Wallet

A wallet is the digital environment someone uses to store, receive and send crypto. A wallet has a public address that is visible on the blockchain; access runs through keys that the owner controls. On its own, a wallet says nothing about who is behind it.

What it may indicate

An address that keeps coming back in an investigation can be a lead, but it need not mean anything. Sometimes a wallet belongs to a service, sometimes to a person. What an address really represents only emerges from following the transactions around it.

To map a flow of funds, the wallet from which an amount departed is examined. By following the incoming and outgoing transactions, a picture of the route forms. That picture can give direction, but interpretation only follows after investigation.

What is a crypto wallet?

A wallet is the digital environment used to store and send crypto. It comes with a public address that is visible on the blockchain.

Does a wallet reveal who owns it?

Not by itself. An address is visible, but who is behind it only emerges from following the surrounding transactions in context.

Can someone see who you are from your wallet?

Not from the address itself. A combination of data, for instance a payment to or from a registered platform, can create a link to a person. Only the platform or an authorised body can take that step.

How many addresses belong to one wallet?

That differs per application. Some wallets work with a single address, others create a new address for every receipt. For an investigation that matters, because several addresses can belong to the same user.

What do you record about a wallet in a report?

The addresses attributed to the wallet, the grounds for that attribution, the transactions involved with their hash, and the moments where the behaviour changes. Assumptions are listed separately.

What a wallet does and does not prove

In a file the practical question is who could sign, not who is named somewhere. With a hosted account the keys sit with a provider, so the customer record, the login history and the withdrawal instructions live in that provider’s administration and can only be obtained through a formal route. With self-custody the holder keeps the keys, so control has to be shown in another way, for example through a signed message, a matching device or a consistent pattern of use over time. Those two situations lead to completely different requests for information.

A second point is that one holder usually controls many addresses at once. Change addresses, separate addresses per asset and old backups all belong to the same person, which is why we describe a set of addresses and the reason they belong together rather than pointing at a single line. We never ask anyone for a seed phrase or private key in order to establish this, because control can be demonstrated without handing over the means to spend the balance. What goes into the report is the address set, the period and the evidence for the link.

External sourceThe FCA warns UK consumers that crypto is largely unregulated, that the value can fall sharply and that people who lose money are unlikely to be protected by the compensation schemes that cover regulated products. That is worth reading before you rely on a provider to hold a balance for you, because the choice between hosted and self-custody is also a choice about who carries the risk. See FCA: crypto basics.

Your own situation

If you are reading this, you probably have a question about your own situation. That is exactly what Paucitas does.

The first step is contact by phone. We prefer to schedule that call through WhatsApp, so you do not have to wait. In the call we look together at what can factually be established in your case and what Paucitas can examine for you.

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