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Bitcoin Perfectly Anonymous — Until You Spend It

Posted by Unknown on from the cover-your-tracks dept.

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.

4 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Bitcoin users are working on a fix: CoinJoin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Check it out, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

  2. Re:Just like IRL by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Funny

    every time you stand in front of a CCTV camera you are exposing yourself to the world.

    No, the judge was very clear that I'm not allowed to do that any more.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Very Old News and Acknowledged by Bitcoin Devs by Teancum · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Of course. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.