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civil asset forfeiture, capital controls Bitcoin offers no special protection against this. Your problems would arrive in the real world with guns. See shutdow

civil asset forfeiture, capital controls Bitcoin offers no special protection against this. Your problems would arrive in the real world with guns. See shutdown of exchanges in China. Black market trading If your opsec is perfect, maybe. See Ross Ulbricht. intense privacy invasion by governments Bitcoin keeps a public record of every transaction, forever. That is trivial to tie to your real world activity, in retrospect. It has not been important enough to do yet, but the data is there and data is already collected on other selectors linked to all online activity. widespread privacy loss through corporations (Equifax, Verizon) Bitcoin solves this how? Companies checking credit record will require your real world identity and past records. Why would they want to participate in your crypto-anarchist future? Pseudo-anonymity is not anonymity, and most of the features you have listed as desirable, people simply don’t want, even if bitcoin could deliver them in a meaningful way for non technical people. For better or worse, they are revolutionary ideas which require a change of laws and government, not a change of tech.

AgentME 9y ago
>If your opsec is perfect, maybe. See Ross Ulbricht. The bar is so much lower than many think. Ulbricht posted the first advertisements of Silk Road with accounts publicly linked to his personal email address. >Bitcoin keeps a public record of every transaction, forever. That is trivial to tie to your real world activity, in retrospect. It has not been important enough to do yet, but the data is there and data is already collected on other selectors linked to all online activity. Privacy isn't automatic in bitcoin, but it's easy enough in practice to break the public link in the blockchain. Depositing into an exchange account or other bitcoin service and then withdrawing a few days later is usually enough. If you want privacy from the exchange too, then exchanging bitcoin for a cryptocurrency with anonymity built-in (ie. monero or zcash), and then exchange that back to bitcoin at an exchange that doesn't require user identification. (Alternatively, convince your intended recipients to accept monero/zcash directly and don't even bother with bitcoin.) (It's possible that in the future, the Lightning Network functionality for Bitcoin will add some anonymity as a byproduct to transactions using it.)
- golangnews 9y ago
  Against a state (the ones who impose capital controls etc) every contact with the bitcoin network would give you away. It’s not really designed for privacy and even networks that are like tor have been subverted. You can’t hide from a sufficiently determined state without continuous & extraordinary efforts. If you're willing to live outside the law, bitcoin could help you do so (with difficulty). If you want to live normally, it can't help you. So I guess I'm trying to say - change the law, not the tech.

AgentME 9y ago

>If your opsec is perfect, maybe. See Ross Ulbricht. The bar is so much lower than many think. Ulbricht posted the first advertisements of Silk Road with accounts publicly linked to his personal email address. >Bitcoin keeps a public record of every transaction, forever. That is trivial to tie to your real world activity, in retrospect. It has not been important enough to do yet, but the data is there and data is already collected on other selectors linked to all online activity. Privacy isn't automatic in bitcoin, but it's easy enough in practice to break the public link in the blockchain. Depositing into an exchange account or other bitcoin service and then withdrawing a few days later is usually enough. If you want privacy from the exchange too, then exchanging bitcoin for a cryptocurrency with anonymity built-in (ie. monero or zcash), and then exchange that back to bitcoin at an exchange that doesn't require user identification. (Alternatively, convince your intended recipients to accept monero/zcash directly and don't even bother with bitcoin.) (It's possible that in the future, the Lightning Network functionality for Bitcoin will add some anonymity as a byproduct to transactions using it.)

golangnews 9y ago
Against a state (the ones who impose capital controls etc) every contact with the bitcoin network would give you away. It’s not really designed for privacy and even networks that are like tor have been subverted. You can’t hide from a sufficiently determined state without continuous & extraordinary efforts. If you're willing to live outside the law, bitcoin could help you do so (with difficulty). If you want to live normally, it can't help you. So I guess I'm trying to say - change the law, not the tech.