A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

"Given bitcoin traceability and the ease of getting an injunction, one can imagine that it might make sense for insurers, bitcoin exchanges, and over-the-counter traders to build some sort of private "ransom registry". The moment that an insurer pays a ransom to a hacker, that insurer simultaneously announces the offending address to the registry. A verified OTC trading desk can now protect itself from potential bankruptcy by always checking the registry to make sure that any bitcoins offered to it are "good" bitcoins. Exchanges too would likewise cross-check incoming bitcoin deposits against the registry."

Is this typically the case? As far as I understand, fraud losses for example are often treated quite differently than stolen goods. Are ransom payments really considered stolen?

This doesn't necessarily seem like the kind of a situation where the nemo dat rule would be directly applicable, especially given that it doesn't typically extend to money anyway.

Take the 96 bitcoin, split it into 96 different addresses with 1 bitcoin, then mix those 96 individual addresses to multiple new addresses and then reassemble them elsewhere. This is a horrible explanation, but explains the general idea. You could also mix from Bitcoin to Monero or another currency and back again through various pairs.

There are lots of things out there to attempt to trace the bitcoins back to the source since every transaction is always logged, however if people keep rearranging coins on various addresses it does make it harder.

Having a blacklist registry of all bad/stolen coins would be great if implemented, however I don't know how feasible it would be.

I'm thinking that there is a need/opportunity to be able to register bitcoins as stolen and if vendors used that database, the whole raft of bitcoins used for nefarious activities and more so stolen ones, can be curtailed. Counterpoint to that thinking would be that it would not curtail the criminal activities such as ransom payments, only shift them into other forms.

Also interesting that the incident response team do not track or follow up tracing and tracking the bitcoins used and that a separate company and process was avenued. This shows that incident response is still a learning process, though encouraging that such situations are within their remit of response and as a service for companies - an important one.

Another take away from this is that law enforcement need to up there game, had this been hard cash, they would be driving this and not the insurance company. That shows how they are behind the times and most likely, budget/skill shortages playing out. But a million dollars is a million dollars in any currency, including crypto currency and again, had this been hard currency, you know that they would of been more resource involved. Though please don't take that as an indictment upon the police services, more an indictment of their resource limitations and one that needs addressing and raised up the flagpole.