1. I don't think it was a deliberate choice in the design of Bitcoin. I think Satoshi was hoping for full anonymity. That said, this ability to track Bitcoin

1. I don't think it was a deliberate choice in the design of Bitcoin. I think Satoshi was hoping for full anonymity. That said, this ability to track Bitcoin payments to the payee has been leveraged by some of the present Bitcoin principals to convince governments that Bitcoin is kosher. (Satoshi is no longer involved in the development of Bitcoin) 2. That said, it is possible to use bitcoin anonymously, you just have to be careful and use some of the techniques described above: buying btc anonymously with cash, buying bitcoins via regular channels and "mixing" them via some online btc mixing sites, and/or generating your own btc but taking care to keep the client on a trusted vpn (like Mullvad, for example). Also, it's interesting to note that -- as far as I'm aware -- none of the perpetrators of the large bitcoin thefts have been tracked down, despite the best efforts of many smart people. And these are people that can be clearly tracked to very specific bitcoins. This may have changed in recent months, but it's certainly not a trivial task to track down even someone who has not used the techniques I describe above. It's certainly a hell of a whole lot more anonymous than Paypal or credit cards.