i think this is a good idea. why not flush out the true anonymity capabilities of Bitcoin? if not you, someone else will eventually do it. i'd be interested myself in being able to probe the limits of such a system and would use it regularly i'm sure.
this is a fuzzy area that i'm sure alot of ppl would be interested in.
Topic: Idea: revealing Bitcoin users' identities AND improve anonymity - page 2. (Read 2217 times)
February 18, 2012, 11:25:03 AM
February 18, 2012, 10:45:55 AM
Bitcoin has a reputation of allowing anonymous payments, but people with more Bitcoin expertise know that, without special 'bitcoin laundry' tools, you are far from anonymous when using Bitcoin.
The idea:
Wouldn't it be cool to have a website that allows visitors to do data mining on the block chain? I imagine it could be something like a fuzzy logic algorithm that assigns a probability to each pair of addresses on whether they belong to the same person / wallet, and then show transactions between those address clusters, instead of between individual addresses. Since people will often repeatedly do business with the same person/organization, this could also be used to reinforce the address matching.
On top of that, there could be a wiki-like system, where these 'identities in the block chain' are connected to real-world identities. For instance, after withdrawing bitcoins from an exchange service, I know a Bitcoin address of that exchange service. I could enter that information in the wiki, and then find out what other addresses belong to the exchange service, how many bitcoins they probably hold in total, etc..
Why is this cool?
First of all, this would be a nice demonstration to law enforcement people, to show them that Bitcoin does not necessarily remove their ability to 'follow the money'. This could help to get political support for Bitcoin.
Secondly, this could actually improve anonymity: people can actually see on the website whether their anonymity has been compromised, and they can take measures as soon as they notice.
People who want to compromise anonymity will do datamining on the block chain anyway; by making the best datamining tools available to the general public, at least we make sure nobody has an advantage over other people, and we increase visibility of what is visible and what is not.
The idea:
Wouldn't it be cool to have a website that allows visitors to do data mining on the block chain? I imagine it could be something like a fuzzy logic algorithm that assigns a probability to each pair of addresses on whether they belong to the same person / wallet, and then show transactions between those address clusters, instead of between individual addresses. Since people will often repeatedly do business with the same person/organization, this could also be used to reinforce the address matching.
On top of that, there could be a wiki-like system, where these 'identities in the block chain' are connected to real-world identities. For instance, after withdrawing bitcoins from an exchange service, I know a Bitcoin address of that exchange service. I could enter that information in the wiki, and then find out what other addresses belong to the exchange service, how many bitcoins they probably hold in total, etc..
Why is this cool?
First of all, this would be a nice demonstration to law enforcement people, to show them that Bitcoin does not necessarily remove their ability to 'follow the money'. This could help to get political support for Bitcoin.
Secondly, this could actually improve anonymity: people can actually see on the website whether their anonymity has been compromised, and they can take measures as soon as they notice.
People who want to compromise anonymity will do datamining on the block chain anyway; by making the best datamining tools available to the general public, at least we make sure nobody has an advantage over other people, and we increase visibility of what is visible and what is not.
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