Lost or stolen crypto?
Start with the evidence.
ChainwatchCrypto provides blockchain investigation and tracing services designed to identify transaction paths, analyse wallet relationships and organise evidence for appropriate legal or investigative action.
Blockchain tracing can identify transaction activity and potential intervention points. Recovery is not guaranteed. We do not hold law-enforcement authority, we cannot compel an exchange to act, and we cannot reverse a settled blockchain transaction.
Anyone who guarantees to recover your funds is either mistaken or lying to you. That is true of us as well, which is why we do not say it.
What are crypto recovery services?
Crypto recovery services trace stolen digital assets across a blockchain to establish where funds went and whether an intervention point exists. Tracing is not recovery: no investigator can reverse a settled transaction or compel an exchange to act. What recovery is possible depends on where funds landed and how quickly the theft was reported.
The situations where this work produces something usable.
Exchange or wallet compromise
Funds moved out of an account you controlled, without your authorisation.
Phishing and approval drains
A signature or approval you were tricked into granting, and the drain that followed.
Investment fraud
Deposits made to a platform that turned out to be fictitious, and where those deposits went.
Social engineering
Romance, impersonation and long-contact fraud, traced through the payments rather than the story.
Unauthorised transfers
Insider transfers, compromised keys and account takeovers.
Business email compromise
Redirected settlement in digital assets, traced to the receiving service.
Six stages, in order.
Each stage produces something you can read. Nothing is charged before you have seen an assessment and approved a scope.
Submit case
Transaction hash, address, chain, asset, approximate amount, date, incident type and any supporting evidence. Intake is confidential.
Initial triage
We assess whether blockchain analysis can produce anything useful for your situation. Sometimes it cannot, and we tell you so before you spend anything.
Case assessment
Preliminary findings, scope, complexity, the investigation this would require, and pricing where applicable. Nothing proceeds without your approval.
Investigation
Transaction tracing, clustering where supported, entity analysis, fund-flow analysis and exposure analysis.
Evidence report
Structured documentation separating fact, analytical interpretation and unverified information, with methodology and limitations stated.
Next steps
Customer action, legal counsel, exchange contact, law-enforcement referral, or continued monitoring — chosen against what the findings actually support.
What ‘a result’ actually looks like.
Tracing does not end with a name. It ends with a place where somebody with authority or an account relationship can act.
| Outcome | What was found | What can follow |
|---|---|---|
| Funds reached an identified service | A centralised exchange or custodian holds them. | The strongest position. Your counsel or law enforcement can approach the service; the service decides. |
| Funds are sitting still | An address with no outbound activity. | Monitoring matters here. Movement is often the trigger for action. |
| Funds crossed a bridge | Value moved to another chain. | Tracing continues where the corresponding transaction can be matched with confidence. |
| Funds entered a mixing service | Value entered a pooling construction. | Often the end of a reliable trace. We say so rather than presenting a guess. |
| Funds were converted off-chain | OTC settlement or peer-to-peer trade. | Chain analysis ends at the counterparty. Any next step is legal, not analytical. |
Blockchain tracing can identify transaction activity and potential intervention points. Recovery is not guaranteed. We do not hold law-enforcement authority, we cannot compel an exchange to act, and we cannot reverse a settled blockchain transaction.
The more of this you have, the faster triage is.
Bring what you have. A single transaction hash is often enough to begin, and part of triage is telling you what else would materially change the answer.
Your seed phrase. Your private keys. Remote access to your device. A transfer of crypto to ‘verify’ anything. If anybody claiming to be us asks for these, it is not us.
The case assessment is free. If an investigation is worth running, the assessment states the scope and the fee before any work begins and before you commit to anything.
No. Contingency pricing creates an incentive to promise outcomes nobody can control, and it is the standard structure of recovery fraud. We charge for investigative work, not for outcomes.
It depends entirely on the number of hops, the chains involved and whether funds have entered constructions that break a trace. The assessment gives you a scope; we do not quote a standard turnaround because there is not one.
We cannot tell you that, and neither can anybody else who is being honest with you. What we can tell you is where the funds went, as far as the chain allows, and whether that leads anywhere somebody with authority could act.
