11 ms·
Say it with me: "Bitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous."
by phyzome 4y ago
Say it with me:
"Bitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous."
- fsckboy 4y agobetter if you could go back and time and have said it early on with the early crypto enthusiasts
- berkle4455 4y agothey didn’t listen then and they don’t listen now. waste of effort.
- hailwren 4y agoI think you are projecting your beliefs onto them. Mixers, privacy chains, and ZK privacy schemes have all been implemented because everyone in crypto acknowledges the lack of privacy. The WSJ on the other hand…
- bluGill 4y agoYou are confusing the enthusiasts with the people who understand crypto. Both groups existed, but the enthusiasts group made many claims that anyone who had even minimal understanding didn't believe.
- twelve40 4y ago> Mixers, privacy chains, and ZK privacy schemes Does any of this stuff actually help bypass KYC requirements for legal offramps in developed countries?
- msm_ 4y agoSatoshi (and many other OG members of bitcointalk) knew, and tried to improve the protocol. BTC was not set in stone at the beginning. It's just at some point Satoshi disappeared, and moonfags[1] who controlled the capital (miners and exchanges) weren't interested in any technical improvements that may make regulators more angry, causing the end of most innovation in the cryptocurrency space. [1]Sorry for the very colloquial term, I don't know a better one. I mean people who care about cryptocurrencies only as a speculative "investment".
- overthrow 4y agoBitcoin chose a certain set of tradeoffs, and other coins choose differently. It has its advantages. There's no need to project such negativity onto other projects for making different design choices.
- nr2x 4y agoYeah that’s super offensive, I would avoid it altogether.
- thewildginger 4y agoJust say crypto bros. We all know someone who treats crypto like it's CrossFit. We'll get what you mean. Even a miner and exchanger is a crypto bro, even if they don't want to admit it. They're in it for the money.
- SahAssar 4y agoBut used as intended (not via a KYC exchange) it is pseudonymous, right?
- Lerc 4y agoUntil you buy something you can touch.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoAnd then all transactions up steam can get unraveled.
- noduerme 4y agoIf you trade in and out for cash, in person with a counterparty, from a self-hosted wallet that you never use to send or receive from any other wallet that's connected to an exchange... then yes. The use case for this is mainly moving money over borders.
- funstuff007 4y agoexcept that person(s) you gave and received the cash from know who you are.
- marksmith2996 4y agoonly if they're still alive
- 8note 4y agoOr if they brought their phone with them
- alex_young 4y agoIn this scenario the person transacting the bitcoin murdered their counterparty but the cellphone is still intact?
- carabiner 4y agoBitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous.
- mrcheesebreeze 4y agoIn general maybe, but if you were selling something online and received bitcoin on a wallet not associated with your irl identity you can be anonymous, its just not practical because you need to de-anonymize to get that into actual cash unless you really know what you are doing. Monero is better.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoBetter only in that it's untraceable, but unfortunately due to bad actors that makes it a dodgy or morally indefensible thing to use.
- jancsika 4y agoSo what? It's still decentralized and waits ten minutes waits ten minutes waits ten minutes waits ten minutes waits ten minutes waits ten minutes secure.
- wesapien 4y agoCan you be specific on what are you alluding to?
- pazimzadeh 4y agoI think he's talking about doing the laundry or something to clean his money. he puts in on the quick wash cycle multiple times?
- dsr_ 4y agoI took it to be a reference to slow transaction rates.
- jtsiskin 4y agoThe target block time is 10 minutes, and you need to wait multiple blocks to be confident you’re really on the longest chain
- user3939382 4y agoSomething something tornado cash?
- artdigital 4y agoTornado cash is a smart contract on ethereum Mixers on Bitcoin are usually centralized and operated by a person, so they get (and have been) cracked way more easily
- from 4y agoIt's a felony to use Tornado Cash now. And the government interprets sanctions law extraterritorially so you're not safe in other countries either.
- ETH_start 4y agoThe sanctions are being challenged in court. A federal agency prohibiting use of what is nothing but software is totally unconstitutional, and amounts to a total abrogation of internet freedom, done without any public process like legislation. It also amounts to a general criminalization of financial privacy. So hopefully the legal challenge succeeds.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- inlined 4y agoWhat part of the constitution prohibits banning software?
- ETH_start 4y agoThe First Amendment.
- acdha 4y agoThat covers you publishing software. It doesn’t cover providing a service to criminals and personally profiting from it, and the constitution definitely gives the government authority to police that so it’s going to come down to how well they can prove that those guys were going more than just releasing code.
- senectus1 4y agoI know right?!? The WHOLE PREMISE of it was that it is an OPEN LEDGER...! I'm not sure how this persistent myth of it being a way to secretly make payments got around and stuck so well... maybe the "crypto" in the name?
- acdha 4y agoI put it back to the inherent conflict of interest in such a weak fiat currency: the people who hold it must convince you to buy in to see any value from otherwise valueless tokens. Over the years you could watch the Bitcoin sales crew trying tons of marketing pitches trying to find which sold the best – accuracy didn’t matter as long as prospective buyers found it appealing.
- dist1ll 4y ago"Open" is a heavily overloaded term. One of the main premises of Bitcoin is tamperproofness and permissionless participation. That in itself does not equate to lack of anonymity. Just have a look at Zcash[0] or Monero[1]. In general, the idea that openness and anonymity are in conflict with each other has not been true for at least 40 years. There's entire field of mathematics dedicated to solving this problem known as secure multi-party computation. [0] https://z.cash/technology/ https://z.cash/technology/ [1] https://www.getmonero.org/resources/about/ https://www.getmonero.org/resources/about/
- senectus1 4y agoyeah but zcash and monero are not bitcoin. and again, your transaction and back into bitcoin are completely open and trackable by anyone.
- dist1ll 4y agoSure, but that's due to Bitcoins implementation. There's nothing inherent to "open" ledgers that prevent them from providing anonymity. My point is: dunk on Bitcoin all you want. Just don't drag the general idea of permissionless, open ledgers into this mud fight.
- olalonde 4y agoYeah like email is not anonymous.
- sacrosancty 4y ago[dead]
- _fizz_buzz_ 4y agoThat is not true. The original Satoshi paper has a whole section about it. So the intention of privacy was - at least in theory - there from the beginning.
- sfmike 4y agoIntention is ontogically nonexistant besides ideally bending the unravelling of time, does not render the idea manifested.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoAnd it is private, in that the blockchain is a ledger of IDs and transactions with no information about the people behind them. The blockchain is anonymous enough, it's just that all transactions are public (forever) and conversion to real money requires identity.
- rahen 4y agoPeople should see Bitcoin, the L1 protocol, as a public ledger. Anonymity is solved with a L2 protocol like Lightning, or an anonymous currency like Monero, although it has shortcomings that Bitcoin doesn't have.
- ziml77 4y agoThe idea of using Bitcoin or Ethereum to pay for anything always seemed insane to me. I don't want my info about payments I've made to be public, espcially not in a form where, by design, it will never disappear!
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI mean bank and CC transactions are remembered, but due to them being privacy-sensitive information, this is tightly secured and (depending on where you are and probably a load of other factors), deleted after a mandatory retaining period.
- lostmsu 4y agoTell it to the coffee shops you visit for the first time that send you an email receipt.