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Does anyone have an idea how this would practically work? I understand if the money stays in the black market economy, but once the government is serious about

Does anyone have an idea how this would practically work? I understand if the money stays in the black market economy, but once the government is serious about Bitcoin and has a few data centers following all transactions in the block chain, we'll have to be accountable for all transactions into and out of our wallet. It'll be the perfect system for taxation, and I can't imagine how some of these anonymous funds will ever interact with your real identity without sending up a million red flags.

mtgx 13y ago
Maybe then we'll start using Zerocoin: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-anonymous.html http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-mak... http://zerocoin.org/ http://zerocoin.org/
- IanCal 13y ago
  Would zerocoin count as a mixer? It sounds very similar, and I believe those are/can easily be illegal^. The wiki page on mixers [0] suggests that doing this with a large amount of money could be seen as structuring [1]. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring ^ In the US
  - devx 13y ago
    It's not a mixer.
    - IanCal 13y ago
      What's the functional difference? It's a way of combining assets then removing them such that tracing becomes difficult/impossible. The link I gave warns about hiding transactions over $10k, as I understand it doing that with zerocoin would be illegal.
- RRRA 13y ago
  I agree, we need to make bitcoin even better before releasing it and see it fail because anonymity is currently not part of it, though people still claim it is. Zerocoin and whatnot!
  - wmf 13y ago
    If a government declares all anonymous digital money to be dirty by default then technologies like CoinJoin or Zerocoin just make everyone who uses them into criminals. If people want to successfully move money between the dark and light economies they need technology that creates a plausible audit trail... but pointing in the wrong direction. I don't know if that is even possible.

mtgx 13y ago

Maybe then we'll start using Zerocoin: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-anonymous.html http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-mak... http://zerocoin.org/ http://zerocoin.org/

IanCal 13y ago
Would zerocoin count as a mixer? It sounds very similar, and I believe those are/can easily be illegal^. The wiki page on mixers [0] suggests that doing this with a large amount of money could be seen as structuring [1]. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring ^ In the US
- devx 13y ago
  It's not a mixer.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    What's the functional difference? It's a way of combining assets then removing them such that tracing becomes difficult/impossible. The link I gave warns about hiding transactions over $10k, as I understand it doing that with zerocoin would be illegal.
RRRA 13y ago
I agree, we need to make bitcoin even better before releasing it and see it fail because anonymity is currently not part of it, though people still claim it is. Zerocoin and whatnot!
- wmf 13y ago
  If a government declares all anonymous digital money to be dirty by default then technologies like CoinJoin or Zerocoin just make everyone who uses them into criminals. If people want to successfully move money between the dark and light economies they need technology that creates a plausible audit trail... but pointing in the wrong direction. I don't know if that is even possible.