You can write down the serial numbers of paper money you hold, but that's not going to help you recover the money if someone steals the money and spends it at a shop.
Traceability doesn't need to be a problem.
Traceability doesn't need to be a problem.
Steal enough banknotes and the bank will go to great lengths to find you. The Northern Bank robbery stole a significant fraction of all NB notes in circulation, so the bank re-issued them, relying on the impossibility of the criminals laundering them before the swap deadline.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/the...
As such, traceability will remain a risk for anyone receiving cryptocurrency payments. If a chain analysis reveals an illegal transaction as a precursor, it's going to be considered stolen goods, not money, as the article states.
That's fine, but if the governments don't take action it'll be up for the courts to decide that.
>it's going to be considered stolen goods, not money, as the article states.
This is not at all obvious. It's not even clear that the nemo dat rule would apply to any kind of ransom payment.
The governments don't need to do this, the courts do. There's an existing principle they could very cleanly apply here.