Can Stolen Crypto Be Recovered?

Quick Overview

Summary

Stolen cryptocurrency can sometimes be recovered, but there are no certainties. Fast action increases the chance of success. Blockchain tracing and investigations help identify offenders and exchanges involved. Most crypto thefts happen through phishing attacks. Even if funds are not immediately recoverable, investigations can still identify the culprit for possible legal action.

Key Points

Recovery requires quick response to freeze stolen funds.
Identifying the cash-out exchange is a key investigative step.
Hackers often impersonate legitimate crypto services to obtain sensitive information.
Phishing attacks are the leading cause of crypto theft.
Crypto exchanges generally cooperate with law enforcement when KYC details are provided.
Victims should verify contact details and never provide sensitive data to unsolicited contacts.

FAQ

Is it possible to recover stolen cryptocurrency?: Yes, but recovery is not guaranteed. Quick action can improve the chances.
What is the first step in trying to recover stolen crypto?: The first step is identifying the offender and the exchange used to cash out the funds.
Can funds still be investigated if they are not frozen at the exchange?: Yes, investigations can continue to identify the hacker even if the funds cannot be frozen.

In a world where crypto is becoming increasingly popular, the number of crypto phishing attacks and hacks being perpetrated is climbing at a rapid rate. Scammers and hackers impersonate security departments of crypto exchanges, wallet providers and other trusted platforms to deceive users. The offenders create a sense of urgency which causes panic and leads victims to fall for their traps.

Our blockchain investigators are regularly contacted by individuals who have suffered this type of fraud and are looking for assistance. One question that seems to be on all victims’ lips is, can stolen crypto be recovered?

It is certainly possible to recover funds, however, there are no guarantees. Through expert blockchain investigations and cryptocurrency tracing, the chance of recovering crypto increases.Previously, through an investigation, our crypto tracing team and blockchain forensic experts managed to freeze over $100,000 USD in a Binance account after our client’s trust wallet was hacked. If you’ve lost crypto to a hack, then responding quickly can make all the difference.

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As Australia’s first provider of cryptocurrency tracing to the public, Cybertrace has been at the forefront of crypto investigations.

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How To Recover Stolen Cryptocurrency

The most important thing when it comes to recovering stolen cryptocurrency is identifying the offender. This is the first and most crucial step in any asset recovery process.

Our experienced team of cryptocurrency investigators can trace your stolen crypto and identify the exchange the offender has used to withdraw your funds back into a fiat (government) currency. We refer to this as the ‘cash-out point’. Once the specific cash-out transaction and exchange is identified, then we have two options. The first being freezing the funds (when possible).

Freezing the funds relies on the timing of the investigation though, so there are no promises of freezing at the exchange. With normal investment scam situations, individuals can be sending funds for months without realising that it is a scam. However, with a hacked wallet or account, if you respond quickly enough and engage Cybertrace to trace your stolen funds, we may be able to freeze the funds before the hacker manages to cash them out. If successful, then law enforcement can contact the exchange to commence the retrieval of the funds.

If we do not have the option to freeze the funds, the alternative and common process to recover the funds involves either Cybertrace investigators or the Police submitting a request to the exchanges for the account holder details.

Most crypto exchanges will enforce Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures and will work with a request from law enforcement. The records the exchange holds could include the hacker’s name, photo ID, email address, phone number, and other important data.

Using this information, further action can be taken to recover the funds from the offender. To learn more about the process of cryptocurrency tracing and how it works, read our article here.

Is It Too Late To Recover Hacked Crypto?

What if you didn’t realise straight away that your wallet was hacked and the crypto was stolen? Is it too late to recover the funds? No, it is not. We can still investigate a crypto hacker. Whilst we may not be able to freeze the funds at an exchange when the hacker tries to cash out your crypto, we can still investigate to identify the hacker.

If we can identify the hacker, then you can enter the asset recovery stages to try to recover the stolen cryptocurrency!

How Do Crypto Accounts Get Hacked?

In our experience, over 95% of the time, crypto wallet and exchange account hacks occur when a victim is tricked into releasing information that allows offenders to access their accounts, including passwords, private keys and most notably, the seed phrase.

Hacking in general is very difficult, and especially if the crypto owner has proper security in place, such as using Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and storing your seed phrase offline. So, what commonly happens is the victim unknowingly releases information that the hacker can then use to steal the crypto. It is often through careful manipulation that a victim will release information, leading to their crypto being stolen.

