How to report Bitcoin Fraud

Glasschain.org is a free to use platform where you can report cases of fraud that happened to you or you are aware of. GlassChain works that way, that we store those reports and share them with other service providers in order for them to recognize potential illegally acquired funds. We grow our network continuously and rely on users like you to help us do that.

The goal is to make the blockchain space safer and make the life of the 1% bad actors harder. Those bad actors have caused a lot of bad publicity to such a great invention like DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) and the cryptocurrencies that came with it.

GlassChain will eventually be working for various blockchains but for simplicity, we explain how to report here for Bitcoin only. It applies to all cryptocurrencies.

How to report a Bitcoin fraud

If you want to report a Bitcoin fraud, all you have to do is search for that Address or Wallet from the search bar and then report a fraud by pressing the red “Report” button on top of the page. Here a couple of tips to make your report more valuable and increase the chance of your report to have an impact.

• Register and report it as registered user
• Be as precise as possible in your description
• Be sure to report the right address or wallet (more details below)
• Share the link to that address with your report on social media and forums to let people know

How to be sure to report the right Bitcoin address

This depends on the type of the report you are doing. Below a few common examples that might help to understand, how you should report a fraud and how to be sure to report the right Bitcoin address.

Blackmail
Blackmailing involves mostly an email that contains a Bitcoin address to which you should pay money to. This address belongs for sure to the fraudster and must be reported.

IMPORTANT: Even if there is no transactions yet and 0 Bitcoin, it is important to report that address as it might have been sent to thousands of people that will find comfort in knowing, this is a fraud. Not every user is as certain as you might be that this is a fraud.

Hacked wallet
If you had your wallet hacked or someone got in any other form access to your wallet and now the Bitcoin is gone, you should take the transaction hash of the last outgoing transaction (can be more than 1) and report all receiving addresses (outputs).

You sent Bitcoin to a scam
If you have sent Bitcoin to a scammer and realized this now, you have to report the address the scammer has given you to pay to and you have made the payment to. Bare in mind, that this address might be shown to you as belonging to an exchange, such as Binance for example. In this case, it means that the scammer has given you his exchange deposit address directly. You should still report this address and identity the exchange immediately.

Exchange Wallet hacked
Same as for a hacked wallet, if your exchange account has been compromised and Bitcoin has been stolen, you should go to the withdraw history and report the address that has received (output) the Bitcoin from your account. Be sure to immediately inform the exchange about and find the cause of the breach.

A general rule is that a scammer is the owner of the receiving Bitcoin Address. However, a transaction can have multiple outputs and you have to be careful not to report the output address that might be your change address. This is especially important if YOU have made the transfer to a scam. Likely, one of the output addresses is your return address. To know which is the scammer, check the output value (Bitcoin Amount) and use the one you know got the amount you have sent funds to. If you do not know how Bitcoin works and have been scammed, we suggest to read about bitcoin here https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works