8 ms·

Well, at least your bank nor the goverment didn't know that you were buying that pizza. I think you may have misunderstood Bitcoin; you realise it's not anonym

Well, at least your bank nor the goverment didn't know that you were buying that pizza. I think you may have misunderstood Bitcoin; you realise it's not anonymous, right?

notdrunkatall 14y ago
I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I was under the assumption bitcoin's anononymity was one of its main draws.
- rmc 14y ago
  Every bitcoin transaction is publically recorded forever. Here's an interface to it http://blockexplorer.com/ http://blockexplorer.com/
  - 27182818284 14y ago
    Right, but you can regenerate new IDs each time? So it is anonymous in the sense that you can have throwaway names.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      This is where a study by the Feds (I think?) comes in. They found that they were generally able to link accounts as belonging to the same person, based on transaction patterns and flow of money between the multiple accounts the holder owns. You can make it more difficult to link your accounts together by never transferring funds between your different accounts, but then how do you fund your accounts? It just gets more and more complicated. I don't really think Bitcoin will bring an end to "Follow the money".
      - MacsHeadroom 14y ago
        That study was by some Israeli CS students, not the feds. It's methodology was severely messed up. It got absolutely destroyed by this peer review. https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921
        sliverstorm 14y ago
        Either way, the core idea seems sound IMO.
        feral 14y ago
        'Some Israeli CS students'? That seems a little un-generous: the authors have published papers since the 80s, and one has a Turing award. But I think the study you actually want might our study, which focuses on anonymity: http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.ie/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.ie/2011/07/bitcoin-is-n... I might be biased, but I think we deal with most of the points JGarzik mentioned in our paper. But we're not 'the Feds'; perhaps silverstorm was thinking of this story: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-fears-bitcoin/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-fears-bitcoin/
        tptacek 14y ago
        Ahh, Hacker News, where Adi Shamir counts as "some Israeli CS student". http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Cryptanalysis-Data-Encryption-Standard/dp/0387979301 http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Cryptanalysis-Data-Encryp...
        rmc 14y ago
        To expand, Adi Shamir is the S in RSA.
    - mahyarm 14y ago
      From what I understand, you need a 'cash remixer' that doesn't keep logs. The log deletion is what breaks the state chain.
      - SilasX 14y ago
        This will probably be the first to be targeted, under money laundering laws.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Not really. You can create new 'names', i.e. your wallet. But they start off empty. So how do you get the actual money (bitcoins) into the new wallet? You need to transfer the money from your old wallet/name to the new one. And that is publically logged. This means you can always follow the money. The way to get around this is to generate many wallets and move things around a lot. However it's still money moving within a subset of bitcoin wallets, so potentially trackable still (Google is able to detect 'link farms', so the police might be able to detect 'mixing farms')
  - SilasX 14y ago
    Oh, blast it all! They've learned that my agent 1PvJ8Ncwk9KQjGEDti8uBFpDR1gLgZ8QYn gave 0.92 BTC to 1Nhaw787YjYMjGCzCc9H6jsrxiWFCGzJfK! Now it's only hours until our whole operation is unraveled!
- mpyne 14y ago
