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Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tra

Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tracking. (coinjoin/zerocoin) A lot of us are investing with the expectation true anonymous transactions eventually happen, because when they do Bitcoin will become even more valuable.

cheez 13y ago
It's not scaremongering. Can you trust the mixing services?
- tedunangst 13y ago
  The more mixing is done, the higher the daily bitcoin transaction volume is, and the more trustworthy bitcoin becomes!
gnaritas 13y ago
> A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising Call it what it is, money laundering.
- VMG 13y ago
  It isn't.
  - hbags 13y ago
    A mixer's sole purpose in life is collect a fee for concealing sources of money. It's textbook money laundering.
    - VMG 13y ago
      Except with Bitcoin, there are valid reasons to conceal the source and destination of money from the public besides criminal activity. The money being "laundered" isn't necessarily "dirty" to begin with. The same logic applies to encryption. People have a right to privacy.
      - gnaritas 13y ago
        It doesn't matter what the reasons are, or whether you have a right to it, if you're trying to conceal where money came from, it's money laundering.
        bobwaycott 13y ago
        Only if that money is the proceeds of a crime and you're attempting to conceal the source of the illegal funds. The flippant and universalizing way several of the commenters here are referring to money laundering as "concealing where the money came from" cast far too wide a net. The definition you're using here would include concealing where $500 came from that was donated by anonymous friends to give to another friend in need. Suddenly, by your metric, if any of the friends suspected of donating the cash to help someone don't fess up to the source of the cash, they're laundering money. Yeah, that's ridiculous. But it fits your description. Money laundering requires the currency be earnings from criminal activity.
        PeterisP 13y ago
        If you're running a coin mixing service that makes the coins anonymous to others then as soon as a single transaction is true money laundering (from criminal activity), then you're liable for that. If a single Fed sting operation on silkroad buys drugs for some bitcoin that afterwards gets to your service - you're going down. Pretty much the only way to do so 'properly' would require you to make the coins anonymous to the public, but ID all of your customers and keep records on who actually gets which coins in the end.
        bobwaycott 13y ago
        Like the other commenter, you're speaking to a different angle. I was commenting strictly on the repeated blanket statements made throughout these comments that any concealing of the source of money == money laundering. I was not speaking to liability ramifications of running a coin mixing service at all. I wasn't even contending that there might not be legitimate claims made against bitcoin activity that could be money laundering. The act of concealing where money came from as a general principle is not itself money laundering. Yes, running a service that facilitates concealing the source of money can quickly become a target and risk liability for laundering activities. That is still, however, an entirely different point.
- baddox 13y ago
  It's both. There is such a thing as synonyms.
- algorias 13y ago
  It may be, depending on your definition, but the term "money laundering" has a distinctly criminal connotation. Bitcoin mixing is more analogous to paying for something with cash withdrawn from a bank account rather than making a bank transfer directly.
  - consonants 13y ago
    Money laundering is the process of concealing sources of money. If the IRS found out Western Union was trying to cover it's tracks of who sent/received money they would be investigated immediately. Laundering implies you have something to hide, most likely tax dollars or ill-received profits.
    - bobwaycott 13y ago
      Money laundering is the process of concealing illegal sources of money.
      - consonants 13y ago
        Money laundering is the process of concealing sources of money. Period. The act of purposefully laundering legitimate income is criminal.
- fexl 13y ago
  The term "money laundering" originally referred to the practice of concealing the movement of funds involved in a crime. Now they've redefined it so that concealing the movement of funds is itself a crime, even if the funds are entirely legitimate and no other crime is involved.
  - consonants 13y ago
    Yes, because the motivations behind money laundering are driven almost exclusively by crime. For purchases you wish to remain private, such as personally embarrassing products, there are 'anonymizing' but traceable services for you to save face with. There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions.
    - Amadou 13y ago
      The problem isn't the IRS, it is everybody else who wants to know. Especially in the case of bitcoin where all transactions are public record. Come up with a way for the IRS to investigate (not just get it handed to them on a platter, but something that mathematically requires a level of effort to prevent fishing expeditions by IRS employees) while simultaneously keeping all transactions private from everyone else and then we'll have a solution.
    - fexl 13y ago
