This is who we need to be working with to trace where the GOX coins are. They already compiled a nice list of addresses and institutions. The institutions have the ID's of the users.
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdfGiven the size of these thefts, it shouldn't be hard to start placing some names to thefts. We need Gox to release some internal transaction info or at least contract with these folks to find who has it.
My bet is the US government has already been working with this group in tracing silk road transactions, perhaps sheep marketplace as well.
Never rest until these folks are caught, nor allow bitcoin to grow without showing there is some self policing going on, or deep regulations.
"With these thefts, our ability to track the stolen money provides
evidence that even the most motivated Bitcoin users (i.e., crimi-
nals) are engaging in idioms of use that allow us to erode their
anonymity. While one might argue that thieves could easily thwart
our analysis, as Heuristic 2 is admittedly not robust in the face of
adversarial behavior, our observation is that — at least at present —
none of the criminals we studied seem to have taken such precau-
tions. We further argue that the fairly direct flow of bitcoins from
the point of theft to the deposit with an exchange provides some
evidence that using exchanges to cash out at scale is inevitable, and
thus that — again, at present — Bitcoin does not provide a partic-
ularly easy or effective way to transact large volumes of illicitly-
obtained money."
