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The bitcoins are the data. If you steal their files, you can spend their money anonymously and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Restoring from a backup just gets them a bunch of worthless bitcoins that have already been spent.

And the answer to the second question is "absolutely not". The lack of tracking is a primary requirement that was designed into the system from the start.

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There is no lacking of tracking built into bitcoin. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Everything is tracked within bitcoin. The one exception is with stolen bitcoins, like what had happened. Those bitcoins show up as owned by the rightful owner... And when spent and tracked, would appear to have been spent by that person, instead of the thief.

You're right. I was imprecise. The transactions themselves are trackable, so with backups you know to "who" your specific bitcoins were transfered. But the "who" is just a number, and anonymous. And you can create as many identities as you want.

Essentially: bitcoins are anonymous because money laundering in the bitcoin world is perfect and free.

Eventually the money has to come out somewhere, though.

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