Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Is Not Anonymous
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from University College Dublin have conducted an analysis of anonymity on Bitcoin, and found it is not inherently anonymous, and that in many cases, users and their transactions can be identified. They use techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate and visualize an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
Bitcoin in the new Twitter. No matter how many times you post about it, there's still only a dozen people who care.
For my reasons why, check out every other /. comment thread regarding bitcoin.
Drinking several litres of Coke everyday is not healthy, yet morons will continue to believe that it is.
Anyone who spells "liter" as "litre" is a moron.
Moron.
Too bad it is merely a academic explanation of what was already known about Bitcoin. At least I can point to this when someone asked for references when I criticize Bitcoin as impractical for the many purposes fanatic proponents advertise.
No shit. Every transaction is public and permanently recorded in the block chain. Of couse it's not anonymous. The best you can hope for is making it hard for others to identify you and plausible deniability by using different accounts for every transaction and laundering the coins.
Please stop posting this shit.
I know you're getting paid, but goddammit when the majority if your user base thinks it's spam, quit fucking pretending it's a story.
Anyone with half a million dollars worth of bitcoins is probably up to no good. At the very least they need to have their head examined for buying monopoly money.
I wouldn't give you jack for them. Can I pay my utility bills with them? No. Can I may my mortgage with them? No. Can I go into most shops or online stores and buy stuff with them? No.
They're nothing more than a financial toy for people to play around with and waste energy on GPU calculations which they justify by reeling off a list of websites no one has heard of where you can buy useless crap with them.
In order to analyse whetehr Slashdot is overly preoccupied with Bitcoin, I have conducted a rigorous scientific analysis. My methodology relies on the key fact that Google knows everything. To draw on the wisdom of Google, I typed slashdot into my Google search bar. The results are revealing:
Google suggests (in this order):
slashdot
slashdot rss
slashdotted
slashdot wiki
slashdot bitcoin
Phrases such as "slashdot linux", "slashdot news" and "slashdot " did not appear.
I'm still working on the conclusions.
I hate bitcoin hurr durr.
People need to learn the difference between anonymity and pseudonymity. Bitcoin is not anonymous, and neither are so many other things mistakenly labeled anonymous.
In the context of Slashdot:
AC == Anonymous
handle == pseudonymous
handle linked to meatspace identity == identified
Pseudonymous actions are those where an arbitrary identifier (handle, public key fingerprint, assigned account number) completely replaces the meatspace identity a person has been assigned by government.
Pseudonymous actions by a specific identifier (such as as Bitcoin key) can be linked to other actions by that identifier.
Anonymous actions have no primary key linking together events by a person or group of persons acting in concert.
An anonymous payment would be something like cash in the mail, so long as the envelope is devoid of any identifer, assigned or pseudo, which could connect that envelope and its contents to another action by the person who sent it.
How does this ponzi scheme continue to proliferate and have any value at all????
What they fail to do is identify the thief!
Perhaps the margin of their paper was too small to include the thief's name.
First of all, absolutely no service is anonymous, you are just trusting different entities with the information. Some people say bitcoin is anonymous because it doesn't require state ID and a signature to send money, which is a fine definition. Identities can trivially be created or destroyed in bitcoin, and if someone is careful, then it can be very hard to prove who controls which identity. I find it funny that the whole premise of the article is that it's not anonymous, and for their case study they pick a large theft, and still know absolutely nothing useful about the thief's identity.
If you advertise a bitcoin address in a forum post asking for donations, of course they can Google the result, and identify you.
If however, someone were to transfer their bitcoins to 20 different wallets, each random amounts, at random times. And then mix them into a pool such as mybitcoin, it is impossible to trace the origin. The bitcoin client sends oldest bitcoins first, so when they withdraw from mybitcoin, they will never get the same as they deposited.
Well... you can buy illegal drugs from Silk Road with them.
But can you buy a senator or two so that they'll get taken down to CII or lower, which any doctor can prescribe?
