The client transferred money to an investment platform that promised high returns. Within minutes the money became a crypto-asset and changed wallets. The question reaches the firm the same afternoon: can it still be frozen?
Blockchain for lawyers, what tracing identifies and where it stops, and the technical data a freeze request needs.
Crypto-assets do not vanish. Every transaction is recorded on a public blockchain, and anyone can look it up. What the record does not carry is the name: the blockchain shows addresses, not people.
The name appears at a few gateways: the exchange where the criminal has an account, the stablecoin issuer that can freeze balances, the platform that identifies its customers. The freeze request must point to the right gateway, with network, address, transaction hash and time. A generic request, such as "freeze the defendant's cryptocurrencies", comes back unanswered.
The course explains blockchain in the language of litigation, shows what tracing identifies and where it stops, and provides the data sheet for the request. It covers Law 14,478/2022 (Brazil's virtual assets act) and the Central Bank of Brazil's rules for virtual asset service providers, in force since February 2026.
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A payment platform was hacked and had data destroyed, and the intruder erased his own tracks. The examination showed that the malicious program's command channel was written into smart contracts on a public blockchain, and recovered the deleted control address, because the record is immutable. It mapped dozens of wallets and more than one hundred thousand transactions, solely by querying the public record. The report gave the authorities the international exchange holding the central wallet, the stablecoin issuers able to freeze funds and the platforms holding the account holders' customer records.
A client sends money by Pix (Brazil's instant payment system) to the account indicated by an "investment platform". The account holder buys crypto-assets at an exchange and sends them to another address, which passes the funds on. Tracing links the Pix transfer to the purchase, follows the wallets and looks for the next gateway with customer records.
In pairs, the class receives the simulated record of a crypto-asset transfer (illustrative example): hash, source and destination addresses, network, asset, amount and time in UTC. In 15 minutes, each pair fills in the technical data sheet for the freeze request, converts the time to Brasília time, identifies the addressee of the order and writes the technical justification in three lines.
Laws and rulings discussed
Law 14,478/2022 (Brazil's virtual assets act) · Decree 11,563/2023, art. 1º · BCB Resolution No. 520/2025 (Central Bank of Brazil) · BCB Resolutions No. 519 and 521/2025 · STJ (Brazilian Superior Court of Justice), REsp 2,104,122 · STJ, REsp 2,250,674 · CNJ (National Council of Justice), CriptoJud · Brazilian Code of Civil Procedure (CPC), art. 301
See also
Representative Cases → Financial Fraud and Payment Systems Forensics → Digital Authorship and Subscriber Data Disclosure → See all courses →