It's always been traceable, there's a public ledger and different data analysis techniques you can perform with varying degrees of usefulness, and Bitcoin's rea

It's always been traceable, there's a public ledger and different data analysis techniques you can perform with varying degrees of usefulness, and Bitcoin's real value doesn't lay there. Anonymity is not the same as pseudonymity, and while you could probably trace a few transactions with a criminal source at a time, it wouldn't take that much to thwart taint analysis by a dedicated enough author. Besides, they were able to seize those Bitcoins due to badly stored passwords, not because any inherent weakness on Bitcoin itself. Some cybercriminals aren't that great at opsec.