Investigating Cryptocurrencies

CHAPTER 10Following the Money

In the previous chapter, you learned how to do research on recovered addresses and find both direct and indirect evidence that could help you with your investigation. In this chapter, you'll look at ways by which you can manually follow transactions through the blockchain and how you can do this in a structured manner. You will also look at techniques to attempt to cluster addresses together into a single owner.

Initial Hints and Tips

Throughout the book, I have referenced blockchain viewers such as blockchain.info, oxt.me, blockexplorer.com, and others. These online tools are very straightforward to use—just search for an address or a transaction, view the details on the screen, and, as I'm sure you have discovered, click other addresses in a transaction to see previous or following transactions. If you have tried doing this, you will have discovered that you get lost, confused, despondent, and generally spun around very quickly indeed! Because of the Base58 and hex naming of address and transactions, following transactions from address to address can be bewildering. When you're working with these tools, I recommend the following:

• Take it slow. Because you can click from transaction to transaction as quickly as the Internet will let you, it is tempting to click away merrily, and this generally results in … no results. Each time you click and load a new screen, you need to take time to consider and understand what you are looking at.
• Take good ...