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Yep. The Bitcoin Blockchain is a permanent historical ledger. As time passes and info about who transacted what becomes public, the cost of identifying a tran

by cwkoss 5y ago

Yep. The Bitcoin Blockchain is a permanent historical ledger. As time passes and info about who transacted what becomes public, the cost of identifying a transaction decreases. (Assuming Bitcoin is still around) we should assume that over time, the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Even if you escape the statute of limitations, there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century.

Out_of_Characte 5y ago
>the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Mind you, there are several ways to obfuscate transactions even in the bitcoin network. and there are also privacy focused blockchains to whitewash money
- cwkoss 5y ago
  All of the 'trustless' tumbling solutions I've seen tend to leave some evidence on the blockchain, it often only dilutes the certainty that a particular input maps to a particular output. IMO, the only "surefire" way to launder bitcoin is traditional money laundering: send a trusted person dirty bitcoins and they send you back bitcoins from a clean legitimate source. Strong incentive for launderer to take the funds and run, so trust is unstable in this model.
  - warkdarrior 5y ago
    But... trustless! /s
f38zf5vdt 5y ago
> there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this. Please stop spreading FUD like this, it only makes people think that privacy is impossible. Even if you are talking about dragnet collection and you assume that for example NSA can store all traffic on the internet (which is basically impossible) in Utah (or wherever) for future decryption with post-quantum cryptography there is no reason to believe that they would make it public. And that is basically the worst case scenario. Privacy fatalism helps no-one.
  - kodah 5y ago
    I don't think that's privacy fatalism? Did you know that Reddit's entire graph has been cached on some dudes servers and up until fairly recently allowed search by username? That includes deleted posts and edits. Reddit is not unique. People do this with Twitter too. I forget the name but there's an entire service for caching changes to your Twitter bio. > No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this Citation needed. Reddit and Twitter aren't selling data to those people. It's an open API.
    - SahAssar 5y ago
      You're talking about public info, that people posted on public forums. Is anyone surprised that that info would be public? We may be talking about different things, but to me "all of the internet" means much more than public data and public forums.
      - kodah 5y ago
        I think it's reasonable for the average internet user to expect that some creep isn't archiving the whole internet. Public or not. We are indeed talking about the same thing, you are just denying that it's a problem.
        SahAssar 5y ago

by cwkoss 5y ago

Out_of_Characte 5y ago

>the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Mind you, there are several ways to obfuscate transactions even in the bitcoin network. and there are also privacy focused blockchains to whitewash money

cwkoss 5y ago
All of the 'trustless' tumbling solutions I've seen tend to leave some evidence on the blockchain, it often only dilutes the certainty that a particular input maps to a particular output. IMO, the only "surefire" way to launder bitcoin is traditional money laundering: send a trusted person dirty bitcoins and they send you back bitcoins from a clean legitimate source. Strong incentive for launderer to take the funds and run, so trust is unstable in this model.
- warkdarrior 5y ago
  But... trustless! /s

f38zf5vdt 5y ago

> there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.

SahAssar 5y ago
No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this. Please stop spreading FUD like this, it only makes people think that privacy is impossible. Even if you are talking about dragnet collection and you assume that for example NSA can store all traffic on the internet (which is basically impossible) in Utah (or wherever) for future decryption with post-quantum cryptography there is no reason to believe that they would make it public. And that is basically the worst case scenario. Privacy fatalism helps no-one.
- kodah 5y ago
  I don't think that's privacy fatalism? Did you know that Reddit's entire graph has been cached on some dudes servers and up until fairly recently allowed search by username? That includes deleted posts and edits. Reddit is not unique. People do this with Twitter too. I forget the name but there's an entire service for caching changes to your Twitter bio. > No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this Citation needed. Reddit and Twitter aren't selling data to those people. It's an open API.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    You're talking about public info, that people posted on public forums. Is anyone surprised that that info would be public? We may be talking about different things, but to me "all of the internet" means much more than public data and public forums.
    - kodah 5y ago
      I think it's reasonable for the average internet user to expect that some creep isn't archiving the whole internet. Public or not. We are indeed talking about the same thing, you are just denying that it's a problem.
      - SahAssar 5y ago