Perhaps the most confusing mystery of cryptocurrency bitcoin is how a market designed for science-backed security methods can be victim to heists. Bitcoin theft was one of the many talking point covered in a recent piece by documentarist Morgan Spurlock, who survived for a week using only the cryptocurrency for his show Inside Man on CNN. But Spurlock left many questions unanswered, including how the cryptocurrency can be stolen, especially now that there are many Bitcoin services shutting down after being hacked.

It turns out there are various ways Bitcoin can be stolen, such as by utilizing malware, hacking Bitcoin mining pools and exploiting Tor. But what happens to stolen bitcoins, given there should be digital evidence left in the wake?

This week, we once again consult Dr. Bitcoin (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, SiliconANGLE’s founding editor and resident Bitcoin expert) on the matter of the fate of stolen bitcoins.

What happens to stolen bitcoins?

Dr. Bitcoin: Presumably it’s spent or saved. The real question is how it’s spent without the thief being caught. That’s usually done with something called a “mixer.” It won’t work with immense quantities of Bitcoin (as was seen in the case of the Mt. Gox theft/scandal).

But mixers are systems set up so that many people put their money into them, and the system programmatically spits it back out to designated addresses in such a way as to obfuscate the path that the coins took to get there.

This is effective for small quantities of Bitcoin, but not effective at all for large heists. In most cases, Bitcoin from these large heists have remained unspent.

Can people get their stolen Bitcoins back?

Dr. Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like cash — they can get their Bitcoin back only if the person who has it voluntarily gives it back. This is a “feature,” not a bug of Bitcoin.

The system is designed to behave like physical currency, and unlike with credit/debit systems, physical currency can only be transacted if the owner of the currency voluntarily engages in the transaction.

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