I think it's a misdirection to say things like "bitcoin is (or isn't) anonymous". This is a point garzik has made before. What makes it hard to find "Tom Williams" bitcoin is that he used multiple techniques to hide his true identity: an entity (corporation) formed in a jurisdiction friendly to anonymous corporations, a host that accepts a pseudonym, a software application that gave him access to people's coins but that gave no way to reach him, and so on.
It was his lifestyle choices that made him anonymous, not bitcoin. I'm not saying anything you folks don't know, but we should be more precise with our language. And last, Tom went to a lot of work to be able to cloak himself this well. Few people would be able to go through with it all.
Topic: Bitcoin IS anonymous (Read 4647 times)
We can all assume that every single thing we do on the internet, phone calls we make, credit card purchases, our location (from our cell phones), bank transactions, pretty much every electronic transaction, travel patterns, and on and on....are stored and analyzed WITHOUT A COURT ORDER.
See http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying just for starts. You should assume that the traffic analysis discussed here is already being done on the blockchain at a minimum.
Thanks for blowing the whistle early on mybitcoin lettucebee, you saved me a hundred coin at least!. Still lost 40 or so I was about to transfer to an offline wallet. I discovered the site was down on the day it first went down when I went to log-in for the final transfer and close my account.
Anyway, to respond to the quoted post, lettucebee, none of that information is admissible in court. It isn't usable as the basis for a warrant, either. It is also unavailable to civilian investigators. Since the bitcoin frauds are not national security matters, the NSA is not going to retarget their datamining, nor will they help with the investigation in any way.
So some datamining AI sifts through all the traffic and sends up the "suspicious" bits through the heirarchy of human review within the U.S. intelligence community to try to prevent terrorism and improve "national security". So what, it doesn't mean bitcoin is not anonymous just because some super spy-computer could, in theory, link btc to real id.
I wonder if they do this for non US Citizens as well.
I'm fairly certain they do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)
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I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
And I suppose you do? How do you draw that judgement based on my statement is beyond me. When you buy gold you typically have to provide some real world proof of id or some info about you (assuming you did not fake it) gets left behind at the merchant or point of purchase. With bitcoin what info info about you is stored? Your e-mail address? Your IP? Get real man, bitcoin IS anonymous.
I've never had to provide ID, background info, or even my name when buying gold, although I chose to once or twice by buying via debit card. Just find a brick-and-mortar shop that sells gold. Take cash. Buy smallish amounts. Nothing to it.
If you want to spend a lot, either first build up a rapport with the shop owner over time, or look for several more out-of-the-way places to buy from. (Look hard. Odd downtown shops and flea markets can surprise you.)
True enough, and that's what I was saying in one of my previous posts. But keep in mind that you are still exposing your visual identity (ie your face) to the shop keeper. In that sense it is not 100% anonymous. You'd be surprised how good some people's memory can be.
I think it's a bad idea that the gold shops you frequent don't ask for id - ie money laundering.
I strongly disagree.
Setting aside for a moment the actual "wrongness" of obscuring one's finances in the first place....
If the little old lady selling some silver coins and a couple of 1/10 ounce gold eagles at the flea market asks for ID before selling to anyone, she's going to go home without having made a sale. She doesn't need anyone else's ID, and frankly, the harm she could do with it is far greater than the harm I'm going to do buying a few hundred dollars worth of metal.
Ditto to the traditional, reputable coin shop. It's not uncommon to show ID when selling a lot of metal, or jewelry or the like, on the off chance you're fencing stolen goods. But buying? What would be the point of looking at the name of someone who buys a gold coin? It's not like the mafia or drug cartels (or your neighborhood drug dealer, I would imagine) do business in gold. Last I heard they had a preference for euros....
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The gist of my argument is that it is a lot easier to leave no traces in the digital world than in the physical world - hence anything do in "real life" carries the risk of compromising your "anonymity"
I agree, using a physical money requires some sort of physical presence and interaction at some point. I was just pointing out that, at least here in the U.S. (for now, anyway), using gold can be fairly anonymous.
Thanks guys for vindicating and proving my point.
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I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
i do. its less anon than you think. i've been selling my gold and silver and the coin shop issues a 1099 to me when i do.
they also took down my drivers license, address, and a fingerprint.
when i bought it i don't remember having to do that tho.
In my part of Canada (mid-west) i am not aware of any reputable retail location that I can purchase PM's from, without supplying photo ID.
I wonder if they do this for non US Citizens as well.
