Quote from: aplistir on December 08, 2017, 10:35:46 PM

Quote from: kooler1 on December 08, 2017, 09:12:45 PM

There are a lot of stories of stolen bitcoins from hacked websites or fooled people.

I was wondering, since all transactions are in blockchain, is it technically possible to make blacklist of wallets where stolen funds where transferred (by claims of victims) to track transfers of those funds and report when the owner can be identified (for example when some goods where bought and delivery address is known)?

Or perhaps just block those blacklisted wallets and don't support them on the network (bitcoin) level?

It is possible to follow the coins, but it is impossible to know if/when the owner has changed. You cannot know if a transfer is from one owners address to another address of his, or if the new address belongs to a new owner.

Even proving that the coins belonged to you could sometimes be difficult

On the other hand. Now all? exchanges require identification for buying or selling large amounts of bitcoins. If the thief sells the stolen coins through an exchange then he can be identified.

Blacklisting coins from the blockchain is impossible. Who could do that? Bitcoin is a decentralized system after all...

I feel like this will become the eventual downfall of "open ledger" and non opaque blockchains like Bitcoin and the other countless clones of it. Major exchange sites will begin to realize just how much liability this puts on them because they absolutely 100% have to report the criminals and have to keep track of these "tainted" coins, and if not then it will look bad on them and will be penalized in some sort of way.

If you have coins that successfully hides all of this meta info from the coins they are exchanging for customers, then that will therefore reduce that liability and also makes exchanges more willing to accept these type of coins. ... At least that's how I see it eventually playing out unless there is some weird law that passes where exchanges are forced to only accept open ledger coins.