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.
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.
It's much worse. It's pushing the value of time and energy over to other commodities needed to power the servers. Think coal and natural gas power generation. We simply don't have the renewables in place to offset and eventually lower the cost per kw. That will tens of years if anything. If instead it was crunching numbers for research such as Folding@Home, I can see human value in that. But to pull megawatts of power to essentially run a scam is really bad. Of course, one could say the same for the high frequency trading server infrastructure as well.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
That energy is actually put to a good use - it provides security for the block chain against double-spending attacks, by making them computationally infeasible. And it gives pretty good value for the money: as far as costs go for a payment-processing network, it's damned cheap compared to what Visa or Paypal charges.
Yes, early adopters come out well. That's true in any venture. But at the end of the day, that doesn't mean it won't be useful as a payment processing network. The amount that early adopters will get out of this utterly pales in comparison to what the big financial corporations are raping you for.
If you think THIS is a scam, read up more on fractional-reserve banking. The debt-driven US dollar is the biggest ponzi scheme ever.
What they fail to do is identify the thief!
Perhaps the margin of their paper was too small to include the thief's name.
I generate my bitcoins on a rack of servers powered by Solar panels and enslaved squirrels on treadmills you insensitive clod!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is exactly how all pyramid schemes work.
Bitcoin might as well be called amway-coin.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What would you have it be, then? If you gave out proportionately more BTC as the number of users grow, the inflation would be insane. So it's 500 BTC per hour, divided among everyone. Yeah, as the number of people grows, your slice becomes tiny. Now you have to earn (or exchange earned money for) bitcoins. Why is it shocking to have to earn your currency?
Bitcoin at its core isn't about making money through mining. It's about having a currency that gets rid of a lot of the disadvantages of current paper currency and payment processing systems. The rapid growth of people participating is making it much more valuable in that regard. You only get "next to nothing" if you were looking for a free handout. For the rest of us, it's a way to actually buy goods and services. For me, the advantage is I dislike and distrust Paypal, and I very much welcome a replacement that isn't tied to yet another flimsy or greedy company.
The debt-driven US dollar is the biggest ponzi scheme ever.
It's not a ponzi scheme if EVERYBODY plays.