ZachXBT, one of the most visible independent onchain investigators in crypto, said he may stop accepting victim-support requests from a set of countries where case handling has been consistently poor. The jurisdictions include Canada, the UK, India, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, and Bangladesh, according to the original report from WuBlockchain. That is not a list defined by a single legal standard, and that is precisely what makes the stance worth watching.
For years, ZachXBT has occupied an unusual position: part forensic analyst, part public utility. Victims of wallet drains, phishing campaigns, and exchange hacks often reach out because law enforcement channels move too slowly or lack the tools to trace funds across bridges and mixers. His decision to reject requests from certain regions shifts that role from an open resource to a gated one.
A blunt jurisdictional filter
ZachXBT described Canada, the UK, India, Nigeria, and several North African and South Asian jurisdictions as the worst experiences he has had while handling cases. He said he would likely automatically reject future requests from those regions and that an upcoming website will restrict users from certain jurisdictions he considers low quality from accessing crypto support services.
The inclusion of the UK and Canada complicates any simple narrative about weak institutions. Both have established legal systems and active crypto sectors. The problem, as ZachXBT frames it, is not only whether a country has laws but how the actual process plays out for victims: how responsive agencies are, how evidence is treated, and how likely an investigation is to produce a useful outcome.
That distinction matters. A victim in a jurisdiction with strong courts may still face law enforcement teams that do not prioritize crypto cases or do not understand the relevant flows. For an independent investigator, those cases can consume time without producing asset recoveries or arrests.
India and Nigeria present a different profile. Both have large retail crypto user bases and significant volumes of scam-related activity. Local support requests can overwhelm a single investigator, and the practical ability to coordinate with local authorities varies. Morocco, Algeria, and Bangladesh add another layer of difficulty, though the source material does not detail the specific failures behind each jurisdiction.
The support gap underneath
At the center of this is a deeper structural problem. Onchain investigations depend on data, but recovery depends on exchanges, law enforcement, and local courts. When those institutions do not engage, the investigator’s work often stops being about blockchain analysis and becomes a coordination problem.
The same tension between enforcement capacity and crypto volume is visible in other parts of the market. In the United States, the political fight over crypto legislation has shown how slowly rules adapt to a technology that moves across jurisdictions by default. A contentious Senate vote over a major crypto bill has exposed disagreements between traditional finance and the industry, and those disagreements ultimately shape how reliably cases get resolved.
Independent investigators are also facing a larger workload because onchain activity continues to spread across ecosystems rather than consolidating on one chain. Developer activity data shows how fragmented
