Your identity may be private when using Bitcoin, but account transactions are not. If you know a person’s Bitcoin address, the same number you would use to send money to them, you can view their transaction history and current account balance.
This is especially interesting when it comes to crooks. For example, in the massive Twitter hack on July 15, 2020, numerous news organizations and individuals reported how much money was sent to the scammer’s Bitcoin address. Here’s how they found out about this number, and how you can do the same for any Bitcoin address.
To find this information, you will need to examine the Bitcoin blockchain. It is a public, shared record of all Bitcoin transactions that occur. The easiest way to access this information is to use a website that makes it available to you. We love Blockchain.com Blockchain explorer for that.
Simply visit the website, paste the Bitcoin address you want information about into the search box, and hit enter. You can choose in which currency you
For example, Twitter attackers used the following address: bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh
You will see a list of transactions associated with that address.
As of the evening of July 15, the account had received a total of 12.86 Bitcoin and sent 7.16 Bitcoin to other addresses.
To view the amount in US dollars, click on “USD” in the upper right corner of the screen. (You can choose another currency from the drop-down list to the right of the search box.)
We can see that the account had received Bitcoin worth over $ 118,000,
Tools like this can also show you other details of the Bitcoin blockchain, including the current value of a Bitcoin account and transaction information. The information is available, and you don’t have to download the entire Bitcoin blockchain yourself to find it.
