Crypto fraud: why transactions are traceable – and what that achieves

As long as funds are moved between wallets, the trail remains visible, but without a name. It becomes tangible at the transitions to the regulated financial system – typically at trading venues that must identify customers. If a chain leads there, a starting point arises for information and preservation requests.

Whether a trading venue responds depends on its seat, the supervision there and the form of the request. Official enquiries in the context of an investigation regularly have a different effect from private letters – one reason why a criminal complaint is more often useful here than in other constellations.

Tracing produces findings; it does not automatically lead to a recovery. Funds may already have been routed through services that make attribution more difficult, or may sit on trading venues without cooperating supervision. Whether and to what extent a preservation is possible depends on the individual case and cannot be promised.