However, I still see this as a good thing; if the hackers did sell 96 Bitcoin to one single buyer, then we can now start a paper trail (or physical evidence) on what the single buyer gave them in return (paper money transfer?)
If one were to sell a sports car in exchange for a pile of marked bills taken from a bank robbery, one would rapidly find oneself in hot water. Receiving stolen goods is a crime.
Edit: after reading TFA, this is the crucial point (in English law, I guess): "Banknotes, coins, and other highly-liquid paper instruments have a very special legal status. ... was granted to banknotes centuries ago in order to ensure that ... money remained highly liquid. If every merchant had to verify...". Interesting case.
In practice, the law is not trying to 'get' people who innocently receive stolen money or goods. In the example you gave, it would be up to prosecutorial discretion what to do; trying to claw back one salary's worth of already-spent money is probably not worthwhile.
But if someone shows up and tries to deposit a couple grand worth of marked bills, they can expect to be taken into a police station for questioning, and should fully cooperate: this makes it unlikely that the penalty will extend further than confiscation of the stolen cash.
The important thing to realize is: if any of this goes to trial, the prosecution only needs to prove that the money is stolen. It doesn't need to prove the receiver knew it was stolen; that's not what the crime is here, that knowledge makes it a worse crime, accessory to robbery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods
The state-level standard appears to vary, the most common case is 'should have known', rather than 'knew for a fact'.
With Bitcoin, where all transactions are a matter of public record, I'd hazard that 'should have known' is baked-in. It will be interesting to see what case law is established in this arena.
That said, my statement above is clearly stronger than reality, except in some states where knowledge doesn't need to be proven.
Who should have known what? After receiving any bitcoin (can't be before!) everyone is obliged to figure out if the coin came from a ransomware attack? How? And what do they do if some of the coin was so tainted?
This is different than recieving other types of stolen goods that haven't been given this special legal status, which ensures that money is fungible and can be accepted with relatively little concern by honest people.
As for your example I'm not sure. Said repairman would unlikely be in legal trouble, but I don't know if the money would be seized or not.
> Banknotes, coins, and other highly-liquid paper instruments have a very special legal status. If you unknowingly accept some banknotes from someone who just obtained them illegally (say via ransom or theft), the law can't compel you to give those banknotes back to the original victim. Money, as the great British jurist Lord Mansfield once declared, isn't like regular property: it "can not be recovered after it has passed into currency."
So the key questions are if cryptocurrency qualifies legally as currency and if not, what the legal standards are for who ends up the owner of that property when it gets mixed via various means.
> The penalty for larceny and the crime of receiving and concealing stolen property in Michigan depends upon the value of the substantiated property or money involved.
https://www.cyabdolaw.com/larceny-and-receiving-stolen-prope...
It says nothing about the need to return stolen money recieved as part of a legitimate seeming transaction.