Follow the Crypto

Public chains are pseudonymous, not anonymous. Every transfer is permanently visible to anyone; what's missing is the mapping from address to human. So the whole game is attribution, and attribution almost always happens at an off-ramp — the point where value converts to fiat through a service that collected identity documents. Everything between the crime and the off-ramp is just plumbing you have to follow.

The beginner error is treating a clustering heuristic's output as fact. "These addresses belong to the same entity" is a probabilistic inference with known failure modes, and commercial attribution labels are proprietary guesses you cannot audit. Trace confidently; attribute carefully.

Triage: what are you holding?