Bitcoin isn't anonymous — investigators can trace every transaction on the blockchain

3 min read Original article ↗

In 2011, Wired reporter Andy Greenberg thought Bitcoin could keep users completely anonymous. But at the 2025 Bitwarden Open Source Security Summit, he said, "I slowly realized I was totally wrong about Bitcoin. It was actually the opposite of untraceable."

The person who changed his mind was Tigran Gambaryan, a criminal investigator with the IRS. Starting around 2014, Gambaryan and a company called Chainalysis exploited the fact that Bitcoin's digital record system was permanent and traceable. It gave investigators "even more power to track financial crimes than traditional banking systems."

Gambaryan's team was able to make the three biggest money seizures in U.S. Justice Department history. They tracked 650,000 stolen Bitcoins from the Mt. Gox exchange to Russian hackers, caught corrupt DEA agents taking Bitcoin bribes on the illegal marketplace Silk Road, and shut down AlphaBay's dark web drug operation by following the digital money trail to Bangkok.

But if tracking blockchain transactions is so easy, why do cyber criminals still steal billions through ransomware attacks? The answer is simple — knowing who did it doesn't mean you can arrest them when criminals operate from Russia or North Korea.

As Greenberg explains: "You can identify the criminals with amazing accuracy thanks to blockchain technology, but if they're in countries where Western police can't reach them, they can still avoid punishment."

Here's the video.

Previously:
• Mysterious $20k Bitcoin transfer to Satoshi Nakamoto's untouched wallet adds to its $117 billion frozen since creator's disappearance in 2011
• How one guy lost millions of dollars of bitcoin to a hacker