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.