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> Does anyone know if you can tell country of origin of a transaction request? Maybe the IP sending the request is public to the network? In this kind of setti

> Does anyone know if you can tell country of origin of a transaction request? Maybe the IP sending the request is public to the network? In this kind of setting, where the transaction is illicit, you wouldn't go through an exchange, you'd publish the transaction directly to the bitcoin network, and organizations like chainalytics do track the origin IP addresses.

LatteLazy 6y ago
That makes sense. Not to criticise but... Isn't the IP of a transaction initiator being public a bit of a design flaw? Is it just assumed that users will obscure their own IPs (vpn, tor, etc)? Otherwise my isp/government can see my transactions and infer wallet ownership and I'm suddenly very un-anonymous...
- gruez 6y ago
  Transactions are relayed to all the nodes in the network, not broadcast. That means when a node sees a transaction from another node, it's impossible to know whether the node was the originator of the transaction, or was merely relaying it from another node. AFAIK bitcoin core also has some mitigations such as delaying broadcast to a subset of the nodes, to make it look like your node wasn't the first node to learn about the transaction.
- sneak 6y ago
  Last I looked, bitcoin p2p connections are not encrypted by default, so your ISP/government can see any transactions you initiate yourself. I implored the bitcoin developers to add this functionality about five or six years ago for this exact reason. That said, someone who isn't in a position to monitor the L2 network can't know if you are initiating a transaction or simply rebroadcasting it.
- literallycancer 6y ago
  There are wallets that support schemes like Dandelion, intended to make it harder to deanonymize users: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0156 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0156 Edit: apparently this has been delayed so you likely can't use it at this point https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81503/what-is-the-tradeoff-between-privacy-and-implementation-complexity-of-dandelion/81504#81504 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81503/what-is-th...

LatteLazy 6y ago

That makes sense. Not to criticise but... Isn't the IP of a transaction initiator being public a bit of a design flaw? Is it just assumed that users will obscure their own IPs (vpn, tor, etc)? Otherwise my isp/government can see my transactions and infer wallet ownership and I'm suddenly very un-anonymous...

gruez 6y ago
Transactions are relayed to all the nodes in the network, not broadcast. That means when a node sees a transaction from another node, it's impossible to know whether the node was the originator of the transaction, or was merely relaying it from another node. AFAIK bitcoin core also has some mitigations such as delaying broadcast to a subset of the nodes, to make it look like your node wasn't the first node to learn about the transaction.
sneak 6y ago
Last I looked, bitcoin p2p connections are not encrypted by default, so your ISP/government can see any transactions you initiate yourself. I implored the bitcoin developers to add this functionality about five or six years ago for this exact reason. That said, someone who isn't in a position to monitor the L2 network can't know if you are initiating a transaction or simply rebroadcasting it.
literallycancer 6y ago
There are wallets that support schemes like Dandelion, intended to make it harder to deanonymize users: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0156 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0156 Edit: apparently this has been delayed so you likely can't use it at this point https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81503/what-is-the-tradeoff-between-privacy-and-implementation-complexity-of-dandelion/81504#81504 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81503/what-is-th...