[tommo123]

Don't bitcoin tumbling services pretty much make it logistically impossible to follow the path of bitcoins if they cycle it enough? Also I wouldn't rely on the governments to do much to return people's investments in a currency they already distrust. In fact, considering the historic and contemporary roles the US and the IMF have had in deliberately destabilising and undermining international economies/currencies, you'd be naive to remove first world governments from the list of suspects. The incentive is even higher for them than normal thieves -- not only do they already have an established system for laundering stolen money, but they don't even need to remove the money to profit, they just need to steal it and render it inaccessible. The credibility of Bitcoin as an extranational, anonymous currency has been dealt a serious blow and, if you consider bitcoin a threat to the current institutions, then that has a value far greater than the few hundred million that they'd wind up with in pocket. I'm not throwing around any conspiracy theories here because there's no evidence for it so far, but I don't think there's anyone foolish enough to pretend that the US/UK/etc governments haven't already been in this ethical sphere of operations for decades. The first question was whether they have the werewithall to operate on this level technologically (confirmed by Snowden), and the second is whether they consider bitcoin a threat.

[dTal]

>I don't think there's anyone foolish enough to pretend that the US/UK/etc governments haven't already been in this ethical sphere of operations for decades.

You underestimate fools.