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Bitcoin Perfectly Anonymous — Until You Spend It
jfruh writes "One of the great attractions of Bitcoin as a currency is that it's completely secure and anonymous. But according to researchers (PDF) from UC San Diego and George Mason University, that anonymity starts to vanish the minute you exchange bitcoin for real-world items or conventional currencies. The researchers tracked transactions across the Bitcoin ecosystem and found points where it would be easy for a government with subpeona power to find the identity of a Bitcoin user. They also concluded that the currency wasn't especially attractive for money-laundering purposes."
Graph theory explains many things.
Check it out, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0
No, the judge was very clear that I'm not allowed to do that any more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One of the ways that you can increase anonymity with Bitcoin purchases is by issuing a different hash key for each different kind of transaction. There are other techniques for moving around large numbers of Bitcoins as well including swapping the coins between wallets.
I'll agree that the exchange of Bitcoins for government-backed currencies is particularly problematic as current exchange laws require all sorts of identification for such transactions. On the other hand, you can live "off the grid" and just exchange Bitcoins for stuff like food, shelter, clothing, and other stuff and not bother with pesky details of exchanging into a government currency.
Almost everything mentioned in the article as some sort of deep revelation was acknowledged by the developers and "fans" of Bitcoins on forums within weeks of the original software published by Satoshi was released.... and happened years ago. Talk about stale news. The only real news is that somebody with "credentials" in a "scholarly paper" has made the same claims.... thus it can be included on Wikipedia or some other similar website.
... for purchases. The gov't will see my garage full of Porsches and Ferraris and the yacht at the dock. What I need to do is to disconnect my means of income from expenditures.
No problem with taxes. I'll pay them. But I don't need the IRS snooping on my investments and calling their buddies with stock tips so they can front run me.
I used to work for an outfit that bid (but lost) a major IT contract to support IRS operations. The story was that they bid way below their cost. But they figured that getting their hands on taxpayer data and using it for their own purposes would more then make up for their loss. To this day I wonder what the contract winner is doing.
I wonder how contractors like Booz Alan Hamilton bid NSA contracts.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm unsure why people think Bitcoin is any kind of anonymous in the first place. Every transaction must be widely published for processing (in theory, ever miner can see every transaction). The entire money flow, every transaction worldwide, is known. Does anyone still think the NSA doesn't know every bitcoin transaction ever processed? Does anyone still think an IP address (with timestamp) is anonymous in any way?
The only anonymous in Bitcoin transaction is one where you hand someone the "wallet". Transferring your secrets, especially by hand, is as anonymous as handing cash to someone, but that's not really the intended model, or a particularly useful one.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Of course, nothing is really anonymous. It is just a cat and mouse game.
Nothing is really anonymous either. Just look at all the 'hacked' exchanges or a 51% attack.
And furthermore, nothing is really anonymous.
I disagree. I think that nothing is really anonymous.
Cowards are anonymous. And nothing. But other than that, nothing is anonymous.
Most people don't realize it's already mandatory (in the US) to scan currency serial numbers at every large transaction with a financial institution. The government is content with that, so I assume it gives them all the power they need, or they'd demand it of all merchants.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.