Disclaimer: I know virtually nothing about bitcoin past what I've read on HN.
Bitcoin are uniquely identifiable by nature. Has there been any attempt to create and maintain a manifest of "tainted" (i.e., stolen) bc that could be referenced during transactions?
If a receiver of bc knows that they are tainted, and that the next receiver might refuse them, then they might refuse them as well.
I understand that I'm hand-waving over the "Alice reports the bc she just paid Bob as stolen" problem, and I don't have an answer to that---maybe users subscribe to this service that investigates bc robbery---just thinking out loud.
That is possible, but the problem is the time it takes to disseminate the knowledge of the crime is longer than the time to trade the bitcoins. So if the thief immediately exchanged them with some merchant right after the robbery, then sometime later, the coins were marked as tainted, the merchant would suffer as well, since they're now holding the coins.
This would create a chilling effect on trade since now you have to worry about the legitimacy of the other party, which brings us right back to the problems we have with credit cards, etc.
Bitcoin are uniquely identifiable by nature. Has there been any attempt to create and maintain a manifest of "tainted" (i.e., stolen) bc that could be referenced during transactions?
If a receiver of bc knows that they are tainted, and that the next receiver might refuse them, then they might refuse them as well.
I understand that I'm hand-waving over the "Alice reports the bc she just paid Bob as stolen" problem, and I don't have an answer to that---maybe users subscribe to this service that investigates bc robbery---just thinking out loud.