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Exactly. One of the chief benefits of BitCoin is that you can act in an anonymous manner if you perform your transactions in a careful way. This means it is inh

Exactly. One of the chief benefits of BitCoin is that you can act in an anonymous manner if you perform your transactions in a careful way. This means it is inherently open to being collapsed by a powerful actor that has the resources and will to attack. Certainly a state but I suspect a relatively small group could do the same. Being found out as the source of an attack is the biggest deterrent. Without the deterrent the temptation for a vested interest must be a magnitude higher.

nickodell 11y ago
>Being found out as the source of an attack is the biggest deterrent. It doesn't seem like much of a deterrent. Suppose we knew for a fact that the attacker was John Smith in Chicago. How would that deter them?
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  Because it's a crime that you can go to prison for. And all of the damaged parties could sue you.
  - northben 11y ago
    It's not a crime to create many small transactions...
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      It is if you do it with the intent to defraud people or to make a service inaccessible. Same thing with a denial of service attack. It's not illegal to visit a webpage, but it is illegal to visit a webpage millions of times per second to bring the server down.
dogma1138 11y ago
How exactly bitcoin transactions are anonymous? Sure they don't have your name tagged on them but they are signed with your key. It won't be that hard to do some data analysis on the block chain to expose who's really behind each transaction, if bitcoin ever goes mainstream it will effectively mean that everyone's creditcard bill will become public...
- northben 11y ago
  Well, modern wallets create new addresses for every transaction. So it's like having a new credit card number for every transaction in your analogy. It's pretty much anonymous.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    And how long does it take to a new address to be accepted by the network? This isn't a viable solution for a large volume day to day usage.

nickodell 11y ago

>Being found out as the source of an attack is the biggest deterrent. It doesn't seem like much of a deterrent. Suppose we knew for a fact that the attacker was John Smith in Chicago. How would that deter them?

marcoperaza 11y ago
Because it's a crime that you can go to prison for. And all of the damaged parties could sue you.
- northben 11y ago
  It's not a crime to create many small transactions...
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    It is if you do it with the intent to defraud people or to make a service inaccessible. Same thing with a denial of service attack. It's not illegal to visit a webpage, but it is illegal to visit a webpage millions of times per second to bring the server down.

dogma1138 11y ago

How exactly bitcoin transactions are anonymous? Sure they don't have your name tagged on them but they are signed with your key. It won't be that hard to do some data analysis on the block chain to expose who's really behind each transaction, if bitcoin ever goes mainstream it will effectively mean that everyone's creditcard bill will become public...

northben 11y ago
Well, modern wallets create new addresses for every transaction. So it's like having a new credit card number for every transaction in your analogy. It's pretty much anonymous.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  And how long does it take to a new address to be accepted by the network? This isn't a viable solution for a large volume day to day usage.