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couldn't they sit on the bitcoin for a few years and transfer it to a local currency where they didn't do any crimes.

• GordonS 9y ago
  But how do they transfer it to a local currency in a non-traceable way? The passage of time is not going to change their wallet addresses.
  • jlebrech 9y ago
    ask an innocent party to cash out for them. or sell the bitcoin for another cryptocurrency
    • GordonS 9y ago
      How are you going to sell it though? It's very likely that exchanges have blacklisted addresses involved in large-scale crimes, and wouldn't touch the coins. They make large sums of money through legitimate business, and don't need that kind of risk.
• gwbas1c 9y ago
  Because Bitcoin isn't really anonymous. It's pseudo-anonymous. You don't know who owns the wallet, but you can trace which wallets the coins are transferred two, indefinitely. (This is how Bitcoin solves the double-spending problem, which is why Bitcoin is the first e-currency to gain traction.) Thus, everyone knows that the coins that were in this particular wallet are hot. Even if the owner "cashes out" in a few years, the buyer is holding hot coins and can't do much with them.
  • celticninja 9y ago
    but they can be mixed and diluted so that the hackers can cash out and no one will realise they have the stolen coins until it is too late.