To do the same thing with bitcoin, you need to be one of two things:
1. A skilled hacker.
2. A government agency with probable cause.
1. A skilled hacker.
2. A government agency with probable cause.
But "keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis" all presume that the investigator already has a target, has a court order in place to allow real-time monitoring of the target's electronic communication, and is monitoring that target when the crime takes place. This is not going to happen in the real world with a real criminal but rarely, if ever.
Guys, I am following this thread with great interest. I am a student of how one sifts through the blockchain, but when I encounter comments like the above I have to weigh in with what I do know.
We can all assume that every single thing we do on the internet, phone calls we make, credit card purchases, our location (from our cell phones), bank transactions, pretty much every electronic transaction, travel patterns, and on and on....are stored and analyzed WITHOUT A COURT ORDER.
See http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying just for starts. You should assume that the traffic analysis discussed here is already being done on the blockchain at a minimum.
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database," infamously wrote New York Times writer William Safire, announcing the birth of Total Information Awareness, a kind of Echelon on steroids introduced a year after 9/11.
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I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
i do. its less anon than you think. i've been selling my gold and silver and the coin shop issues a 1099 to me when i do.
they also took down my drivers license, address, and a fingerprint.
when i bought it i don't remember having to do that tho.
Quote
I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
And I suppose you do? How do you draw that judgement based on my statement is beyond me. When you buy gold you typically have to provide some real world proof of id or some info about you (assuming you did not fake it) gets left behind at the merchant or point of purchase. With bitcoin what info info about you is stored? Your e-mail address? Your IP? Get real man, bitcoin IS anonymous.
I've never had to provide ID, background info, or even my name when buying gold, although I chose to once or twice by buying via debit card. Just find a brick-and-mortar shop that sells gold. Take cash. Buy smallish amounts. Nothing to it.
If you want to spend a lot, either first build up a rapport with the shop owner over time, or look for several more out-of-the-way places to buy from. (Look hard. Odd downtown shops and flea markets can surprise you.)
True enough, and that's what I was saying in one of my previous posts. But keep in mind that you are still exposing your visual identity (ie your face) to the shop keeper. In that sense it is not 100% anonymous. You'd be surprised how good some people's memory can be.
I think it's a bad idea that the gold shops you frequent don't ask for id - ie money laundering.
The gist of my argument is that it is a lot easier to leave no traces in the digital world than in the physical world - hence anything do in "real life" carries the risk of compromising your "anonymity"
Quote
I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
And I suppose you do? How do you draw that judgement based on my statement is beyond me. When you buy gold you typically have to provide some real world proof of id or some info about you (assuming you did not fake it) gets left behind at the merchant or point of purchase. With bitcoin what info info about you is stored? Your e-mail address? Your IP? Get real man, bitcoin IS anonymous.
I've never had to provide ID, background info, or even my name when buying gold, although I chose to once or twice by buying via debit card. Just find a brick-and-mortar shop that sells gold. Take cash. Buy smallish amounts. Nothing to it.
If you want to spend a lot, either first build up a rapport with the shop owner over time, or look for several more out-of-the-way places to buy from. (Look hard. Odd downtown shops and flea markets can surprise you.)
if you buy a bar of gold, i think it has a serial number on it. so you would be crazy to accept damage gold unless at a good price 
You can still get scammed with gold too. But usually if you stay within the gold chain of integrity (Gold bars from the "good delivery list" )..anyways google "gold chain of integrity"..
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I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
And I suppose you do? How do you draw that judgement based on my statement is beyond me. When you buy gold you typically have to provide some real world proof of id or some info about you (assuming you did not fake it) gets left behind at the merchant or point of purchase. With bitcoin what info info about you is stored? Your e-mail address? Your IP? Get real man, bitcoin IS anonymous.
if you buy a bar of gold, i think it has a serial number on it. so you would be crazy to accept damage gold unless at a good price
Quote
I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
You don't really have that much experience with using cash or gold do you?
Pseudo-anonymous ...
... bitcoin's biggest deficiency as money, imo.
So you wish it to be 100% anonymous? Or?
Is gold anonymous?
Sort of...someone can perhaps trace where you bought to gold from (assuming you're holding it in physical form and not stored with some storage provider or in "paper form") but it would be pretty damn hard to find out where you may have hidden your gold stash. If you buy gold from coin shops with cash and assuming they don't video tape everything then you're 100% anonymous. I'd say that bitcoin can be far more anonymous than gold.
Pseudo-anonymous ...
... bitcoin's biggest deficiency as money, imo.
So you wish it to be 100% anonymous? Or?
Is gold anonymous?
