Only recently 16 million Titanium bars were stolen from the company's accounts.
So I would like to learn why it is so difficult to trace a criminals whereabouts through his wallet address?
Millions in bitcoins are being stolen, people are tortured for their wallet adresses, but in order to make use of the stolen bitcoins, the coins first must be transferred into the criminal's bitcoin accounts.
But from what I heard bitcoin transfers aren't anonymous, isn't that the reason why privacy coins like Verge were created in the first place?
So why can't the authorities trace back the criminals through their wallet address?
And why don't people use privacy coins for bigger bitcoin transfers, because from what I read criminals watch the blockchain for big transfers to trace rich bitcoin holders.
But if this works, tracing rich people by their transfers, why doesn't it work the other way, tracing criminals through their transfers?
Could someone help me understand?
There is a reason for this, one of the reason is that the stolen BTC had not been moved yet, and or they are selling it through p2p. But once they had used any exchange platform or trading platfrom that requires KYC, they can be easily traced. Remember the case of one of the owner of a torrent site? He was traced using Bitcoin address he used in collecting fees and exchanging it on/using an exchange platform that requires documents to prove identity.