Cryptocurrency Basics for Investigators

Why Join This Course

Cryptocurrency is no longer a niche tool reserved exclusively for high-level cybercriminals—it routinely surfaces in local drug distribution, fraud, money laundering, and extortion. This course strips away the complex jargon to give you a solid, practical foundation in how digital assets move. You will learn how to confidently identify crypto indicators in your everyday casework and understand the mechanics of a transaction without needing a degree in computer science.

Why It Matters

When criminals shift their profits into digital wallets, standard financial paper trails go cold. If an investigator doesn’t know the difference between a hot wallet, a cold wallet, or an exchange, vital evidence is permanently lost. Understanding the fundamentals of the blockchain ensures that you don’t miss digital assets during searches, misinterpret financial footprints, or fail to secure time-sensitive leads.

How It Helps Investigations

This training turns a technical hurdle into a viable investigative lead. You will learn how to use free, open-source blockchain explorers to track transactions, identify service providers (exchanges) where legal data requests can be sent, and recognize the physical artifacts—such as seed phrases or hardware wallets—during a search operation. It bridges the gap between traditional policing and digital asset recovery.

Who Should Attend

This webinar is tailored for frontline and financial investigators who are increasingly encountering digital currency in their daily workloads:

• Detectives and reactive CID officers
• Financial investigators and counter-fraud teams
• Intelligence analysts and researchers
• Search team members and digital forensics technicians
• Local policing supervisors managing modern crime files

Learning Objectives

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Explain the core components of the blockchain, including the practical differences between public keys, private keys, and wallet types.
• Identify crypto artifacts during physical or digital searches, ensuring that seed phrases and hardware wallets are legally secured.
• Map basic transaction flows using open-source blockchain ledger tools to trace where funds originate and where they are held.
• Identify virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to properly direct legal orders, subpoenas, or data preservation requests to secure evidence.