It's a U.S. organization that goes after financial crime world-wide. I just gave it as an example. Point being, many types of money moving require careful laundering to prevent traces for financial or other prosecution. It's why most crooks focus on trying to steal straight cash if they're here in U.S.. A guy with an easily-moved, unregulated, semi-anonymous stash of millions is a much easier target and the government might not be able to help him. So, more risk than usual and varies depending on his location.
Let's say someone stole Satoshi's stash. To convert it to non-Bitcoin value, they would have to spend it or transfer it. Wouldn't people notice that the famous Satoshi block is suddenly in play? And the point at which it is converted to real value is the point at which a criminal investigation would begin.
I don't understand why Satoshi's stash of bitcoins is any easier to spend untraceably than any other store of value.
Not easier to spend than stock, bonds, derivatives, and so on that most wealth is stored in? Last I heard, there was more liquidity and less auditing for Bitcoin spending in general. An expert on Bitcoin might know that particular block moving would be a high risk operation. Thugs reading about his identity, worth, and use of Bitcoin in criminal dealings might think differently. They might decide to go get his money.
That's the risk. Not sure of its likelihood in terms of a percentage or even verbal description. It's near zero while he's anonymous, though.
There is more auditing for bitcoin than almost any other store of value, because every transaction is broadcast to the entire network. Crowd-sourced auditing is essentially all bitcoin is.
Like bitcoin itself, the anonymity of bitcoin is also a chain. Bitcoins can be mined anonymously, and therefore transacted anonymously. But any point where they are converted to other stores of value will create connections to real-world identity. For example, cash has to be picked up in a physical place, or it has to be transfered into a bank account, which creates an auditable transaction record. Purchased objects have to be delivered somewhere. Purchased services are interacted with in some way. Etc.
I thought crooks successfully transact services with Bitcoin like they do cash, western union, and traded CC's. Must not be as hard to obfuscate as you make it seem regardless of the ledger. Someone else mentioned mix networks to hide whose doing what as well but I'm not up-to-date on them.
Overall point of the discussion is that people finding out he has a physical/digital object worth millions might try to rob him. Some of them also use Bitcoin as payment for crime. So, anonymity seems like a good choice.