That said, I bet you could find *someone* who wanted to part with money in exchange for a certain amount of Bitcoins.
The value derived from that is limited due to the difficulty of finding someone. Once more well-known merchants start accepting BTC payment for goods, the value proposition might become easier to see. Let me know when that has happened.
No one cares about bitcoin except those stupid enough to 'invest'
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I see this article was contributed by "anonymous reader." I suppose he doesn't want to take responsibility for bitcoin transactions! "Anonymous" sure has gotten a lot of attention lately!
That bastard 15iUDqk6nLmav3B1xUHPQivDpfMruVsu9f !! Call the cops! :v/
This is the perfect example of the self-perpetuating machine that IS modern, academic research-grant grabbing.. ;)
Tweeks
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Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency. WoW characters or items are NOT a currency not is anybody pretending it to be. Neither are paintings currency, there is no exchange anywhere in the world that even pretends at giving a dollar price for a painting. At best you got auction houses but next thing you will be claiming my labour is a currency just because I can sell it.
Bitcoin by claiming to be a currency claims to be something more then trade items that have a value if someone is willing to pay it. A dollar has a certain value. The way it has this value is rather insubstantial but because enough people subscribe to it it works. I can exchange my dollar for other established currencies and goods/services at a fairly stable rate.
But really, virtual currencies are so last bubble. Back then people believed totally in them as well. Where are they now?
Value only has meaning if enough people buy into it. A rembrandt has value because a lot of people regonize this. My paintings are at least as good (my mom told me so) but they don't have any market value.
You can just create a currency, if you could the Greeks would have done it by now.
To think otherwise to to live in la-la land. The world just doesn't work as it does in your cyber-punk novels or whatever trash you been reading.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Correct; however we do care about proper punctuation. Now stop that or I'll send you to bed without dinner.
I care. It is at the nexus of technology, finance and privacy. I guess you would rather see /. turn into another wired or gizmodo clone with nothing but vapid product reviews.
Are we still calling it Buttcoin? I thought Bitcon was even funnier, myself... :)
Each person who spelled "spelled" as "spelt" is also a moron.
Morons.
Check out his homepage. He is peddling "finance" advice and forwarding people to advanced loan "services." Don't expect his ilk to ever promote something like bitcoin.
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The ad^Wpage views say otherwise.
Ah, bitcoins. They're sort of like money, except no one uses them, and retailers won't accept them. A bit like deciding pebbles in your backyard are really money, and then going into shops demanding they accept them.
I've been mining bitcoins with servers. Servers that would normally be used to display websites. Instead of producing websites, they are producing bitcoins! Just for me! And it only costs me around $14,000 a month!
When I'm rich and you're not, we'll see who is laughing!!!
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So, while most comments so far seem to suggest that most of Slashdot doesn't want to hear about Bitcoin, I'm posting in the hopes that one or two people here actually understand how it works.
The network is imperfect in the sense that there is, at the moment, a one-to-one mapping between users and public-keys.
This strikes me as entirely fucking wrong. There is a one-to-many mapping here -- while one key belongs to one user, a user can (and should) have many keys.
Or is it that they're admitting that they make this assumption?
Also, this:
The presence of a Bitcoin mining pool (a large red vertex) and a number of public-keys between it and WikiLeaks' public-key is interesting.
Not really. I'd guess most Bitcoins now are originally mined in a mining pool. The number of public-keys between it and WikiLeaks may represent distribution between the mining pool and its users, or (more likely) actual transactions where the mining pool assigns coins to a miner, who trades with someone else, who trades with someone else, who donates to Wikileaks. Knowing which mining pool originally generated those coins doesn't really tell you much, does it?
It's possible I'm misreading this, though. The summary within the blog post is informative:
Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous. It may be possible to conduct transactions is such a way so as to obscure your identity, but, in many cases, users and their transactions can be identified.
