Dude, it is incredibly easy to track bitcoin... when the govt wants to. Honestly, cash is 1000 times harder to follow.
You may be more of an IT geek than me, but I doubt there are many on here with more financial crime experience.
Its a miracle dumbasses havent figured out how easy it is to be tracked yet.
Tumblers are almost zero problem. Youre aware that they are required to follow all antimoney layndering laws, right? Well, guess how quickly they fold when a fed shows up at the door?
Besides, you can tumble 100k somewhat eadily. Your arent tumbling millions easily.
I do however see that cutting off the world from world wide web might be a necessity in the future. (Out of my wheelhouse but I know it's being discussed.)
The way you describe it, Bitcoin shouldn’t be used for ransom payment. If that were true, why do they use it? Why are they using crypto(currencies) to buy their new Lambos/Ferraris/Bugatti’s?
Ransom recipient are not cowering, They are using the money to buy luxuries and “reinvesting” in their companies by buying more 0days, so they can do the next thing.
As long as the “hackers” stay in Russia (or China or wherever), they can essentially do whatever they want.
Crypto(currencies) are not my in wheelhouse, but I will say there isn’t any slowing down on pushing out ransomware, collecting the coin, and living the high life.
Geofencing the US from “the rest of the world” isn’t really feasible. Attribution is hard. They don’t fire up their home computers and start their campaigns. Instead, they bounce off of compromised hosts in other countries (even the US) and the use their ephemeral, cloud-based infrastructure to carry out their deeds.
Many in infosec come from military backgrounds (not me), and they have even seriously discussed on Twitter the need for a kinetic response (again, not me). Response, hack-back, or even deep dive attempts to attribute campaign to country/group is way above my pay grade (and can be highly illegal under CFAA - Computer Fraud and Abuse Act)
if there were a simple answer, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in.