>I get that. But how are the hackers who stole / continue to steal from exchanges like in the Mt Gox hack -- and more recently, the CoinCheck[1] -- hack, able t

>I get that. But how are the hackers who stole / continue to steal from exchanges like in the Mt Gox hack -- and more recently, the CoinCheck[1] -- hack, able to get away with it? See CoinCheck link and quote below. Important takeaway is It is a good question and I don't have an answer as I don't know many of the details of the Mt. Gox hack. Many details on these hacks are not public. There have been arrests in Mt. Gox BTW. My favorite quote on this subject is: 1. One possible answer is that the attackers just sit on the coins and don't attempt cash them out see "Bitcoin offers privacy — as long as you don't cash out or spend it". 2. Another possibility is the thieves either live or cashed out in jurisdictions which won't cooperate with investigations. 3. Or as your article states the thieves could attempt to move the coins through privacy coins such as zCash or Monero to hide the final destinations of the coins. However that is a fairly risky proposition, if they make a mistake they are cooked and there are so many mistakes they could make. I don't believe either zCash or Monero offer network level privacy other than TOR and TOR is problematic as it was not designed for cryptocurrencies. Monero is planning I2P support [0]. Then again it could be the case that law enforcement organizations investigating some of these cases don't have the expertise to understand the highly technical evidence they have. [0]: https://github.com/monero-project/kovri https://github.com/monero-project/kovri