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If I temporarily change my name to a random number and then go to 3 brothels, a drug dealer, and then my church, I can assure that after I change my name back

If I temporarily change my name to a random number and then go to 3 brothels, a drug dealer, and then my church, I can assure that after I change my name back and run for congress, it will come up. The problem is that all your transactions take place with the same public key or set of public keys. Sure, you can add more keys to that mix, but someone can probably always untagle the web. Contrast this to say Chaum style e-cash where you get complete anonymity. To withdraw a coin , you have the bank signs a serial number in a such a way that they don't know what they are signing. You can then spend the coin by providing the signature and serial number to a merchant who asks the bank if that serial number has been deposited yet. If not, then the coin is neither counterfeit nor double spent. No one in this system can de-anonymize you since they can't know the serial number you used when you withdrew a coin.

wyager 14y ago
>If I temporarily change my name to a random number There's nothing temporary about it. Unless you voluntarily publish something associating a particular address with yourself, there's basically no way for someone else to make that association. Making the association is completely infeasible if proper precautions are taken. >The problem is that all your transactions take place with the same public key or set of public keys. No, they don't. In fact, with the default client, it tries to minimize the number of times you re-use any given public key. >Sure, you can add more keys to that mix, but someone can probably always untagle the web. No, they can't. The "web" is comprised of a lot of cryptographically random probabilistic association, so the most you can possibly say is something like "there is a .0001% chance that this address belongs to the owner of this other address, and a 99.999% chance that it belongs to someone else." Nothing that would even remotely hold up in court, or even let someone associate you with a purchase. It literally does not get any more anonymous than this in a distributed identity-based system.
- trhtrsh 14y ago
  When an 'anonymous' purchase gets mailed to your house, that creates evidence that you are the anonymous person.
  - wyager 14y ago
    And? How does any other digital coin system solve this problem? In the end, you can always associate an identity with a purchase. Bitcoin simply allows you to have an infinite number of disconnected identities.
    - anologwintermut 14y ago
      In most other systems, you don't have an identity that is visibly associated with the transaction. Each transaction is unlinkable to any other transaction or your identity: you are not trying to prevent the breadcrumb trail between each of your transactions from following you home, you are actually not leaving crumbs.

wyager 14y ago

>If I temporarily change my name to a random number There's nothing temporary about it. Unless you voluntarily publish something associating a particular address with yourself, there's basically no way for someone else to make that association. Making the association is completely infeasible if proper precautions are taken. >The problem is that all your transactions take place with the same public key or set of public keys. No, they don't. In fact, with the default client, it tries to minimize the number of times you re-use any given public key. >Sure, you can add more keys to that mix, but someone can probably always untagle the web. No, they can't. The "web" is comprised of a lot of cryptographically random probabilistic association, so the most you can possibly say is something like "there is a .0001% chance that this address belongs to the owner of this other address, and a 99.999% chance that it belongs to someone else." Nothing that would even remotely hold up in court, or even let someone associate you with a purchase. It literally does not get any more anonymous than this in a distributed identity-based system.

trhtrsh 14y ago
When an 'anonymous' purchase gets mailed to your house, that creates evidence that you are the anonymous person.
- wyager 14y ago
  And? How does any other digital coin system solve this problem? In the end, you can always associate an identity with a purchase. Bitcoin simply allows you to have an infinite number of disconnected identities.
  - anologwintermut 14y ago
    In most other systems, you don't have an identity that is visibly associated with the transaction. Each transaction is unlinkable to any other transaction or your identity: you are not trying to prevent the breadcrumb trail between each of your transactions from following you home, you are actually not leaving crumbs.