But we sort of knew this. Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous. However, it is not particularly hard to be more anonymous than what this article suggests.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The concept of a non centralized electronic form of money could effectively remove the ability of government and banks to tax people through the issue of debt & through inflation. it would remove the central authority and control authorizing and monitoring transactions.
At the moment, our money is issued as debt, you may not have thought about why that is the case, but it is quite deliberate.
So I am of the opinion that there are some very wealthy and powerful people paying Slashdot to disparage Bitcoin. They don't want even the idea to become popular never mind the particular implementation itself.
Otherwise, bitcoin is as you say completely irrelevant. Why would anyone bother?
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Can you stop posting bitcoin articles already? Slashdot is the ONLY place I hear about it, and almost everyday there is some stupid story about them. At this point I'm guessing the editors own millions of these worthless things, and they are hoping to generate interest so hey can unload them on some sucker. The rest of the world doesn't care in the slightest about bitcoin, including your readers. Can we go back to stuff that matters now?
"the thief sent 0.31337 BTC to LulzSec"
Cute.
So... this is the year of the Bitcoin desktop?
You are who you hang out with.
Without them, you are a cipher. You are also irrelevant and, in the context of a network, you are nonexistent.
With them, named or pseudonymmed, you are you and your youness is its own significance.
Bitcoin is not anonymous; it is pseudonymous. Maintaining the uniqueness and validity of those pseudonyms is essential to its operation. It can therefore never be anonymous. Which is not to deny that you might as well be anonymous if nobody cares what you're doing with it. Cf. life in the big city, man.
And now a reading from American Gods by Neil Gaiman:
Chapter one. Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked 'don't fuck with me' enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape and taught himself coin tricks. He thought a lot about how he loved his wife. The best thing in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the - please let's stop posting about Bitcoin. The best thing in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing about being in prison, was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as - please let's stop posting about Bitcoin. The feeling that he'd plunged as low - please let's stop posting about Bitcoin. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man would get him - please let's stop posting about Bitcoin. He did - please let's stop posting about Bitcoin...
Until they actually reveal the identity of someone, their conclusion is false.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
For fuck's sake I think I've read about this supposed "early adopter bonus" two dozen times already so let me say it loud and clear:
EARLY ADOPTERS ARE NOT AT SIGNIFICANT ADVANTAGE.
I want people to understand that mining bitcoins was not easier at the beginning than it is now. In fact due to technological advances, bitcoin mining is easier nowadays.
BTC are basically worth a measure of computer cycles. If you invest the same amount of computer cycles you get the same amount of BTC. More actually thanks to revised algorithms.
An early adopter can be beaten by a late adopter if the late adopter invests more resources into the mesh than the early adopter. An early adopter using old hardware in his basement only during the night when the power bills are cheaper can be beaten by a late adopter using modern GPUs running fulltime in a week. In two weeks you will be twice as rich, in BTC, than him.
When you realise that mining for BTC costs real money it means that early adopters aren't really at an advantage. They have more BTC but less UDS, which places limits on them.
Now early adopters have been profiting from block checking, but that is no different than profiting from services in any other industry. Also I admit that early BTC buyers (not minners, buyers) do have early adopter advantages right now, since BTC are worth more today than early, but if the value of BTC drops so does their investment, they aren't at much of an advantage.
And of course, even that advantage is only relative to their total investment.
I'm sure someone with a more economics bent than me can come up other early adopter advantages I haven't considered, but in my technical opinion this is probably balanced with the late adopter advantages due to technological progress.
But... the future refused to change.
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Actually no. I'd like more important debates, like about the U.S. debt ceiling, the Oslo bombings or Lulzsec activities.
Umm, with the exception of the latter, why don't you go read CNN.com or something? If I wanted to read about the US deb ceiling or the Oslo bombings, Slashdot is not exactly the place I'd think of first. I'd have to be pretty stupid to expect those kinds of stories to appear on a tech news site.
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