I would love to find the bastard that stole my coins from my wallet..State Security apparatus like FBI defiantly have the ability to track the IP of a transaction and track the coins through mixers to a new address and IP...TOR and VPN actually make it EASIER for them.
But they will never give a shit about small time thefts they only protect the uber-rich.
I would much prefer to deal with the thief most personally anyway...The 'Legal' system is designed to protect thieves and there is NO BIGGER THIEF than Governments.
Topic: Tracking down stolen Bitcoins - page 2. (Read 1845 times)
Even if you manage to discover and proof those were stolen coins, what legal procedures can be done to force the thief to give it back? Can he be arrested?
Tracking stolen Bitcoins is an important task in putting things in order in the market of crypto currency and can cause more confidence in investors that will affect the overall capitalization.
I agree with this idea. There should be a way to track stolen bits. So bitcoin players will not fear losing their money for no apparent reason and do not find the culprit. Many IT specialists have stolen accounts and then taken the money from our bitcoin wallet. People who are not good at technology will not detect the culprit.
Tracking is possible only on those coins where they have been moved to another address, but the scammer is using a mixer, then tracking is really impossible 
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?
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...
The hacker/thieves nowadays have become just like their scams more sophisticated. We cannot do anything to trace who the hacker is as long as many legit and non legit casino sites do not care to check where the money comes from as long as they are making profit for themselves. In fact this is the most common way nowadays how bitcoin are mixed and tainted easily from anyone with the ability to do so.
Definitive solution is to warn people to not send bitcoin to anyone before being 101% sure that they are a legit company or a legit person.
Tracking is possible but not always. Once they are converted to alt, it increases difficulty.
You could technically track the bitcoin if the coins went through an exchange, however this is a problem with bitcoin, as it becomes older hackers may find a way into the system.
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?
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?
I dont know if it's just me but I dont want this to be encouraged. It greatly hurts the fungibility of coins in the project. I understand that it sucks for people that got hacked/scammed, but not chasing/tracking those coins is for the good of the project, imho.
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?
How i wish this is possible cos i have got a lot of coins stolen from me in the past before i learnt to better secure my account. 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 would have been very helpful if any bitcoin theft case can be tracked.However, the developers may
try to fix a patch or another node of codes or something to enable this security feature of being able to track
down the identity of the culprit of theft issue.
try to fix a patch or another node of codes or something to enable this security feature of being able to track
down the identity of the culprit of theft issue.
There is a way for you to track these missing bitcoins. Sadly, the change of ownership will still be anonymous. Thus, it may be impossible to retrieve.
This guy is right
This guy is right
Exchanges can act as a shuffling mechanism, so it is important that they do know their customer (KYC procedures). But even so you need a judge to have access to such information from the exchange.
bitcoin transactions are traceable,it is the main reason decentralization works , the world can watch and confirm that a transaction is legit. but recovering stolen coins would require finding the people who are holding the coins, but this is almost impossible because of the anonymity of wallet owners.
i think to make coins more secure there should be some method to track down
Well, how do you trace a stolen cash? There is a simple answer - you don't. You can't trace it. So this is not the problem of Bitcoin. Solving this problem would lead to cryptocurrency losing it's advantages. Becausew, common, do you really want your transactions to be unanonimous, and YOU would be identified? Let's say you store 10BTC on your wallet, and everyone can see the wallet with 10 BTC on it, do you want your name next to it?
Actually I had different vision -- let's say I stole 10BTC from you and everyone can see that transaction. All following transactions from my wallet can be tracked. And eventually one of the child transactions might make it possible to track me back. For example if I ever change BTC from my wallet to USD on exchange that requests identification, exchange will know my personal details and knowing that my wallet was involved in illegal activity will notify somebody (now sure who exactly should do such investigation, but let's call them crypto-police). And crypto-police will do the justice.
There will always be a link between bitcoin transactions, however with bitcoin mixers being used it would be very difficult to determine exactly which wallets are currently storing stolen fund. Odds are that most small transactions can be traced back to a wallet containing stolen funds, same goes with cash.
Anonymity is the thing that Bitcoin is known for. Bitcoin has been in the industry for 9 years now and in this years there have been many cases where people lost their BTC to hackers and fraudsters. All of those hackers are still roaming happily as none of them have ever been identified.
So tracking down BTC transactions won't help as their owners can't be traced. It is pointless to track a BTC transaction as Bitcoins can be splitted whenever their owner wants. Mixing services are created for this purpose that an amount is divided into many small amounts and then converted back to a big amount for the purpose of anonymity. So tracking down stolen Bitcoins is completely a waste of time.
So tracking down BTC transactions won't help as their owners can't be traced. It is pointless to track a BTC transaction as Bitcoins can be splitted whenever their owner wants. Mixing services are created for this purpose that an amount is divided into many small amounts and then converted back to a big amount for the purpose of anonymity. So tracking down stolen Bitcoins is completely a waste of time.
You are certainly not the first to propose the blacklisting of certain wallets that have been accused of theft of someone else's bitcoin. But here's why this is never going to happen. First of all which authority is going to decide whether a wallet should be blacklisted or not. This undermines the decentralization of bitcoin as whole because a single authority will have the power to blacklist whichever wallet they want. Not to mention how you will verify if the coins were actually stolen. People can start accusing other of theft (for personal interest) and there's no way to know for sure.
This is exactly the reason universally agreed upon black list probably will never see the light of the day. There is and there will be cases where coins will be tracked, accounts will be blocked on suspicions but it is very unlikely some association will decide and enforce universal blockade of coins. Also such measure will likely result in raise of new BTC laundry services that will be glad to accept shady BTC.
You are certainly not the first to propose the blacklisting of certain wallets that have been accused of theft of someone else's bitcoin. But here's why this is never going to happen. First of all which authority is going to decide whether a wallet should be blacklisted or not. This undermines the decentralization of bitcoin as whole because a single authority will have the power to blacklist whichever wallet they want. Not to mention how you will verify if the coins were actually stolen. People can start accusing other of theft (for personal interest) and there's no way to know for sure.
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