These situations commonly unfold when the offenders impersonate a legitimate crypto entity, such as an exchange and use this reputation to encourage victims to provide sensitive information. In some cases offenders may impersonate a reputable wallet or exchange’s website by launching a clone website. We’ve even seen instances where the offenders run Google Ads, ensuring their fake clone website shows up in Google above the real website! The victim thinks they are dealing with a trusted website that they’ve used many times before. They enter their login details and sometimes even their wallet’s seed phrase, only to soon find out their wallet has been drained.

Of course, there are plenty of other criminal techniques deployed by scammers trying to get their hands on your crypto. Including the use of viruses, which can infect someone’s computer or mobile device and record sensitive information.

In most cases though, a hacked account begins with a phishing attack. It typically starts when an offender contacts an individual, making false claims about the security of their cryptocurrency. From reports submitted to Cybertrace, most commonly the offenders will claim that an individual’s cryptocurrency exchange account or wallet has been compromised and will urge them to secure their funds. This set-up puts time pressure on the victim, who often acts out of panic to do as the offender has advised. In some cases, phishing links are used to harbour sensitive information, in other cases, remote access is provided to a device and often victims hand over information believing that the offender is trying to help.

How to Know if you Have Been Hacked

If you are unsure if you have fallen victim to a crypto hack, here are a few tips to consider.

Firstly, how were you contacted? If you received a phone call from an unknown number, it is almost certainly a scam. While exchanges do have lines of contact with their users, it is very unlikely that they will call individual users, especially using unknown/private numbers. Furthermore, Binance reported at the start of the year that there has been an increase in Binance impersonation SMS’s targeting Australians.

In 2025, Cybertrace received numerous reports of individuals falling victim to crypto phishing scams where phishing text messages were arriving in the same SMS thread as genuine text messages from Binance. It is important when dealing with situations of this nature to take a moment to consider the situation before acting. Although the text message is coming from a phone number that is said to be linked to a legitimate exchange, we recommend checking twice before doing as they say. This may mean searching for confirmed phone numbers linked to the exchange or alternatively contacting the exchange directly to determine if it was a legitimate message. Never click links or call numbers provided to you in an email or SMS. Instead, find the official channel of communication through your own research to ensure you’re dealing with the real entity.

Secondly, if you received an email, what was the email address domain? This is another simple check that can be done to determine if the individual contacting you is legitimate. For example, if you were contacted by someone from CoinSpot, the email address domain would be @coinspot.com.au. If the email address domain is not this, then the chances of it being an impersonation attempt is incredibly high. Almost daily our crypto investigations team finds domains impersonating exchanges, for example they could be something like “security-coinspot.com”. It looks like it could be an official email address owned by CoinSpot, but it is not.

What Can be Done About Lost Crypto?

While stolen crypto is also lost crypto, there is a slight differentiation between the two. Lost crypto typically refers to funds that are lost in a variety of ways. This may include losing your seed phrase or private keys, sending the funds to the wrong wallet address or even storing funds in an exchange that goes into liquidation. In all these cases, intervention from scam investigators such as Cybertrace will not provide assistance for a number of reasons.

Unfortunately, once you lose your seed phrase, there is nothing that can be done to recover it. We recommend having two copies of your seed phrase and storing them in two separate and safe places. Additionally, if funds were sent to the wrong wallet address, Police are very unlikely to offer assistance to help determine the owner of the address as no criminal offence has occurred. As for the exchange, you can submit claims for the funds that are yours however, Cybertrace cannot assist with handling this. To avoid having to potentially deal with such a situation, Cybertrace recommends storing your funds in a self-custodial wallet such as a Ledger or Trezor. Storing funds in an offline cold-wallet is the safest way to store your cryptocurrency.

How You Can Help Others

If you feel like you want to do your part to protect others, you can alert people of fraudulent wallet addresses. If you have fallen victim to a phishing scam or crypto hack and had your crypto stolen on any of the below blockchains, you can flag the wallet address on their respective blockchain.

Ethereum
BNB Smart Chain
Base
Polygon
Arbitrum
Avalanche

Simply search the wallet address that received your funds and you can find a drop-down menu that gives you the option to flag the funds.

Once you click this, you will see a drop-down menu. The last option is to “Report/Flag Address”.

Completing this form will prompt the blockchain explorer to assess the wallet address further. If there is sufficient information to display that the wallet address was acting fraudulently, a warning as seen below will appear on the wallet address alerting other users that it has been involved in fraudulent activity.