Topic: Overleveraging, cheating, shadow margin, prostitution, crime (Read 174 times)

That is true that with your public address you can basically follow its transactions especially if you have disclosed it on the internet before hand but the thing with cryptocurrency is that anonymity is still very much observed so even if you know that this specific public address belongs to x you still don’t know who x is

It's important that we protect our privacy but when it gets too much, we become like the kings of our worlds to the point that nobody understands us. No problem if there is a need for you to post your public key/address but that doesn't mean that someone who believes it to be owned by you can also be lied to. Like, you just grabbed it somewhere else and you claim to be the owner of it.

There is no law that stops you from doing that and you'll also not liable if someone believes that the public key or address you have mentioned to your friends as they seem to be gullible at all.

What are you trying to say? We have to improve our privacy and use mixers? Anyway, who's moving their holdings nowadays? We don't want to spend a lot of money for the fees because they're too much.

And you have given the exchange the idea on who you are and the address you've used.

The detail is public it doesn't mean they can access the holdings and make you do thing they want, only with private keys it is possible to access the crypto associated with the wallet address and its not that simple to identify the individual based on an address unless you get insider information from KYC exchange or government entity.

Exactly.  People dont seem to care where the paper money in their wallet originally came from or what it was used for in the past.  But with Bitcoin, folks get all worried that it might have been involved in something sketchy or illegal.  Its kinda silly when you think about it, because Bitcoin is basically just another type of money. 

I mean all currencies, even regular cash, can be used for both good stuff and bad stuff.  Its up to each person to decide what they wanna use their money for.  The money itself doesnt have some kind of morality built into it.  Bitcoin really isnt much different from other forms of money when you get down to it.

Exactly! even if the blockchain is public and our transactions is visible, that doesn't mean that our accounts is not safe. In fact, We didn't know whose account are having a large bitcoin holdings, right? our wallet and private keys remains safe and private unless you want to disclose your identity in public.

Yes, it's visible and made public but....

But that doesn't mean that everyone who has their Bitcoins or cryptos can be known. It's all just public addresses and you won't get to know the person behind it until you know him personally and shows you that he owns it.

And for the side of exchanges, that's done through KYC. That's why it's impossible to know someone who's behind that address or wallet unless you actually know the person.

You have completely failed in presenting your point of view. You ned to divide your topic into small sectors and then present it. It is true that blockchain is open source, but using traditional methods you can hide your identity from 99% of people, and unless there is a government or entity that has sufficient funding and access to data, it may not No one can access it except through backdoors from some companies, so it will not be easy to track you.

So what does privacy have to do with fake trading volumes, hardware wallets, banks, chat rooms and capitalism?

This is just a transaction id. That cannot be used against you, and I do not even know what "used against you" is either.

It is a huge stretch.

We already have adequate security and also anonymity with the bitcoin network.

- Jay -

It's called a public key for a reason. If you're someone that has large amounts and it's a potential victim to hackers, it's always advisible to keep that address to yourself. Have other addresses that you use to receive money then transfer those coins to the other address yourself. That way even if the transaction you transaction is public, people can't trace that address back to you because nobody knows it's yours and you've never dropped it anywhere online.

Nobody that doesn't have the private keys of an address can know how much is in that particular address, but I agree that you can be a target if hackers see that a particular address makes a large amount of transactions and they can trace that address back to you if you've ever published it online.

Sure, unless the government starts saying you own "tainted coins" which is a term I understand but find as ridiculous as holding "tainted cash".  I would not put anything past regulators when they're trying to protect fiat and decrease personal privacy, which has been on many governments' agendas for quite some time now.  All it takes is some politician making a statement that the media broadcasts to a public that doesn't question anything they see on the news and that's it. 

This is what scares me about stuff like mixers being verbotten on the forum come the first of the year.  I absolutely get where Theymos is coming from with that decision, but it's the fact that he had to eliminate something that isn't (yet) illegal just to protect himself and bitcointalk from scrutiny.

All of that shit that OP mentioned has been done to death with cash before bitcoin came along, but I think we all know that.  Just thought I'd say it anyway.

I truly don’t get you completely.
How will one be able to leverage the holding on your wallet and use it against you? Most especially, in the case of prostitution as proposed! I just can’t correlate what is the case here.

