Stolen crypto or lost access? They are not the same case.
Blockchain tracing solves one of these and cannot touch the other. Working out which problem you have takes about a minute and saves you from paying the wrong specialist — or a fraud pretending to be either.
Someone took your crypto. The funds moved to an address you do not control. Tracing can follow them. That is our work.
You cannot open your own wallet. The funds never moved. You lost a password, a seed phrase or a device. Tracing cannot help at all, and we do not offer this service.
What is the difference between stolen and lost cryptocurrency?
Stolen cryptocurrency has moved on-chain to an address the owner does not control, and the transaction path can be traced. Lost cryptocurrency has not moved at all — the owner cannot access a wallet they still hold, usually through a forgotten password or a damaged seed phrase. Tracing recovers neither, but it can only investigate the first.
One question settles it: did the coins move?
Open a blockchain explorer and look at your address. The answer is visible on the ledger, and it costs nothing to check.
The balance left your address
There is an outgoing transaction you did not authorise. The funds now sit somewhere else. This is theft — phishing, a drained approval, a compromised key, a fake exchange or an investment scam.
Blockchain tracing applies. It can establish where the funds went, which services received them, and whether an intervention point exists.
The balance is still sitting there
You can see the coins. You simply cannot sign a transaction. This is lost access — a forgotten wallet password, a mistyped or incomplete seed phrase, a failed drive, a corrupted keystore file, or a wallet whose maker no longer exists.
Blockchain tracing is useless here. There is nothing to trace. The problem is cryptographic, not investigative.
ChainwatchCrypto does not do wallet recovery.
We investigate stolen assets. We do not recover lost passwords, reconstruct seed phrases, or break wallet encryption, and we will not take your money to attempt it.
No amount of analysis recovers a key
A private key is not recorded anywhere on the blockchain. Transaction analysis, clustering and attribution operate on public ledger data and never reveal a key. Anyone claiming otherwise does not understand the technology, or is lying.
This is a genuinely different discipline
Cryptographic recovery is password cracking and key reconstruction — specialist computational work with its own tooling and its own practitioners. It shares almost nothing with blockchain investigation beyond the word ‘recovery’.
Referring you out costs us nothing
We would rather send you to the right specialist than sell you an investigation that could not have worked. If your case is lost access, the assessment ends with that answer and no charge.
What can genuinely be done, and by whom.
Some lost-access cases are solvable. The determining factor is how much you still remember or still hold — not who you hire.
Often solvable
These are computational problems. A legitimate wallet-recovery specialist will explain the search space, quote against it, and tell you when it is too large to be worth attempting.
Not solvable by anyone
Modern wallet encryption is not breakable by brute force within any useful timeframe. Anybody who says otherwise is selling you something that cannot exist.
The same rules apply as for any recovery service. They should never ask for your full seed phrase up front, never demand payment before establishing feasibility, and never guarantee success. Legitimate practitioners in this field charge a percentage on success or an agreed fee, explain the maths, and turn away cases that cannot work. The warning signs are identical to recovery-scam warning signs.
“Unclaimed” or “dormant” crypto is somebody else’s property.
People search for ways to claim unclaimed bitcoin or find lost crypto that belongs to someone else. There is no mechanism for this. Dormant coins are not abandoned property, no registry exists to claim them from, and the keys are the only thing that determines ownership.
Services offering access to dormant wallets are running one of two schemes: an advance-fee fraud, or an attempt to recruit you into handling proceeds of somebody else’s theft. Both end badly for the person who paid.
Genuine unclaimed-property programmes run by state authorities occasionally hold liquidated crypto from estates or escheatment. Those are searched free of charge through official state unclaimed-property databases, never through a private company that contacts you first.
Then the clock matters, and the first steps are free.
Stop and preserve
Send nothing further. Save transaction hashes, addresses, screenshots, emails and chat logs before anything is deleted.
Report it
File with IC3 and your local police first. It is free, it is fast, and it is frequently a precondition for anything an exchange or prosecutor can later do. Step-by-step reporting guide.
Then get it assessed
A free assessment tells you whether tracing can produce anything useful in your case — including when it cannot.
Bitcoin recovery services and wallet recovery services are not the same trade
The phrase “bitcoin recovery” covers two unrelated problems, and hiring the wrong specialist wastes money on a service that could never have helped.
A bitcoin recovery expert who works on theft is an investigator: they trace where coins went. A bitcoin wallet recovery service works on access: they attempt to reconstruct a password or seed phrase for a wallet you still hold. The two share a word and almost nothing else, and neither can do the other’s job.
Crypto recovery software advertised for retrieving stolen funds does not work — there is nothing for software to do once a transaction has settled. Genuine wallet-recovery tooling is a different category entirely: it performs constrained searches against a wallet file you provide, and its usefulness depends entirely on how much you still remember.
If the coins moved
You need investigation. Tracing establishes the destination and whether an intervention point exists. Crypto recovery services.
If the coins never moved
You need a cryptographic specialist, not an investigator. We do not offer this and will refer you rather than sell you an investigation that could not work.
Claiming unclaimed or dormant bitcoin
There is no mechanism for claiming coins that belong to someone else. Dormant wallets are not abandoned property and no registry exists to claim them from. Offers to provide access are advance-fee fraud or mule recruitment.
Vetting either kind of specialist
Identical rules: no guarantee, no seed phrase up front, no fee to release funds, no unsolicited contact. The warning signs.
On bitcoin recovery specifically.
It depends which problem you have, and the two are unrelated. A bitcoin recovery expert working on theft traces where coins went after they moved. Bitcoin recovery services working on lost access attempt to reconstruct a password or seed phrase for a wallet you still hold. Neither can do the other’s job, and only the second is a cryptographic problem.
Establish which problem you have first — check whether the coins moved — then look for someone who works on that specific problem and will explain its limits. Bitcoin recovery experts who claim to handle both theft tracing and key reconstruction are usually doing neither well.
Not for stolen funds. Once a transaction has settled there is nothing for software to act on. Genuine wallet-recovery tooling is a different category: it runs constrained searches against a wallet file you provide, and its usefulness depends entirely on how much you still remember.