BTC propagation through bitcoin addresses (wallets)

[deathcode]

Please bare with me while I explain my question.
From the developer's point of you and since all BTC transactions are public. How can a tracker that follow BTC through different BTC addresses?

My questions comes from the possibility of "black listing" addresses in case of a hustle/steal situation if I were to create a BTC exchange that relies in honor/reputation.

If someone plays unfairly, I want to be able to blacklist the address and all the subsequent addresses where BTC is sent to from that address.

I hope I expressed myself correctly. Please let me know if this can be done from the technical point of view. Don't hesitate to ask me more question in case it's not clear.

[1715231383]

1715231383

[DigitalHermit]

My questions comes from the possibility of "black listing" addresses in case of a hustle/steal situation if I were to create a BTC exchange that relies in honor/reputation. If someone plays unfairly, I want to be able to blacklist the address and all the subsequent addresses where BTC is sent to from that address.

This concept has been discussed many times before and is referred to as "tainting". However, it is a TERRIBLE idea and if you want to read the details of why, check out this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85433.0

[DannyHamilton]

Bitcoins aren't discreet items.

Example:

A single input (we'll call it input_A) of 5 BTC and another single input (we'll call it input_B) of 2 BTC can be included in a single transaction that has 2 outputs.
Lets call the first output output_A and say it has 3 BTC, and the second output output_B and say it also has 3 BTC.  That leaves 1 BTC for the miner to accept as a transaction fee coinbase_A.

Since each of those inputs and outputs can be associated with a separate address, and the coinbase transaction can have MANY outputs, if you determine that input_B was blacklisted, how would you handle the addresses associated with each of:

• input_A
• output_A
• output_B
• coinbase_A

[DannyHamilton]

Thank you for the replies. Maybe a good idea instead of tainting, would be to link a bitcoin address with a profile (not necessarily providing personal information but a nickname) and blacklist addresses based on that, however, there has to be a way to authenticate and prevent a malicious user to create new profiles every time he/she scams/cons someone.

And what keeps the scammer from just creating a new bitcoin addess every time they scam someone?