[Taylorious]

So I have seen several of these stories pop up and I am still kind of confused by them. Are these hackers actually getting "real" money at some point? Are they able to cash out these bitcoins to USD or something else in a reasonable time-frame, or do they simply have a large amount of "fake" money that they can use for very specific goods and services?

[RyanZAG]

They can certainly cash it out using a number of bitcoin to currency services. So the hacker has done the equivalent of stealing $1mil out of a bank, except a bank is very easy to trace while stealing BTC means the thief is home free.

  https://www.bitcoin.de/en?cr=1
  https://www.bitstamp.net/
  https://btc-e.com/
  https://www.bitfinex.com/
  https://localbitcoins.com/

[JeremyBanks]

BitCoins are difficult to anonymize. If you take your stolen coins directly to an exchange, the exchange would be able to identify you if law enforcement asked.

[nyarlathotep]

Well, you could use a site like this: https://localbitcoins.com/ but then again doing hundreds of these cash transactions in person seems like it would be stressful.

[MichaelGG]

Seems to me that the most useful point of the LocalBitcoins service is to find traders willing to exchange via postal service. Face-to-face interaction seems like a bad move, especially since the money you're sending could be tracked to a "theft" and the service or trader might decide to snoop on you. And again, as the criminal complaint against Nod showed, using USPS is only safe if you act with sufficient randomness and change profiles. Otherwise they may detect a large pattern you generate.

It's also safer because it seems the government isn't likely to setup a major investigation for the case of BTC "theft".

(I say "theft" because it is possible, but unlikely, that the owner of the wallet transferred the money to someone intentionally, to pay them or something.)

[meowface]

They may very well hang onto them for a while, and in the event the price goes up even more in the coming months, they may make out with quite a bit more than $1M.

[bdcravens]

They're likely moving the Bitcoins to their own cryptowallet. At that point they could spend on sources that accept Bitcoin for payment (Silk Road and the like, Reddit Gold, the small but growing set of real-world places that take Bitcoin, etc) or could transfer to an exchange to cash out.

tl;dr - both.

[hvidgaard]

Problem is that the coins can be traced, so they need to spend them anonymously.

[hackerboos]

Couldn't they tumble the coins and cash out?

[Xdes]

Tumbling simply makes the accounting harder, but not impossible.

[hvidgaard]

Even if they do, the mixing service must be anonymous too. The blockchain provides irrefutable evidence, and you need at least one step to make the coins anonymous.

[venomsnake]

It is possible ... but you need some specific conditions - someone willing to convert bitcoin for real money in a jurisdiction that has lax money laundering laws, then he must somehow launder them.

[jamesaguilar]

They can sell the coins on any exchange that allows them to convert it to real money. Not sure how deep the order book is so they may not be able to convert it all at once.