3 ms·
>Your post strikes me as naive. All that laundering does is tag more addresses as "hot". You still have a graph of where the bitcoins have gone. Lets say you h
by feral 14y ago
>Your post strikes me as naive. All that laundering does is tag more addresses as "hot". You still have a graph of where the bitcoins have gone.
Lets say you have an address with 1000 bitcoins in it.
A thief steals a lot of bitcoins, and maliciously, unknown to you, sends you 10 stolen bitcoins.
You now have an account/address with 1010 bitcoins in it. The system you have just proposed tags your address as hot.
What happens next?
[This is not a hypothetical scenario: in the 'allinvain' alleged theft, we saw several organisations and individuals receive stolen bitcoins from quite soon after the theft; probably as unsolicited donations.]
- Dylan16807 14y agoSend the 10 back. There, you're not longer tainted.
- elliottcarlson 14y agoOnce it is added to your wallet you can't send it back, you just have a quantity in there without any differentiation on which bitcoin is which. Sending 10 back would in essence aide in laundering the bitcoins.
- Dylan16807 14y agoIf you send 10 to the same address you have sent it back. That does not aid in laundering at all.
- eropple 14y agoYou now have an account/address with 1010 bitcoins in it. The system you have just proposed tags your address as hot. What happens next? Then, as with every criminal investigation, you follow up that lead. Not all Bitcoin addresses will be resolveable to a person in an area where you have LEO authority, but I'm fairly confident that eventually it'll happen and you start tracking back up the chain. I didn't say the solution was entirely technical--I've said more than once that nerds who default to "computers can solve every problem" are wrong. It does still involve old-fashioned detective work. And you're not going to solve every case. But Bitcoin gives you a lot of clues.