If the address where the $80m is stashed, or some of them are identifiable, they are effectively tainted as belonging to DPR / Ulbricht.
When he's finally free in 15yrs or whatever DPR maybe richer than Bill Gates, but with a lot of tainted coins. Satoshi's coins are also tainted (not in a negative way but due to the linking bug).
Lot of good they're currently doing him (or likely to do him ever considering the charges). I'd really rather not participate in a discussion where someone with charges like this is held up as exemplar, as it's too easy to go off on a insane tangent.
I dont think it matters so much the actual scenario the point is to find ways to improve bitcoin security (and security of data & auth keys generally). As Ed Felten observed recently, no its not a good idea for judges to start thinking because they can issue subpoenas that internet physics and software architects somehow owes them data in a subpoenable form. The reason is the design is the same whether you are protecting against theft, blackmail, extortion, corrupt insider, or subpoena - its all the same thing from a technology perspective.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/silk-road-lavabit-and-the-limits-of-crypto/Clearly whatever you think of the war on drugs, and personally I am against drug taking but also against governments in a free country removing individuals freedom to choose, DPR if the charges arent made up apparently tried to have someone assassinated which obviously is very uncool.
Anyway sometimes its fun to think about and articulate security problems in a james-bond-esque setting, over the equivalent but boring dining-cryptographers setting etc, but the techniques are the same if its a wealthy individual safe-guarding their money from extortion, or a normal level wealth protecting their bitcoin from theft physical or virtual.
Adam