What records might a cryptocurrency exchange hold?¶

A cryptocurrency exchange may hold customer, access, funding, trading and blockchain records that are not visible from the public ledger.

Avoid the dangerous assumption¶

The dangerous assumption is that the blockchain contains the exchange’s complete evidential record.

Customer records may include name, date of birth, address, identity documents, verification results, email addresses, phone numbers and account IDs.

Access records may include logins, IP addresses, devices, sessions, authentication events, password resets and security changes.

Financial records may include linked bank accounts, cards, fiat deposits, withdrawals, trades, fees and internal transfers.

Cryptocurrency records may include deposit addresses, withdrawal addresses, transaction hashes, network, asset, memo or tag, wallet labels and status history.

The exchange may also retain address whitelisting, beneficiary details, support contacts, fraud alerts, account restrictions, compliance reviews, investigations and records of compromised access.

Internal transfers between exchange users may not appear on the public blockchain.

Provider records may therefore be the only way to identify the customer accounts on both sides.

Preserve every known account ID, email address, phone number, transaction reference, address, hash, asset, network and date range.

Ask the provider to distinguish customer instructions, internal ledger movements and on-chain transactions.

Do not assume that know-your-customer information identifies the actual user of each transaction.

Compare registration with device, session and authentication evidence.

When reporting, separate account registration, access, trading, internal movement, blockchain movement and personal attribution.

Operational takeaway¶

Request complete exchange identity, access, funding, trade, internal-transfer, deposit and withdrawal records so on-chain activity can be linked accurately to customer accounts and users.