Accused of Hiding Crypto in a Divorce? How to Prove You Don't

If you are reading this, your spouse or their attorney has accused you of hiding cryptocurrency in a divorce, and you need to show the accusation is wrong. Almost every guide online is written for the spouse who suspects concealment. Almost none are written for the spouse being accused of concealment they did not commit.

When someone contacts me about this, they want one of two things: clarity about what actually happened, or proof that they definitely don't have any crypto. Both come down to the same work. Go through the records, check every transaction on-chain, and document what is there and what isn't.

Proving a negative is harder than proving a positive. You can't point at a transaction that never happened. What you can do is build a record complete enough, and honest enough about its limits, that the accusation has nothing left to stand on.

When You Need This Report

You have been formally accused of hiding crypto

The other side has put it in writing: a request for production, a settlement demand, a filing. Sometimes they name a specific wallet or exchange. Sometimes they just insist you must have crypto somewhere. Either way, a flat denial won't end it.

You had crypto in the past, but not now

Plenty of people bought crypto at some point during the marriage and sold it long before the divorce. That history still shows up in bank transfers to exchanges, old emails, and tax returns, since the IRS asks every filer about digital assets on Form 1040. The other side sees it and assumes you must still be holding something. A forensic report shows the money going in, the money coming out, and the balance sitting at zero.

You are negotiating a settlement

If the settlement includes a promise that you'll be liable for any crypto found later, a report is what lets you sign it without worrying. It also gives the other side a reason to drop a claim that goes nowhere.

You are about to be deposed on your finances

If your deposition will include questions about crypto, having the report in hand means you answer from documented findings instead of memory. Your attorney can produce it ahead of time and cut that line of questioning short.

How to Get Started

To get started, I need either the exchange records produced in the case, yours or your spouse's, or some form of facts about the exchange wallets involved. Statements, CSV exports, wallet addresses, anything that came back from a civil subpoena to a crypto exchange.

From there I go through everything and document it. Every transaction gets checked against the blockchain to see whether any crypto is still sitting on-chain. If I find something, I document it and preserve it for your counsel or for opposing counsel. If I find nothing, the report shows exactly what was checked and why it came back empty.

Billing is hourly, and the first look is free, so you know whether a full report is worth doing before you commit to one. The divorce crypto forensics service page covers what an engagement includes.

What the Other Side Sees

The part that surprises people most is the detail. In one matter, the other side's report was about 20 pages. Mine was about 200, with every single transaction and every single coin documented. When they saw it, they were shocked at how in-depth it went.

That depth is the point. A short report built on totals leaves room to argue about what the totals mean. A report that accounts for every transaction doesn't.

What the Report Contains

• What was searched. Every wallet address, exchange account and blockchain, plus the time period. If something was left out, the report says so and why.
• Where that list came from. The records and facts the client provided. That ties the search to the client's own disclosures, so nobody can say the investigator picked what to look at.
• How it was checked. The tools and block explorers used, and how balances and histories were pulled.
• What was found. For each address and account: current balance, last activity, and total money in and out over the period.
• What it can't rule out. Covered below.
• The bottom line. One or two sentences stating the finding.

Defining the Scope Honestly

Scope is the first thing opposing counsel attacks. Check only Bitcoin and they'll ask about everything else. Promise there's no crypto anywhere on earth and they'll use that to discredit the whole report. The scope has to be wide enough to cover where crypto could realistically be, and narrow enough that everything in it actually gets checked.

• Every wallet address the client has used, including ones recovered from tax filings, exchange exports, or an old hardware wallet.
• Every exchange account the client has opened, whether that's Coinbase, Kraken, Binance.US, Gemini, Crypto.com, Cash App, Robinhood, or something smaller, verified against the account records.
• Every chain those addresses touched.
• The relevant time period, usually from the date of marriage or the earliest known crypto activity through today.

How the Checking Is Done

None of this is new science. It's the same public blockchain data federal investigators and the big analytics firms use. I run professional tracing software, Breadcrumbs for Ethereum and Solana and MetaSleuth for Bitcoin, then verify each chain on its own public block explorer: mempool.space for Bitcoin, Etherscan for Ethereum, and so on.

• The current balance of every address, both native coins and tokens.
• The full transaction history in and out.
• Exchange records matched against the on-chain record, so the two tell the same story.
• Timestamps of money moving in and out of accounts matched to the exact transactions on the blockchain.

Anyone with the same tools and the same address list can reproduce the findings. That's what makes the report hard to argue with. For more on the tooling, see the complete guide to crypto forensic investigation.

If you want to see how an investigation runs from start to finish, see the stages of a crypto forensic investigation.

The Signed Declaration

The report is a technical document. To make it usable as evidence, I sign a declaration for divorce court or arbitration stating what the on-chain record shows. The declaration:

• Identifies who prepared the report.
• States that the attached report is my own work.
• Describes the methodology used.
• Repeats the limitations stated in the report.
• Is signed under penalty of perjury, or notarized where that's required.

With the declaration attached, your attorney can include the report with your financial disclosure or file it in the case.

What I Can't Prove

The one thing that breaks this is someone lying to me. If a client lies about their exchange records, or leaves out a wallet, I can't prove anything about what I was never given. But if I get the correct information, everything is findable.

That cuts both ways. If you do hold crypto you haven't disclosed, the process will surface it, and I won't write a report saying otherwise.

Beyond that, an honest report states its limits:

• Wallets that were never disclosed. If they aren't in the records, they're outside what was searched.
• Privacy coins. Monero and similar chains don't expose balances the way Bitcoin and Ethereum do.
• Keys that never touched the blockchain. A private key written on paper and never used to receive anything won't show up in any analysis.
• The future. The report is a snapshot as of its date.

Stating those limits is what makes the rest defensible. It forces the other side to argue about the limits, which is a much weaker argument than attacking the work itself.

How Attorneys Use the Report

• With your financial disclosure. The report backs up the crypto side of your sworn disclosure.
• In settlement. It takes "hidden crypto" off the table, which often gets a negotiation moving.
• Before your deposition. Your attorney can produce it in advance and narrow the crypto questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you're on the other side of this and suspect your spouse is the one hiding crypto, see hidden crypto assets in divorce. If the question is whether money was wasted rather than hidden, see crypto dissipation claims in divorce.