      I make sure Uncle Soprano gets his cut.
      - consonants 13y ago
        Then I see no problems in your future! Here's to prudence.
    - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
      >There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions Nice circular reasoning. Because everything that the IRS would disapprove of is illegitimate? When did the IRS get ultimate moral authority?
salient 13y ago
The question is will the Bitcoin Foundation put those add-ons into the Bitcoin protocol? I think they would be quite reluctant to do it at this point, as they are more concerned with establishing Bitcoin as a viable currency right now, that's not used just by Silk Road and its ilk. I do think in the mid to long term Zerocoin or something similar should be added to Bitcoin to at least allow people the option to be anonymous if they want to be. However, I'm also unsure if this should be done right now as governments are trying to decide what to do with Bitcoin. Perhaps it would be better to wait a couple more years, get Bitcoin more established into the mainstream, and adopted by banks and more companies, and then enable something like Zerocoin in the protocol, when it would be too late to stop Bitcoin. Although I'm not sure what the government's reaction towards Zerocoin would be then. On the other hand, Bitcoin may be even harder to kill than file-sharing/torrenting, in which case maybe it won't matter if it's done now, as the government's action against it could be irrelevant.
shock-value 13y ago
cheez is hardly scaremongering. As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. (I'm not a Bitcoin user so feel free to correct me.) I would say that you are the one who is doing whatever the opposite of scaremongering would be called (hope-mongering?).
- DanBC 13y ago
  > anonymous and private transactions Something doesn't have to be private to be anonymous. So if you're happy with anonymous and public it's possible, but hard.
  - shock-value 13y ago
    In theory yes, but as the linked blog-post shows, Bitcoin---in its current state anyway---likely isn't truly anonymous either (ostensibly due to its transactional records being public).
    - tracker1 13y ago
      If you create a new wallet.. coins sent to that wallet, a person may know where the coins came from (because of other transactions to their wallet), they don't know for certain that the new wallet is you.. In the case of the article, the reason it's suspected, not even confirmed, is simply because the number of wallets coins were coming from were identified as the same source. It's definitely more anonymous than wire transfers, or credit card transactions. The way to avoid detection would be to keep many, relatively small wallets... and disperse money from different sources fairly evently.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Yeah, my gauge reads "more anonymous than wire transfers or credit cards, less anonymous than cash". Hard to send cash digitally, though.
    - kaoD 13y ago
consonants 13y ago
Please stop interjecting with your vested interest as if it trumps anyone else's valid concerns.
mikeash 13y ago
People are supposed to stop stating true facts because people are doing research that everybody hopes will solve the problem? That's... pretty stupid. Calling it "privacy scaremongering" would be reasonable if it were simply wrong. But if it's completely correct, and the only reason you disagree is because you're pretty sure it'll eventually be solved, that's crazy.
anigbrowl 13y ago
You're not investing. You're speculating - a perfectly valid use of your own money, but different nonetheless.
- chm 13y ago
  Any investment is speculation until proven otherwise. And by that I mean that "the mass" accepts it as an "investment".
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I'm distinguishing it from investments that pay a dividend or interest coupon at time of purchase, or which have a commodity value independent of price (eg gold and oil are commodities that you can speculate in or take delivery of for actual consumption). You might well get rich from speculating in bitcoin, but if if doesn't pan out then your assets could end up having no value whatsoever - you won't even be able to burn them to keep warm during the zombie apocalypse ;) I'm not trying to comment on the viability of BTC here, just pointing out that it not the same as many other asset classes.
    - chm 13y ago
      Then we agree that it is a very risky investment and one should be careful about it =)
dllthomas 13y ago
You mean trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely get you brought up on money-laundering charges.
PeterisP 13y ago
Can any of the mixing/anonymising services hide the fact that a mixing/anonymising service was used? It's trivial to work against them - simply forbid any legal business offering goods, services or bitcoin-currency transactions to accept such coins. In essence, the same way that they're fighting right now against laundered cash - you can do it, but not on large scale, and it's not accepted for most of assets you want to buy.

cheez 13y ago

It's not scaremongering. Can you trust the mixing services?

tedunangst 13y ago
The more mixing is done, the higher the daily bitcoin transaction volume is, and the more trustworthy bitcoin becomes!

gnaritas 13y ago

> A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising Call it what it is, money laundering.

