Bitcoin Forum

I admit, I am not btc savvy enough to know all of the inner workings of the blockchain.
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?

BTC being stolen is now hard to recover, because the current exchange a lot of, the criminals also prevent take BTC to cash out, criminals can also take same BTC offline trading, directly for cash.

This is the law of life,there must be criminals and there must be victim.sometimes this helps us to be more precautionary person if we experienced something that we didnt expect .this must not happen anymore .this is our teacher .so if you dont want to be victim,you should be considering always safety

This is one of the disadvantages that bitcoin brings. It promotes ecrime and theft because of it's own nature. Bitcoin is certainly less traceable than fiat or credit card, which is what brings criminals to target people and demand ransoms through Bitcoin. They can then transfer BTC into privacy based coins, such as Monero, where tracking is basically impossible. These coins have protocols that are there specifically for ones privacy. Monero guarantees that no one can see the recipient, sender and the amount. This is done through the use of stealth addresses and ring signatures, so that nobody knows where the money comes from and where exactly the money goes. It is sad, but once the money is stolen, it is practically untraceable.

Lots of criminals HAVE been caught through the blockchain. For example the criminal admin at BTC-E who hacked MtGox and then sold the coins.

You can find the whole fascinating story in the following article:

https://bravenewcoin.com/news/mtgox-btc-e-and-the-missing-coins-a-living-timeline-of-the-greatest-cyber-crime-ever/

Alexander Vinnick is awaiting trial for stealing $4 billion worth of bitcoin.

     Well, people losing bitcoins or money or any other currencies out there is really something that we cannot prevent from happening. It is simply out of out hands. The only thing we can do is take care of our own possessions and take every precautions out there to make sure that we, and all our possessions are all safe and secured. One reason I can see as to why it is hard to trace these transactions from criminals is because they are using sites that are giving services to make a transfer hard to detect. I that the word for it is mixers although I am not so sure but that's the only way I see that these criminals can cover up their traces.

Yes bitcoin transaction could be tracked but it is not that easy to track, when you create a wallet usually you don't provide any information, so the owner of the address is anonymous, and then the criminal can go to mixing the coin to cover the track, there are numerous of ways to cover trace and make it difficult to track

What kind of wallets do not need any personal information? Most exchanges nowadays ask for kyc, especially if you want to get verified in order to be able to withdraw bigger amounts.

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.