We can prepare documentation in the form exchanges generally expect, and we can support your counsel in approaching them. We cannot compel any exchange to respond or to act.
Yes. Case data is access-controlled, and we do not publish customer cases. Where we publish a case study it is either anonymised and labelled as an illustrative case, or published with explicit permission.
How to recover stolen cryptocurrency: what the process actually involves
Crypto recovery services do not move funds back. They establish where a stolen asset went, who received it, and whether anyone is in a position to act. Here is what that work involves and where it stops.
When someone asks how to recover stolen cryptocurrency, they are usually asking two questions at once: can the money be traced, and can it be returned. Those have different answers. Digital asset recovery as an industry sells the first and is frequently mistaken for the second.
An unauthorised crypto transaction is final once confirmed. No cryptocurrency recovery service can reverse it, and any firm implying otherwise is describing something the technology does not permit. What a competent investigation produces is a documented path from your wallet to wherever the funds came to rest, and an assessment of whether an intervention point exists at the end of it.
Scammed, hacked, or drained — the tracing is the same
Crypto scam recovery, crypto fraud recovery and stolen-wallet cases all reduce to the same on-chain question: which addresses received the funds, and did any of them belong to a service that keeps records. The scam type shapes the off-chain evidence, not the trace.
Where to hire a cryptocurrency recovery service
Judge any firm on whether it publishes its limits, refuses to guarantee outcomes, and will decline a case that cannot work. Nine criteria, with us scored against them.
What "recovered" realistically means
Almost always: a report an exchange, lawyer or prosecutor can act on. Occasionally: a freeze at a service that still held the funds. Never: a technical reversal. All five routes compared.
When we say no
If funds entered a mixer, dispersed years ago, or the amount cannot justify the work, triage says so and you are not charged. A service that finds every case viable is selling hope.
Report the theft first — it is free and it is what every later route depends on. Reporting guide. Then read the recovery-scam warning signs, because people who have just lost crypto are the most heavily targeted group in this market.
On scope, terminology and what is realistic.
Digital asset recovery describes investigative work that establishes where lost or stolen crypto assets went and whether anyone can act on that finding. It does not describe moving funds back, which no service can do unilaterally. Where you see the phrase used to promise restitution, treat it as a marketing claim rather than a description of the work.
We can trace them, and sometimes tracing identifies a service holding them that could freeze the account. Whether funds are actually returned depends on that service, on law enforcement, and on how quickly the loss was reported. Crypto scam asset retrieval is not something any investigator controls, and we do not price the work as though it were.
An unauthorised transaction is still final once confirmed, whether it came from a drained approval, a compromised key or a SIM swap. Tracing follows where the value went. The route to any remedy runs through the receiving service, your bank if fiat was involved, and a police report — not through reversing the transaction.
Before you pay anyone, report the theft.
Reporting is free, it takes minutes, and it is the step most likely to matter. Do it before you engage us or any other investigator. A tracing report is far more useful to an exchange or a prosecutor when a formal complaint already exists to attach it to.
FBI IC3
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. The primary US route for crypto theft and fraud. File here even if the amount feels small — IC3 aggregates reports, and clusters get investigated.
FTC ReportFraud
The Federal Trade Commission’s fraud reporting service. Covers scams, impersonation and investment fraud, and feeds a database used by law enforcement across the US.
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The right route where the loss involves crypto derivatives, leveraged trading or a fraudulent trading platform.
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission. Use this where the asset or scheme was presented as an investment, a token sale or a fund.
Your local police
File a report in your own jurisdiction and keep the reference number. Banks, exchanges and insurers frequently require it, and it is often the precondition for any formal request to a service.
Report to your national fraud or cybercrime body and to your local police. If a card or bank transfer was involved at any point, contact your bank immediately — that is the one channel where speed can still change the outcome.
Blockchain analysis establishes where funds went and whether an intervention point exists. Whether anything is recovered depends on where the funds landed, how quickly you acted, and whether a cooperating exchange or authority sits at the end of the path. Read exactly what we can and cannot do, and how to spot a recovery scam before you pay anybody.