Could an exchange reuse or rotate addresses?¶
Yes. Exchanges may keep, rotate, replace, retire or share addresses, so one address does not permanently identify one customer and several addresses do not imply several controllers.
Public infrastructure and customer ledgers differ¶
Services may assign persistent or temporary deposit addresses, use a shared address with a tag, and execute withdrawals from pooled wallets. A current screen may omit the historical route.
Obtain historical assignment¶
Preserve address, network, asset, tag, account and observation date. Request creation and retirement dates, assignment history and linked deposits or withdrawals.
Where an address recurs across investigations, test whether it is provider infrastructure before inferring common control. Report customer-assigned, shared and operational addresses distinctly.
The point to remember
Historical provider mapping is essential because address rotation and pooling can defeat attribution from the public address alone.
