[andrewfong]

If the problem is criminals using Western Union for money laundering and fraud, replacing it with a decentralized system of quasi-anonymous irreversible transfers seems like it would make things easier for said criminals.

Unless your complaint is about the government stepping in to penalize Western Union. In which case, I misunderstood.

[ateevchopra]

Bitcoin's whole system is transparent. You can always see all the transactions happening. So there is no way one can hide. I recommend you reading this article for details.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/why-criminals-cant-hi...

[luckystartup]

There's absolutely no way of knowing who owns the addresses. We have a saying for this: "Hiding in plain sight."

[cm2187]

And that is why crypto-hackers use bitcoin!