Guide · 5 min read
Can a crypto swap be traced? What it hides and what it does not
By the AltoSwap team · Reviewed and updated · Editorial policy
Short answerA swap is not invisible. Your deposit and your payout are both recorded on their blockchains, and the exchange that converts the coins sees both sides. What a swap does change is the link between the two: someone looking only at the public blockchains cannot simply follow your coins from one chain to the other. How private the result is depends mostly on the coins involved.
Who sees what
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Anyone, on a public blockchain | Your deposit transaction and your payout transaction, each on its own chain, with amounts and addresses. Not the fact that they belong together. |
| The exchange that converts the coins | Both sides of the swap: the deposit, the payout address and the amounts. |
| The swap site | The pair, the amounts and the addresses you typed, for as long as the swap record exists. |
| The person you pay | A payment from the exchange's address, not from your wallet. |
What links the two sides anyway
- Timing and amount. A deposit of an unusual amount followed minutes later by a matching payout can be paired by someone who watches both chains.
- The exchange's records. Whoever can obtain them can connect the two sides.
- Your own habits, such as reusing an address that is already known to be yours.
Why the coin matters
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and most other chains are public ledgers: every payment and every balance can be read by anyone. Monero hides amounts and addresses on its own chain. A swap into Monero therefore ends in a payment that outsiders cannot read, although the exchange still knows it made it.
What AltoSwap keeps
No account, no email and no identity document. The swap record held by the exchange is deleted 14 days after it was created. For its own accounts the site keeps the swap ID, the two coins, the amounts, the route and the time for 12 months, with no addresses and no IP address.
What this means in practice
A swap is a reasonable way to keep your wallet and its balance out of someone else's view. It is not a way to make funds untraceable, and it does not change what the law where you live requires of you.
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