VMG 13y ago
It isn't.
- hbags 13y ago
  A mixer's sole purpose in life is collect a fee for concealing sources of money. It's textbook money laundering.
  - VMG 13y ago
    Except with Bitcoin, there are valid reasons to conceal the source and destination of money from the public besides criminal activity. The money being "laundered" isn't necessarily "dirty" to begin with. The same logic applies to encryption. People have a right to privacy.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      It doesn't matter what the reasons are, or whether you have a right to it, if you're trying to conceal where money came from, it's money laundering.
      - bobwaycott 13y ago
        Only if that money is the proceeds of a crime and you're attempting to conceal the source of the illegal funds. The flippant and universalizing way several of the commenters here are referring to money laundering as "concealing where the money came from" cast far too wide a net. The definition you're using here would include concealing where $500 came from that was donated by anonymous friends to give to another friend in need. Suddenly, by your metric, if any of the friends suspected of donating the cash to help someone don't fess up to the source of the cash, they're laundering money. Yeah, that's ridiculous. But it fits your description. Money laundering requires the currency be earnings from criminal activity.
        PeterisP 13y ago
        If you're running a coin mixing service that makes the coins anonymous to others then as soon as a single transaction is true money laundering (from criminal activity), then you're liable for that. If a single Fed sting operation on silkroad buys drugs for some bitcoin that afterwards gets to your service - you're going down. Pretty much the only way to do so 'properly' would require you to make the coins anonymous to the public, but ID all of your customers and keep records on who actually gets which coins in the end.
        bobwaycott 13y ago
        Like the other commenter, you're speaking to a different angle. I was commenting strictly on the repeated blanket statements made throughout these comments that any concealing of the source of money == money laundering. I was not speaking to liability ramifications of running a coin mixing service at all. I wasn't even contending that there might not be legitimate claims made against bitcoin activity that could be money laundering. The act of concealing where money came from as a general principle is not itself money laundering. Yes, running a service that facilitates concealing the source of money can quickly become a target and risk liability for laundering activities. That is still, however, an entirely different point.
baddox 13y ago
It's both. There is such a thing as synonyms.
algorias 13y ago
It may be, depending on your definition, but the term "money laundering" has a distinctly criminal connotation. Bitcoin mixing is more analogous to paying for something with cash withdrawn from a bank account rather than making a bank transfer directly.
- consonants 13y ago
  Money laundering is the process of concealing sources of money. If the IRS found out Western Union was trying to cover it's tracks of who sent/received money they would be investigated immediately. Laundering implies you have something to hide, most likely tax dollars or ill-received profits.
  - bobwaycott 13y ago
    Money laundering is the process of concealing illegal sources of money.
    - consonants 13y ago
      Money laundering is the process of concealing sources of money. Period. The act of purposefully laundering legitimate income is criminal.
fexl 13y ago
The term "money laundering" originally referred to the practice of concealing the movement of funds involved in a crime. Now they've redefined it so that concealing the movement of funds is itself a crime, even if the funds are entirely legitimate and no other crime is involved.
- consonants 13y ago
  Yes, because the motivations behind money laundering are driven almost exclusively by crime. For purchases you wish to remain private, such as personally embarrassing products, there are 'anonymizing' but traceable services for you to save face with. There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    The problem isn't the IRS, it is everybody else who wants to know. Especially in the case of bitcoin where all transactions are public record. Come up with a way for the IRS to investigate (not just get it handed to them on a platter, but something that mathematically requires a level of effort to prevent fishing expeditions by IRS employees) while simultaneously keeping all transactions private from everyone else and then we'll have a solution.
  - fexl 13y ago
    I make sure Uncle Soprano gets his cut.
    - consonants 13y ago
      Then I see no problems in your future! Here's to prudence.
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    >There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions Nice circular reasoning. Because everything that the IRS would disapprove of is illegitimate? When did the IRS get ultimate moral authority?

