I don't know of any real desire amongst the community to blacklist or color code bitcoins. Plenty of people have pointed out that money isn't guilty or criminal, people are. It would very much go against the ideals of bitcoin if we started blocking or putting certain restrictions on some money just because it has or might pass through the hands of a criminal.
In regards to more anonymity, this is something bitcoin developers are working on wealth stealth addresses and I expect it to be implemented , you can read about it in a recent article here: http://www.coindesk.com/stealth-addresses-secret-bitcoin-privacy/
I agree in regards to too much anonymity governments probalby wouldn't like the idea of that since it could become harder to stop things like money laundering or in the case of many governments these days they may start screaming "it's funding terrorism!".
Topic: Issue of anonymity and fungibilty for btc (Read 495 times)
From what I can tell here, there seem to be two possible threats.
Firstly that if bitcoin transactions are traceable, then btc loses it's fungibility and I understand this is a big problem. If certain bitcoins are blacklisted or color-coded and what not, this gets ugly quickly.
Secondly, if something were written onto the btc code to make it fully anonymous, then governments may lash out against it for fears of money-laundering and such. I realize this is no different from cash, but governments do things to combat the use of cash for illegal activity. So without control of bitcoin one would expect they may choose to fight the bitcoin system all together.
My question isn't so much whether either of these "problems" are a serious concern for the widespread adoption of bitcoin, but rather if there is some way to resolve both of them. Some way to make one bitcoin indistinguishable from another, while not being a safe haven for illegal activity.
Firstly that if bitcoin transactions are traceable, then btc loses it's fungibility and I understand this is a big problem. If certain bitcoins are blacklisted or color-coded and what not, this gets ugly quickly.
Secondly, if something were written onto the btc code to make it fully anonymous, then governments may lash out against it for fears of money-laundering and such. I realize this is no different from cash, but governments do things to combat the use of cash for illegal activity. So without control of bitcoin one would expect they may choose to fight the bitcoin system all together.
My question isn't so much whether either of these "problems" are a serious concern for the widespread adoption of bitcoin, but rather if there is some way to resolve both of them. Some way to make one bitcoin indistinguishable from another, while not being a safe haven for illegal activity.
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