In this article, I will discuss methods that can be used to find out the owner of a crypto wallet.
Even though blockchain technology is known for its transparency, it tends to hide the identity of a wallet owner.
Still, there are techniques for tracing ownership, including blockchain explorers, WI disclosure, and advanced analytic methods.
These techniques, when utilized, will attempt to establish ownership in some ways.
How To Find Out Who Owns a Crypto Wallet?
When searching for the owner of a crypto wallet is challenging because there is a lot of anonymity surrounding the blockchain world.
That said, there are some techniques that you could utilize to search for the owner:
Blockchain Explorers: Apart from mapping out the genesis history of particular Bitcoin addresses, tools such as Blockchain.Com or BlockExplorer come in handy when there is a need to track the transactions made by certain users.
These explorers show the publicly available, chronological records of blockchain transactions1.
Transaction Analysis Tools: Specialized companies controlling the Chainalysis or Elliptic brand offer extension pieces to investigate the moved tokens, including connection to named individuals from the real world1.
Social Media and Forums: Twenty per cent of the participants in the study indicated that they would be willing to take it a step further and publish their wallet addresses on social media or forum sites.
By typing the given address in a search engine, you might find similar or related emails that could help pin the owner.
Cryptocurrency Exchanges: If you have an idea of the platform where the wallet was hosted, you can get the KYC information of that particular exchange.
However, this information is available only to the exchange or when obtained legally via court order.
BitcoinWhosWho: This site allows you to check if a Bitcoin address has been reported for scamming purposes and has associated tags.
Legal Considerations and Privacy Issues
Perhaps the best remedy approach is to look at legal angles: ownership of a crypto wallet raises several legal and privacy issues.
Legal Considerations
Data Protection Laws: Because many countries have specific laws on the legal protection of people’s private data (i.e. GDPR in Europe), what is the scrubbing of personal information?
Treating or disseminating private information without consent may invoke legal measures.
KYC Regulations: There are laws regarding the identification and verification of users that are followed or implemented by many businesses dealing with cryptocurrency, and these are called Know Your Customer Regulations or KYC.
Nonetheless, this information is mainly held and accessible only to the authorities and the extradition.
Legal Requests: If you want to collect data regarding the wallet owner legally, you may have to obtain the information by asking through legal means, for instance, getting any prerequisites from the court or engaging with justice enforcement.
Privacy Issues
Anonymity: Anonymity is at the core of the benefits of cryptocurrencies, and this is also a turning point for most people who use such currencies. Wallet addresses do not have any personal details, so it will prove challenging to associate them with the natural person.
Pseudonymity: Unfortunately, their transactions are public, but the parties involved and their wallet address are unknown.
This means that unless a person chooses to make known their wallet address, it might be hard to know who that wallet belongs.
Ethical Considerations: Attempting to decipher the identity of a person or group without prior permission raises moral questions.
Just like any other intrusive step, it is essential to consider what justifies such an infringement.
Best Practices
Do Not Violate Privacy: Avoid identifying people’s identities whenever possible, especially if there is no genuine purpose.
Approach Authority: If you reasonably wish to know the identity of a wallet owner, access your relevant authority if such persons are illegally claiming other people’s properties.
Legal Update: Stay abreast of the ever-evolving legal landscape surrounding the cryptocurrency industry to meet your appropriate entitlement and responsibilities.
Conclusion
To sum up all of the above, determining the identity of a crypto wallet feature is not as simple as it seems. Reasons for this include the anonymity and pseudonymity aspects of blockchain-based technologies.
Exploring the blockchain, examining the transaction records, searching social networks — everything has some clues but does not work in most cases.
Further legal measures may be required to solve the problem, such as communicating with a cryptocurrency auction or contacting the police. Still, each of these fair approaches may have its constraints as well.
This is an important step, but care must be taken regarding privacy and moral restrictions regarding the search processes for the wallet owner.
First and foremost, make sure that any actions you take would be legal. If there is such a business justification for finding out the wallet’s owner, obtaining legal counsel may be necessary, as this may be problematic.
