Topic: Bitcoin is NOT anonymous--and is a dangerous privacy issue for its users (Read 323 times)

Yes, you are right.

Having said that, you have the possibility to keep your transactions private if you do the work.

Satoshi Nakamoto is a clear example of this. No one (except maybe a few people) know about his transactions.

But for the average person who does KYC, and reuses addresses, etc, then it's quite clear to see the transactions linked to an ID.

I've said nothing of the kind.


Correct: that was the premise of the OP, that many people are misinformed about Bitcoin, and this creates a dangerous situation. I never implied that I personally thought Bitcoin was a private currency.

OP, I think you've been influenced by people who aren't familiar enough with bitcoin and taken that information as being commonly understood.

It's not. That's just your understanding from poorly informed people.

It's well known by people who are well informed that bitcoin is not private, in that you cannot easily or typically use your coin without giving complete or partial evidence of your holdings.

Secondly, your ignorance of address usage is just that - your not having come across it is your doing and no one else's.

We're all learning.

If you are trolling, I am done. Nothing to say more with you.

If you say Bitcoin does not provide any better thing for you and your life, why are you here?

Are you here to prove that Bitcoin is not as good as people say and want to debunk it?

Go ahead and you will receive many helpful answers from community to enlighten your wrong knowledge on Bitcoin. The day people recognize that you are trolling, the community will be done with all threads you create.

There are more methods to exchange your bitcoin to fiat currency or cash, and credit card is not the only method for doing this.

There are methods for cashing out directly without connections with banks, credit cards and there are no KYC exchanges for you to sell your bitcoin too.

Pretty much anyone that reads about Bitcoin for one day will know that Bitcoin transactions are pseudonymous, not anonymous. It's been like that since genesis.

This means that you have a specific ID when dealing with Bitcoin, that can be traced. If at any point there is a link between that ID and your real name, then your real name can be traced to those transactions.

I'm surprised that this is new information to anyone in this forum though.

I disagree and agree with some of your points, but I'll only focus on the topic for the sake of not talking too much.
Let's take this forum for example, you do agree it is an anonymous forum, right? No KYC required, no personal details, just an email a username and a password. Now if a user registers on this forum and goes ahead to use his real name and posts his passport or other ID cards for us to see, you agree that the user is compromised right? But does that stop the forum from being an anonymous forum?

I believe it's the same with Bitcoin. If a Bitcoin holder doesn't use any centralized exchange, he strictly transacts P2P with other users that don't use any centralised exchange, can you still say he's not anonymous? I agree you cannot use a new address to receive transactions every time, but you can use different address for different purposes. Bitcoin on its own is anonymous, its the way the holder uses it that decides if it will keep being anonymous or not.

It's not just that, but if you are unfortunate enough to be assigned an IP address that has been abused in the past, then all online services are going to treat you the same and start enforcing blocks and captchas, since all they get is an IP address and an (easily changeable) user agent in the HTTP headers which is all they have available for identifying you.

But at the very least, it's just a nuisance and I similarly don't think that Bitcoin doesn't have any serious privacy problems.

Zero. Because I don't need it. And if you want to just buy a pizza, then such amounts can be transferred without KYC, under many jurisdictions.

For example: if you have Bitcoin ATMs, then you have this famous "1000 EUR limit". Should be enough for many pizzas.

We have CGNAT. Which means, that if you use IPv4, then your IP is shared with thousands of other people. Which means, that if you try to edit some Wiki page, there is a huge chance, that you will see someone else's history. And after restarting your router, it is very likely, that you will get a different IP, just like in Tor, when in every session, you have a different IP.

So, if people would have end-to-end connections, then yes, knowing someone's IP might be enough to track someone. But now, in the era of IPv4 and CGNAT, you are mixed with a lot of different individuals, unless you specifically request a static IP from your ISP (and pay a bunch of dollars more per month, for the ability to run your own home-hosted servers).

In practice, credit card isn't as good as you describe though. On some country, bank legally can share some of your personal data with other financial company.

To know more about certain Bitcoin transaction, you'll need one of involved party (such as sender, receiver or 3rd party used by either sender/buyer) to leak such data.


But on the other hand, some Bitcoin wallet already help preventing address reuse. The wallet would show different address when previous ones already receive Bitcoin or user manually click "Generate receiving address" again.

bitcoin was always described as pseudonymous not anonymous/private
bitcoin was always described as a public ledger not a private payment system

it was only those promoting privacy services that claimed bitcoin was private

in public there is no expectation of privacy and its up to individuals to create their own privacy via self controlling the information they emit/admit to the public

bitcoin is also not fungible which is why those who scream that bitcoin is fungible and private then promote mixers and stuff because deep down they know they are lying and want to trade off their tainted/dark service linked coin to innocent people and take innocent peoples coin. to try to de-link their involvement in stuff that can be publicly linked

if you want to create privacy YOU need to do it and not rely on central/commercial services which can be used against you. yep even commercialised mixers still need to create logs to ensure the depositor gets the right amount of coin after the mixing when the service later gives coin out, so expect that even commercialised mixers know who put funds in and where they go to, to balance the books and ensure the recipient after mixing is made whole for what they put in..
.. and to ensure they keep logs to ensure hackers are not shifting coins out of a mixers haul without being a genuine user/customer who put funds in(ensure people get what they deserve by logging who uses the service honourably)

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alot of people who fall for the myth of privacy then get lazy as they think they were promised privacy so dont need to self control their data
for instance:
people who used silk road think that because they used bitcoin they could not be traced, so were lazy and happily then gave their home delivery address to receive silk road promoted goods. not thinking they should have used a fake ID to get a PO box and only attended with a mask and ensure the PO Box was not surveilled/monitored

also people who think just using bitcoin keeps them private so then happily and lazily then publicly discuss their home life on forums and link bitcoin addresses to their profiles, thinking that there was some magic system that automatically then scrambles their public omissions after publicly releasing personal data

heck people even think things like lightning and tor are private, not realising that the 'gossip'/bridging protocols can be used against them to form links
(and yes when tor has its own list of bridge nodes pre-programmed, you are at their mercy of the path the software takes you)

It is how an individual will secure his privacy over the net. Even if the transaction is visible in the blockchain, but if people don't know your address, you can still save your privacy. As much as possible, don't disclose to anyone about your crypto transactions as well as your addresses.

All I can say is that you live in a bubble. I have never heard a person (who doesn't live in these forums) even use the word "address reusage". Most average consumers wouldn't even know what that means.


If you had written something in the vein of: "Bitcoiners, please care about your privacy and follow these basic rules ...", I'd not complain