Could an exchange reuse or rotate addresses?¶

Yes. A cryptocurrency exchange may reuse, rotate, replace or retire deposit and withdrawal addresses.

Avoid the dangerous assumption¶

The dangerous assumption is that one address permanently identifies one customer or that a new address means a new account.

An exchange may assign a customer a persistent deposit address.

It may also generate a new address for security, operational or network reasons.

Some services use shared addresses together with a memo, tag or internal reference.

Withdrawal transactions may come from pooled provider wallets rather than an address dedicated to the customer.

This means historical provider records are essential.

A current account screen may not show the address used during the relevant period.

Preserve the address, network, asset, date observed, account ID and any tag or memo.

Ask the exchange for address-assignment history, creation and retirement dates, internal account linkage and relevant deposit or withdrawal records.

Do not assume that several customers using the same visible address are the same person.

Likewise, do not assume that several addresses linked to one account represent several controllers.

Rotation and pooling can complicate blockchain analysis but make provider records more important, because the public address alone may not reveal the internal customer relationship.

Where an address appears in several investigations, determine whether it belongs to exchange infrastructure before attributing common control.

When reporting, distinguish customer-assigned addresses, pooled operational wallets and temporary or rotated addresses.

Operational takeaway¶

Obtain historical exchange address-assignment records before linking an address to a customer, because providers may rotate, reuse or pool addresses across accounts and transactions.