Tracing
Following the movement or provenance of value forward or backward from a defined starting point across successive transactions, intermediary addresses, swaps and bridges, applying a stated tracing method where funds are commingled. Through mixers, CoinJoin, privacy protocols and custodial services, tracing generally cannot be performed deterministically from on-chain data alone. Links may instead rely on probabilistic analysis, distinctive transaction patterns, user errors or third-party records.
When funds pass through a custodial service, its internal records can help reconstruct movements between customer accounts, but assets traded or transferred within the service are fungible: investigators may be tracing the movement of value through accounts rather than the same identifiable units of cryptocurrency. Conclusions should distinguish direct on-chain links, heuristic inferences and links established through external records.
Related
Essays
- The Strings Stay Public (Why Tracing Is Not Enough)
“Tracing funds walks edges until they end in a mixer, a nested service, a deposit address you cannot compel.”
- Two Sweeps Pointed at the Same Address
“The tracing was done and the report was already with law enforcement when the client told me the part that reopened the case.”
- The Desk Opens on Monday
“Most of the attention in this work goes to the tracing that finds the window.”
- Achilles Catches the Tortoise Where It Has to Stop
“The bottleneck it never removes is the delivery of the report, which stays a discrete, accountable act no matter how fast the tracing gets.”