The result is that even if you can prove that someone else holds a dollar bill that was stolen from you at some point, you do not necessarily have the right to get it back.
"legal tender" is a strange concept. For example, £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes are not legal tender in Scotland. But I don't think most Scottish people consider those notes to be "more like a commodity than money."
I'm not sure what happens if stolen Euros or gold are accepted as payment. These aren't legal tender in the US, so if they are exempt from the aforementioned rule, then bitcoins might be as well.
This is no different from real life scenarios. Suppose someone stole a $5000 ring, sold it for $2500. The ring is still stolen, the police can and will confiscate the ring, so the buyer is out of the $5000 ring and their $2500 paid for the stolen property. The ring is stolen from the owner, the money is stolen from the buyer.
Yea--keep the loot; won't bother to retrieve stolen bikes at
flea markets; cruise the streets looking for marginal DUI's;
always handing out tickets for marginal infractions.
I look at them as Tax Collectors. For protection, I would
have more luck printing out a Physibe gun.
I think that would depend on jurisdiction but I don't think reclaiming would be workable in this scenario.
Imagine this: I exploit malleability and deposit directly in my BTC-e account, exchange to LTC etc, etc on dozens of exchange and finally to USD. I cash out to cash and disappear. I of course gave my final stop false information. So now my last victim gets a claim, if this last victim happens to be an exchange and it is forced to pay up and the amount is somewhat significant that exchange is now insolvent. Whose problem is that? The exchange declares bankruptcy and their customers get a haircut.
You're describing money laundering, which scrubs the stolen property of its association with a crime. Its a technique which can obviously be successful, but is a crime in its own right.
