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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
(Updated September 2022)Bitcoin is often perceived as a completely anonymous network where transactions are untraceable. It’s been heavily criticized for being the money of criminals – that drug dealers use it to evade “the man”. However, can Bitcoin be traced?Here’s the short answer:Yes, Bitcoin can be traced. All transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain are public, and anyone can review them. However, you can only trace the Bitcoin wallet that the transaction stems from, not the person who owns the wallet.It’s not the case that Bitcoin is mainly used by criminals, even though it’s highly private. The number of transactions on the Bitcoin network that are criminal is currently less than one percent. In fact, Bitcoin is one of the most transparent payment systems in the world, but at the same time, if you know what you’re doing, Bitcoin is practically untraceable.Is Bitcoin Traceable?Because Bitcoin is built on blockchain tech, every computer on the Bitcoin network keeps a perfect copy of the transaction history.The sender and receiver’s wallet address, the time/date of the transaction and the amount of Bitcoin sent/received will be permanently stored for all Bitcoin transactions ever made, and all transactions ever to come. This means that anybody can look up the details regarding every transaction ever made. That’s why it’s so transparent.Another important thing about transacting with Bitcoin is that once an address is used, it gets “dirty”:Wallet addresses are linked to every transaction it ever was involved in. This makes it easy to figure out what a specific address has done in the past. In this sense, Bitcoin can be traced.You can look up a specific address and check out all the different transactions it’s been involved in, as well as when it was first used and how much BTC it contains. Blockchain.com lets you check out all Bitcoin wallets in existence. Below you see an example:Bitcoin offers total transparency of transactions. However, to figure out who was involved in the transaction, one needs to know who used the wallet; that’s where privacy comes in:Even though the transactions of all wallets are public, it’s still highly private.Yes, everyone can look up your transaction data, but no one knows who you are – they can only see your wallet address.Information about who owns a wallet is not easy to access, which is why Bitcoin offers a great deal of privacy.However, it’s not impossible to figure out:How to Crack the Privacy of Bitcoin TransactionsWhen a person tries to buy goods or services, they usually need to give their personal information, like their name and address, in order to receive them.The business that sold the given good/service can then check what wallet address paid, and connect the dots.If “John Johnson” bought a car from BMW, and it was paid for by a wallet with the address “x”, BMW could assume that the wallet with address “x” belongs to John Johnson. They can then look up all the different transactions he has been involved in, as well as check his wallet
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