  It's anonymous in the sense that you can create a different identity ID, but as soon as that ID is correlated to Domino's transaction # for that transaction, or any other slip of personally-identifying info, then you're no longer anonymous.
  - Retric 14y ago
    It's worse than That as you need to fund any new ID from another act. You can mine bitcoins and send them to a new act but the ip's used to generate those bitcoins are public. Really for most mid sized transactions cash if far better, and dominos accepts cash unlike say amazon.com.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Actually, Amazon does, if indirectly: http://www.amazon.com/2-page-Corp-GC/b/ref=amb_link_85153671_2?ie=UTF8&node=1292847011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0NQE30EQ0KCCP2ZMQN6R&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1478770962&pf_rd_i=682500011 http://www.amazon.com/2-page-Corp-GC/b/ref=amb_link_85153671...
    - MacsHeadroom 14y ago
      >you need to fund any new ID from another act. Not necessarily. Lots of eWallet providers use "shared wallets" where thousands of peoples' bitcoins are stored in a single wallet. This allows for complete anonymity. It's simple and free.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        As long as you trust this unknown third-party not to keep detailed logs.
    - jerguismi 14y ago
      > You can mine bitcoins and send them to a new act but the ip's used to generate those bitcoins are public. What? There seems to be lots of misinformation here. Please prove your point. There is no need to publish your IP when you mine. Most people mine in pools, and I guess the mining pool announces the block. But you can announce it through Tor, or you can solo-mine through tor.
- mootothemax 14y ago
  I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I was under the assumption bitcoin's anononymity was one of its main draws. The Bitcoin wiki has a good article on this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity Whilst it might be possible to obfuscate your transactions list (for all the good that will do you), there's still a paper trail.
cbr 14y ago
Bitcoin is as anonymous as cash if you use a mixing service.
- mootothemax 14y ago
  Bitcoin is as anonymous as cash if you use a mixing service. No it's not. There's plenty of information that will still leak out, whether it's what service(s) the outgoing money is then sent to, the time of day following transactions take place, and a million other tiny little pieces. And this is ignoring any issues with the mixing service.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    Why not? What if the mixing service operates like a checking account, and you keep a permanent bitcoin balance with them, making deposits as you receive bitcoin payments? When you want to make a bitcoin payment, you instruct the service to make a transfer from its own bitcoin wallet, and reduce your balance in its own records accordingly. With this method, incoming and outgoing payments would be asynchronous, so it would be hard to use timestamps to associate them. The interesting thing here is that with bitcoin, a cash-like transaction may not be anonymous, but a check-like transaction usually would be. Of course, the middleman institution could still be compromised here, but since it uses its own protocol to track its customers' balances, it could use one that does preserve anonymity effectively.
    - mootothemax 14y ago
      Why not? Because what you've just described is still just obfuscation. With this method, incoming and outgoing payments would be asynchronous, so it would be hard to use timestamps to associate them. Doesn't matter. An outgoing payment will happen at some point in your day, and unless you have zero time patterns in your life, it will help identify you. As will the resulting services and people you send money to, even if the pieces start as small and as basic as "Orders pizza."
      - trhtrsh 14y ago

