Comment by paxys
21 hours ago
That's like saying every currency note is traceable because it has a serial number. If someone hands you a dollar today can you trace it starting from where it was printed to everything it was used for until it eventually got into your hands?
Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so.
The difference is that with cash we don't write the serial number of every bill for every transaction in an easily-accessible central ledger. There's no such thing as an off-the-books Bitcoin transaction, by nature.
Most bitcoin transactions actually happen off-chain (aka "off the books"), mostly through exchanges but also through decentralized layers like Lightning Network. It's also possible to physically transfer value by exchanging a signing device or seed phrase.
Except none of that happened. It didn't stay anonymous, it just went to Iran.
Did not happen != cannot happen
A lot of things can happen, but what did happen is the coins went to Iran.