Cryptocurrency was, in its early years, described as private. The description took hold and is, in the present environment, misleading. A blockchain is a public ledger. Every transaction on it is permanently recorded. The records are searchable, indexable, and increasingly easy to read at scale. The privacy of a cryptocurrency holding does not sit in the chain. It sits, if anywhere, in the connection between the chain and the person behind it.

That connection is, for most holders, the exchange. To open an account with a regulated cryptocurrency exchange is to provide identity documents, a residential address, a tax identifier, and a banking relationship. The exchange holds all of this and links it permanently to every wallet the account ever interacts with. The blockchain, which knows none of this, is, through the exchange, fully attributable to a verified person.

The same is true of the secondary mechanisms that move cryptocurrency in and out of the regulated world. Bank transfers in and out of exchanges. Card payments to exchanges. Payment processors that integrate with exchanges. Tax filings that, in most serious jurisdictions, now require cryptocurrency to be declared and the underlying records preserved. Each adds a layer of documentation to a holding that, on the chain alone, looks anonymous.

What most people miss is that the documentation, once created, does not stay only with the party that created it. Exchanges share records under cooperation agreements between regulators. Banks share records under tax-information frameworks. Aggregators consume what is publicly disclosed. A holding that the holder considers private is, in practical terms, attributable to them in several places they are not aware of.

the desk works with substantial holders of cryptocurrency on the records that surround their holdings rather than the holdings themselves. The desk does not access exchange accounts, does not hold wallet credentials, and does not transact. It maps the public blockchain record against the holder's identifiers, traces the connection points through which the chain becomes attributable, and addresses, through the proper administrative channels, what can be addressed.

The fuller account of the desk's work in this area is set out in the desk's work on protecting cryptocurrency and digital asset holdings.