[blario]

There is no lacking of tracking built into bitcoin. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Everything is tracked within bitcoin. The one exception is with stolen bitcoins, like what had happened. Those bitcoins show up as owned by the rightful owner... And when spent and tracked, would appear to have been spent by that person, instead of the thief.

[ajross]

You're right. I was imprecise. The transactions themselves are trackable, so with backups you know to "who" your specific bitcoins were transfered. But the "who" is just a number, and anonymous. And you can create as many identities as you want.

Essentially: bitcoins are anonymous because money laundering in the bitcoin world is perfect and free.

[wmf]

Eventually the money has to come out somewhere, though.