I keep seeing all this criticism of bitcoin that is basically "hackers can steal your money". It's amazing how no one seems to remember all of the hacks of major financial institutions during the last 12 months that were much worse for the individual customers.
Citibank had 200,000 customer names, account numbers, and email addresses stolen. Google, Apple, Lockheed Martin, etc. all had break-ins that resulted in more sensitive information being stolen than hashed passwords and email addresses.
The fall-out is what is VERY different when you compare btc-related break-ins and the major $ businesses. Citibank says "too bad" and since you can't avoid doing business with them and they know it, they can do what they want. A btc exchange operator knows there are no barriers to entry in his industry so he has to win you back or go out of business. That is one of the primary reasons bitcoin was created.
The problem is how do you get bitcoins back if they are stolen? With money, you can go to the authorities and have some chance. Bitcoin is just going to attract criminals and they'll just swap in for cash.
If it's not anonymous as a lot of people here are claiming, then why hasn't somebody tracked down the thief and got the money back. It isn't going to happen.
In the long run, this will be btc's downfall. People won't trust it.
Your nick is too big for you, clearly you have no clue.
As I said, bitcoin transactions are transparent, there are public records accessible by anyone.
The only peculiarity is that your identitiy is still unknown.
If you start a big illegal operation based on bitcoins, you will leave red trails over the whole network. The whole network will have logs of your illegal operation.
As soon as the bitcoin touches the real world (ip addresses, delivery addresses, purchases, email addresses, bank deposits, conversion... etc) your anonymity is prone to be compromised.
Small illegal transactions might get undetected under the radar, big illegal operations are vulnerable to statistical analysis.
