from Europe coinbase wallet to a personal wallet in Asia

[tothebitcoinlife]

What if bob used his coinbase account to buy cocaine to alice? Bob forwarded the bitcoin from his coinbase account to alice's wallet? Then bob received a bad quality cocaine so he want a revenge so he coordinated with the DEA to find where alice at? Bob is in Europe and alice is in asia. Alice used a local exchange in asia to sell her bitcoin where the money will go to her personal bank account. Will they able to find or sue alice? Should alice buy first dash to an exchange like bittrex or cryptsy then sell it again to become bitcoin? Then that's the only time she should sell it to their local exchange?

What if even bob did not coordinated with the DEA, is there any possibility that he could trace alice in the future because alice exchange it and it will be in her personal account?  Can he just use the blockchain to follow alice? Sorry for the stupid question, im just newbie. thank you

[NorrisK]

For the first part I doubt they would go after a simple street vendor like Alice. Besides their lack of jurisdiction outside of the USA ofcourse. The only way they would get the personal information if Alice was stupid enough to link a drug selling address to her real information was if the exchange would hand over this information, which they probably wouldn't do. Even when using altcoins, if the exchanges start handing over information, it would be possible to track Alice.

If Bob wont on his own he won't stand a chance. You can follow the coins for sure, but an exchange will never give this info to another costumer.

[bitbaby]

If you're doing illegal trades with or without using BTC then sooner or later you'll get traced and prosecuted, period! because all criminals make mistakes, so in the story above, both Alice and Bob will go behind bars one day.

[Amph]

if those coins are dumped at some point, especially in coinbase where everything is traced now because they are in touch with IRs, then yes, you're asking for trouble

but you spedn bitcoin directly for whatever thing you want, it will be very hard for them if nto impossible to connect that address to you, especially if you mix with altcoin

i always use this example: a large criminal base activity, can pretty much create their own zero knowledge altcoin, like monero, pump it a bit in some way and use that for trading stuff

good luck to everyone tracking them, no one will ever know that the altcoin exist, because they will keeps it secret, it will be only used between mafia and terrorist...

[odolvlobo]

It appears to me that Alice and Bob are married, so I would not want to get in the middle of their little quarrel. Bob's best move would be to get a job at the DEA so that Alice would stop complaining about how he needs a job. Then they can pay their debts and their daughter would no longer need to sell herself to the rich Chinese businessmen that visit their town. Alice could go back to work as a stewardess, but she is getting old and can no longer depend on the cocaine and booze to keep her thin.