salient 13y ago

The question is will the Bitcoin Foundation put those add-ons into the Bitcoin protocol? I think they would be quite reluctant to do it at this point, as they are more concerned with establishing Bitcoin as a viable currency right now, that's not used just by Silk Road and its ilk. I do think in the mid to long term Zerocoin or something similar should be added to Bitcoin to at least allow people the option to be anonymous if they want to be. However, I'm also unsure if this should be done right now as governments are trying to decide what to do with Bitcoin. Perhaps it would be better to wait a couple more years, get Bitcoin more established into the mainstream, and adopted by banks and more companies, and then enable something like Zerocoin in the protocol, when it would be too late to stop Bitcoin. Although I'm not sure what the government's reaction towards Zerocoin would be then. On the other hand, Bitcoin may be even harder to kill than file-sharing/torrenting, in which case maybe it won't matter if it's done now, as the government's action against it could be irrelevant.

shock-value 13y ago

cheez is hardly scaremongering. As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. (I'm not a Bitcoin user so feel free to correct me.) I would say that you are the one who is doing whatever the opposite of scaremongering would be called (hope-mongering?).

DanBC 13y ago
> anonymous and private transactions Something doesn't have to be private to be anonymous. So if you're happy with anonymous and public it's possible, but hard.
- shock-value 13y ago
  In theory yes, but as the linked blog-post shows, Bitcoin---in its current state anyway---likely isn't truly anonymous either (ostensibly due to its transactional records being public).
  - tracker1 13y ago
    If you create a new wallet.. coins sent to that wallet, a person may know where the coins came from (because of other transactions to their wallet), they don't know for certain that the new wallet is you.. In the case of the article, the reason it's suspected, not even confirmed, is simply because the number of wallets coins were coming from were identified as the same source. It's definitely more anonymous than wire transfers, or credit card transactions. The way to avoid detection would be to keep many, relatively small wallets... and disperse money from different sources fairly evently.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Yeah, my gauge reads "more anonymous than wire transfers or credit cards, less anonymous than cash". Hard to send cash digitally, though.
  - kaoD 13y ago

consonants 13y ago

Please stop interjecting with your vested interest as if it trumps anyone else's valid concerns.

mikeash 13y ago

People are supposed to stop stating true facts because people are doing research that everybody hopes will solve the problem? That's... pretty stupid. Calling it "privacy scaremongering" would be reasonable if it were simply wrong. But if it's completely correct, and the only reason you disagree is because you're pretty sure it'll eventually be solved, that's crazy.

anigbrowl 13y ago

You're not investing. You're speculating - a perfectly valid use of your own money, but different nonetheless.

chm 13y ago
Any investment is speculation until proven otherwise. And by that I mean that "the mass" accepts it as an "investment".
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I'm distinguishing it from investments that pay a dividend or interest coupon at time of purchase, or which have a commodity value independent of price (eg gold and oil are commodities that you can speculate in or take delivery of for actual consumption). You might well get rich from speculating in bitcoin, but if if doesn't pan out then your assets could end up having no value whatsoever - you won't even be able to burn them to keep warm during the zombie apocalypse ;) I'm not trying to comment on the viability of BTC here, just pointing out that it not the same as many other asset classes.
  - chm 13y ago
    Then we agree that it is a very risky investment and one should be careful about it =)

dllthomas 13y ago

You mean trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely get you brought up on money-laundering charges.

PeterisP 13y ago

Can any of the mixing/anonymising services hide the fact that a mixing/anonymising service was used? It's trivial to work against them - simply forbid any legal business offering goods, services or bitcoin-currency transactions to accept such coins. In essence, the same way that they're fighting right now against laundered cash - you can do it, but not on large scale, and it's not accepted for most of assets you want to buy.