No, it's not "just theory".
By observing timing and size of network traffic bursts, one may deduce who is the sender of a bitcoin transaction, even if the network connection is encrypted. And by default, the connection is not encrypted.
This is obviously predicated on someone already observing you, as well as actively sampling the P2P network. If you find out about a crime after the fact, it is a lot more difficult to associate a transaction with a network address.
Other spends from the same wallet may compromise your identity, if you have ever posted a public bitcoin address somewhere.
In a closed ecosystem without ISP wiretaps and social engineering, bitcoin is highly private. Use of dead drops, transaction delaying, mixing services and other means help increase anonymity, but are too difficult / time consuming for most people to want to use. So we must live in the real world, where methods of discovering who is using bitcoin are already well known and used in the field today (keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis, ...)
By observing timing and size of network traffic bursts, one may deduce who is the sender of a bitcoin transaction, even if the network connection is encrypted. And by default, the connection is not encrypted.
This is obviously predicated on someone already observing you, as well as actively sampling the P2P network. If you find out about a crime after the fact, it is a lot more difficult to associate a transaction with a network address.
Other spends from the same wallet may compromise your identity, if you have ever posted a public bitcoin address somewhere.
In a closed ecosystem without ISP wiretaps and social engineering, bitcoin is highly private. Use of dead drops, transaction delaying, mixing services and other means help increase anonymity, but are too difficult / time consuming for most people to want to use. So we must live in the real world, where methods of discovering who is using bitcoin are already well known and used in the field today (keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis, ...)
But in practicality, who has the means to carry out these kinds of traffic analysis and ISP connection snooping?
Government agencies.
Go figure on that one.
i have been trying to tell people, centralization is not the answer a little after i got into bitcoin, i guess it takes this to kick the message in.
No, it's not "just theory".
By observing timing and size of network traffic bursts, one may deduce who is the sender of a bitcoin transaction, even if the network connection is encrypted. And by default, the connection is not encrypted.
This is obviously predicated on someone already observing you, as well as actively sampling the P2P network. If you find out about a crime after the fact, it is a lot more difficult to associate a transaction with a network address.
Other spends from the same wallet may compromise your identity, if you have ever posted a public bitcoin address somewhere.
In a closed ecosystem without ISP wiretaps and social engineering, bitcoin is highly private. Use of dead drops, transaction delaying, mixing services and other means help increase anonymity, but are too difficult / time consuming for most people to want to use. So we must live in the real world, where methods of discovering who is using bitcoin are already well known and used in the field today (keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis, ...)
By observing timing and size of network traffic bursts, one may deduce who is the sender of a bitcoin transaction, even if the network connection is encrypted. And by default, the connection is not encrypted.
This is obviously predicated on someone already observing you, as well as actively sampling the P2P network. If you find out about a crime after the fact, it is a lot more difficult to associate a transaction with a network address.
Other spends from the same wallet may compromise your identity, if you have ever posted a public bitcoin address somewhere.
In a closed ecosystem without ISP wiretaps and social engineering, bitcoin is highly private. Use of dead drops, transaction delaying, mixing services and other means help increase anonymity, but are too difficult / time consuming for most people to want to use. So we must live in the real world, where methods of discovering who is using bitcoin are already well known and used in the field today (keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis, ...)
Here's the test, for you, Gavin, and whoever else knows enough about bitcoin and computer science to qualify as an expert in court. Can you apply your theories about bitcoin not being anonymous to a real-world case. Where are the mybitcoin, bitomat, and allinvain's bitcoins now? Obviously, no one knows. That's because bitcoins are anonymous.
You have publicly said and continue to maintain that they are not, and I respect that opinion as much as I respect you as a core developer. But "keylogging, data sniffing and snarfing, network timing analysis" all presume that the investigator already has a target, has a court order in place to allow real-time monitoring of the target's electronic communication, and is monitoring that target when the crime takes place. This is not going to happen in the real world with a real criminal but rarely, if ever.
There could be money in it for you, as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the operator(s) of mybitcoin.com, bitomat, and the allinvain malware, probably $10k to $25k, in each case though I won't be paying you so that's just a guesstimate, ballpark fee for an expert witness in a lawsuit. Could higher if it turns out to be a $1 million lawsuit that requires your testimony.
I'm going to have to take the side of Big Time Coin on this one...I challenge anyone to find out who is behind the following address:
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1C7tbiXExkyXfZLyCBNZYH24VDC5JryVXK
That's a chunk of my 25K bitcoins
I can track these damn things in perpetuity, but what good is that going to do me?
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