Well, at least your bank nor the goverment didn't know that you were buying that pizza. I think you may have misunderstood Bitcoin; you realise it's not anonymous, right?

notdrunkatall 14y ago

I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I was under the assumption bitcoin's anononymity was one of its main draws.

rmc 14y ago
Every bitcoin transaction is publically recorded forever. Here's an interface to it http://blockexplorer.com/ http://blockexplorer.com/
- 27182818284 14y ago
  Right, but you can regenerate new IDs each time? So it is anonymous in the sense that you can have throwaway names.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    This is where a study by the Feds (I think?) comes in. They found that they were generally able to link accounts as belonging to the same person, based on transaction patterns and flow of money between the multiple accounts the holder owns. You can make it more difficult to link your accounts together by never transferring funds between your different accounts, but then how do you fund your accounts? It just gets more and more complicated. I don't really think Bitcoin will bring an end to "Follow the money".
    - MacsHeadroom 14y ago
      That study was by some Israeli CS students, not the feds. It's methodology was severely messed up. It got absolutely destroyed by this peer review. https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921
      - sliverstorm 14y ago
        Either way, the core idea seems sound IMO.
      - feral 14y ago
        'Some Israeli CS students'? That seems a little un-generous: the authors have published papers since the 80s, and one has a Turing award. But I think the study you actually want might our study, which focuses on anonymity: http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.ie/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.ie/2011/07/bitcoin-is-n... I might be biased, but I think we deal with most of the points JGarzik mentioned in our paper. But we're not 'the Feds'; perhaps silverstorm was thinking of this story: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-fears-bitcoin/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-fears-bitcoin/
      - tptacek 14y ago
        Ahh, Hacker News, where Adi Shamir counts as "some Israeli CS student". http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Cryptanalysis-Data-Encryption-Standard/dp/0387979301 http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Cryptanalysis-Data-Encryp...
        rmc 14y ago
        To expand, Adi Shamir is the S in RSA.
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    From what I understand, you need a 'cash remixer' that doesn't keep logs. The log deletion is what breaks the state chain.
    - SilasX 14y ago
      This will probably be the first to be targeted, under money laundering laws.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Not really. You can create new 'names', i.e. your wallet. But they start off empty. So how do you get the actual money (bitcoins) into the new wallet? You need to transfer the money from your old wallet/name to the new one. And that is publically logged. This means you can always follow the money. The way to get around this is to generate many wallets and move things around a lot. However it's still money moving within a subset of bitcoin wallets, so potentially trackable still (Google is able to detect 'link farms', so the police might be able to detect 'mixing farms')
- SilasX 14y ago
  Oh, blast it all! They've learned that my agent 1PvJ8Ncwk9KQjGEDti8uBFpDR1gLgZ8QYn gave 0.92 BTC to 1Nhaw787YjYMjGCzCc9H6jsrxiWFCGzJfK! Now it's only hours until our whole operation is unraveled!
mpyne 14y ago
It's anonymous in the sense that you can create a different identity ID, but as soon as that ID is correlated to Domino's transaction # for that transaction, or any other slip of personally-identifying info, then you're no longer anonymous.
- Retric 14y ago
  It's worse than That as you need to fund any new ID from another act. You can mine bitcoins and send them to a new act but the ip's used to generate those bitcoins are public. Really for most mid sized transactions cash if far better, and dominos accepts cash unlike say amazon.com.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Actually, Amazon does, if indirectly: http://www.amazon.com/2-page-Corp-GC/b/ref=amb_link_85153671_2?ie=UTF8&node=1292847011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0NQE30EQ0KCCP2ZMQN6R&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1478770962&pf_rd_i=682500011 http://www.amazon.com/2-page-Corp-GC/b/ref=amb_link_85153671...
  - MacsHeadroom 14y ago
    >you need to fund any new ID from another act. Not necessarily. Lots of eWallet providers use "shared wallets" where thousands of peoples' bitcoins are stored in a single wallet. This allows for complete anonymity. It's simple and free.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      As long as you trust this unknown third-party not to keep detailed logs.
  - jerguismi 14y ago
    > You can mine bitcoins and send them to a new act but the ip's used to generate those bitcoins are public. What? There seems to be lots of misinformation here. Please prove your point. There is no need to publish your IP when you mine. Most people mine in pools, and I guess the mining pool announces the block. But you can announce it through Tor, or you can solo-mine through tor.
mootothemax 14y ago
I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I was under the assumption bitcoin's anononymity was one of its main draws. The Bitcoin wiki has a good article on this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity Whilst it might be possible to obfuscate your transactions list (for all the good that will do you), there's still a paper trail.

cbr 14y ago

Bitcoin is as anonymous as cash if you use a mixing service.

mootothemax 14y ago
Bitcoin is as anonymous as cash if you use a mixing service. No it's not. There's plenty of information that will still leak out, whether it's what service(s) the outgoing money is then sent to, the time of day following transactions take place, and a million other tiny little pieces. And this is ignoring any issues with the mixing service.
- Gormo 14y ago
  Why not? What if the mixing service operates like a checking account, and you keep a permanent bitcoin balance with them, making deposits as you receive bitcoin payments? When you want to make a bitcoin payment, you instruct the service to make a transfer from its own bitcoin wallet, and reduce your balance in its own records accordingly. With this method, incoming and outgoing payments would be asynchronous, so it would be hard to use timestamps to associate them. The interesting thing here is that with bitcoin, a cash-like transaction may not be anonymous, but a check-like transaction usually would be. Of course, the middleman institution could still be compromised here, but since it uses its own protocol to track its customers' balances, it could use one that does preserve anonymity effectively.
  - mootothemax 14y ago
    Why not? Because what you've just described is still just obfuscation. With this method, incoming and outgoing payments would be asynchronous, so it would be hard to use timestamps to associate them. Doesn't matter. An outgoing payment will happen at some point in your day, and unless you have zero time patterns in your life, it will help identify you. As will the resulting services and people you send money to, even if the pieces start as small and as basic as "Orders pizza."
    - trhtrsh 14y ago