By the way. We get it that exchanges are centralized and liable to regulations within there nations of operation but still, until it becomes an issue of public security, even then you would hardly have your identity revealed to the authorities. Addresses don’t tell tales of users behind, except on the forum of course but, it’s an anonymous forum for the majority.

That’s why, using non custodial wallets has always been the way to ensure security and anonymity. No one can target you by your holdings except you’ve made some declarations and did let your security down. You can’t go after who you don’t know.

Not sure what you mean by the bolden parts of the OP. Bitcoins transactions are public records and cannot be hidden from the blockchain network. But it is impossible to know the identity of the address owner. The only way this can be done is if there a connection found between the wallet and a centralized exchange address with full kyc. Even at that, by law exchanges cannot give a third party users data unless for a federal investigation.

While we can see transactions on the blockchain, we can only know published bitcoin holdings. Apart from that, we don't know whose wallet it is. Even if you knew someone had a lot of bitcoins, what would you do? threaten them? hack it? it's not something easy

As far as I know, bitcoin is very safe and even though it can be traced, disguising bitcoin transactions is easy, especially if you use a mixer. So what you are afraid of seems excessive.

Transaction hashes can be used against you I suppose. the blockchain is public and sometimes that is all that is needed to make things roll. Although of course, hackings considered you won't get anywhere knowing someone's public address, you still need to have access to their stuff before you can even make magic happen. But in OP's case where overleveraging (I don't even know what he means but I guess it involves making people believe that they are you by showing transaction hashes showing how good you are at trading or how many coins you manage) is taken into account, be it a stretch as it may seem, I think we still deserve some form of security and anonymity one way or another.

I gotta disagree.  Just because your wallet is out there for all to see dont automatically mean your coins are up for illicit activities.  I mean sure, folks can see you got crypto if they look but they would need more to actually link that to your identity or illegal activities. You would have to go sending funds knowingly to some straight up criminals for real trouble and  that just aint happenin.

Most normal folks keep their wallets and IDs separate for good reason.  Dont want just anyone seeing how much you got tracking purchases and whatnot.  So yeah, the blockchain is public, but your identity and your interent address? Those stay private unless you connect them personally.  That idea is silly.

What do you mean by "knows your internet" and "leverage your holdings"?

The blockchain is public, but without the private keys you cannot prove ownership or perform any action on the wallet.

- Jay -

Since your holdings are visible on the blockchain, anyone that knows your internet or wallet address can leverage your holdings against you on the corrupt exchanges for crime, prostitution, or worse.

There are not many people in this market. Many have access to or operate exchanges, thus are able to link users to addresses, with or without KYC. Electrum or RPC connections, mobile wallets, explorers, payments, and even clipboards on your device can be tracked back to you, your IP address, or your general DNS location. Even without this information, an address with holdings can be referenced over time by owners of other issued tokens or coins in order to make market decisions based on how long or where these holdings are held. Or worse, new tokens or coins can be issued using your holdings as leverage (since they can be viewed publicly by anyone) to prop up their market for illegal or even terrorist activity.

Corrupt exchanges can display whatever numbers they want on the chart, then force users to wait inordinate amounts of confirmations while the exchange shuffles their gambles and bets upon your withdrawal.

This is why the original application did not include spv/rpc and why keeping a local copy of the blockchain is so critical: To keep other entities from spying on your holdings and transactions.

Even this forum and its owners can track you, your wallet, your holdings, or any other information you make public. Once scripted, a malicious entity can create a map with profiles on anyone and everyone on the blockchain.

Moving your holdings routinely to new wallets is also not enough, as each time you transact you are linked back to the previous address. You would have to move them to an exchange and then return them to a new wallet that you have never referenced publicly.

This isn't a game. This isn't intellectual property being revealed. These are subtly introduced flaws that have corrupted the original design, such as by Trezor, Ledger, Cryptoid, Blockchair. These tactics are utilized by employees and owners of every exchange or application against you.

Quit being criminals and build it better or this whole market is meant to steal candy from babies.

That's not all: banks, advfn, chatrooms, fraternities, and other communication channels also lead to insider trading, criminal knowledge of personal information, and theft on the stock and bond market, metals, real estate, or anywhere people can take advantage of one another.

You are not entitled to other people's property, bodies, nor knowledge whether you have the ability to obtain such or not.

Capitalism is compromised.