Can one trace a criminal with his Pubkey?

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Say FBI arrested a guy who bought some drugs using bitcoin. Then, is it possible for FBI to trace a drug dealer using the arrested guy’s PrivateKey and his transaction histories?

If my understanding of bitcoin algorithm is correct, this is impossible since PublicKey only shows that “there is a user with this public key” and it does not give any more information about a user who owns that PublicKey.

Moreover, transaction that the dealer and the arrested guy made only shows public keys.

Can one trace someone using past trasactions?

Rubertos

Posted 2018-01-15T11:18:02.230

Reputation: 187

Most users of BTC have many PrivateKeys and PublicKeys, since good security practice calls for a different address for every single transaction. – abelenky – 2018-01-15T14:36:13.213

Answers

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Knowledge about his addresses and transaction history will be sufficient to discover addresses with which he made deals. His Private key will not help. This is the consequence of public ledger.

The different case is with deterministic wallets. When you know master private key/ mnemonic seed you can check all derived addresses, even the ones you have no previous knowledge.

Michał Zabielski

Posted 2018-01-15T11:18:02.230

Reputation: 326

But can one find the actual guy in real world when we only know his “address” (this is a PublicKey) ? That is my question. – Rubertos – 2018-01-15T11:29:59.583

@Rubertos if he send the money from this address to the account on market exchange then law enforcement can contact the exchange and with high probability find the person. – Michał Zabielski – 2018-01-15T11:33:32.230

Yes that would be one case. However, is it possible to find the person directly using bitcoin address? This is my question. What if the dealer did use a deep web market place and did not convert it to real money using cryptocurrecy-exchange market? – Rubertos – 2018-01-15T11:37:05.777

@Rubertos the address without any additional data gives you no information. Note however, that all the transactions are known, so law enforcement can contact some person who this dealer made deals with, and going back in transaction history find the person who they want to catch. Because of that, some people say that bitcoin is pseudonymous. – Michał Zabielski – 2018-01-15T11:46:11.977

Okay thank you. That drug-dealing scenario is just an example. I was curious that how much information an individual can directly extract from PublicKeys. So, unlike one can find out location using IP address, there is no info here.. thank you – Rubertos – 2018-01-15T11:49:42.447

Asked: 2018-01-15T11:18:02.230

Viewed: 88 times

Active: 2018-01-15T11:57:38.800