Yes. This is true.

Also, on your quoted statement: I do not believe the author consider money laundering with bitcoins. Say I steal $500k worth of bitcoins. I contact launder XYZ and he places my $500k worth of coins with $5.5mil worth of coins, then, funnels using smaller amounts to a multitude of addresses back to the thief. Since there are so many transactions to/from in the Launder's wallet, it would be hard to trace past that point where the $500k actually went.

So what does the launderer gain for the risk of taking the loss/blame for the theft? Surely he must impose a healthy fee? Surely this fee would be negotiable based on the good provenance of the coins.

This currency is a money-tracker's dream.

A quick Google of 'bitcoin laundry' shows a typical commission rate of 1.5-3.5% and portion of bitcoins per transaction (to cover the costs of transferring).

I wonder what is to stop a launderer from accepting stolen bitcoins, but then just keeping them. Who would the thief go cry to? Even if the thief complained to the community to harm the launderer's reputation, they would have to tell the community what coins were involved before anybody would listen. Physical retribution, as could/would be used "in meatspace" no longer helps.

>When $50K of BitCoins is stolen today, and is $500K of BitCoin five years from now, every last cent of that filthy lucre can be monitored with acute cryptographic precision until the end of time.

Thats just false. Its easy to convert Bitcoin into other altcoins. And then convert those alt coins into other altcoins. And then convert those alt coins into Euros/Rubles/USD. And in the future some of these alt coin chains will vanish totally and it will take a miracle to recover the block chain history.

Explain how.

what part

All of it, especially the part where you convert coins without there being a transaction in the bitcoin blocks.

OK what you said is literally true, but I interpreted the spirit of your comment, because it has few implications for the end user. It's technically relevant, but eventually will be abstracted away.. (.. because "if the project continues to succeed into the future")

For the record I link all of my transactions to my personal identity. And intend to in the future. I just like to think about the project a lot, because its feature as a de facto black market currency is one thing that will guarantee usage (not necessarily /USD price appreciation) in the at least short term future (until a better technology supplants it).

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#Its easy to convert Bitcoin into other altcoins.

btc-e, cryptonit make it easy

#And then convert those alt coins into other altcoins.

btc-e, cryptonit make it easy

#And then convert those alt coins into Euros/Rubles/USD

btc-e, localbitcoin

#And in the future some of these alt coin chains will vanish totally

have you looked at the namecoin project. it hasn't been updated in 8 months. the price has gone down over time (but it's really fucking hard to get historical price data for namecoin unless someone sells it to you). honestly if you just wash through one of these fledgling currencies there is a speculator market on all of them, one of these projects will wend its way into obscurity. the market has a limited number of actors, not enough to guarantee that anyone is recording data. the exchange probably has books of its rates, but how are you going to get data from them? these also drop like flies.

# and it will take a miracle to recover the block chain history.

that's what i'm saying. the initial transaction will be logged, and tied to you if you aren't careful. the last transaction will be logged, and tied to you if you aren't careful. but putting together all the links in the middle and linking it to someone's identity? it's possible, if you knock on enough doors, and have aggressive enough resources. but there's no process for it currently, and so many things would have to come together in the most serendipitous way to conspire against you.

Thanks for this explanation. I misunderstood your statement to mean "technically" impossible to trace, rather than "realistically" impossible. I understand much better now!