Bitcoin Forum

New bitcoin technology can tell banks where coins come from with incredible accuracy (http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-elliptic-startup-anti-money-laundering-tool-get-banks-interested-cryptocurrency-2015-6)

" Elliptic say its tool, build by 4 PhD holders, can make a hugely accurate guess as to who each wallet belongs to — and it can do so in real-time.
Using machine-learning, its software crunches through the web and dark web, skimming references to wallets and other digital clues to build up a picture of the owner. "

Very interesting. Would like to know if it's all smoke and mirrors or it actually works accurately. This is why we need HD wallets to be the standard, to avoid historical transactions being available. BTC needs tons of work privacy wise, no one likes the idea of the public ledger ready for people with agendas to look on it.

If it actually works I still doubt it would work for long. I am not sure how current mixers work, but instead of forwarding and dividing through thousands of wallets, they could just use their own money to be the output of the mixer which would in no way link the initial wallet. So it will be the same as being completely anonymous .

we still have altcoin, and plenty of tool for dismantling this, no matter how much they will try, crypto are here and aim at being fully anon, and they cannot do nothing to it

but if you think about it a even more anonymous coin than monero or dash, is a coin that no one kown about, for example a new coin based on ring signature that isn't advertised here or in any other website, and just used by few people to to hide their tracks

You forgot blackcoin  ;) - Announcement – Custom Stealth Address Pseudonyms and The Obsidian Protocol (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=469640.msg11656511#msg11656511)

Hopefully the Elements technologies that Gmaxwell is working with on Blockstream can save us from this bullshit. I've heard privacy will be increased starting with confidential transactions. It's not ideal but at least they will not know the amount of money moved.

When you look up walletexplorer.com then you already know that much is possible. And walletexplorer isnt even going that far. Its knowing, not guessing at the moment. Its imagineable that this tool can be successfull.

Of course not when you take care not to allow connecting your bitcoin addresses.

Isn't buying an altcoin on one exchange and selling it on another exchange more then enough to erase any trail possible? Given the amount of transactions exchanges do, they only way to track it would be with the help of the exchanges.

And that's totally, provably impossible, isn't it? /s

Ofcourse not, but I would argue that atleast for low impact transactions and regular people, this would be sufficient as they won't bother.

Depends why you want to stay anonymous. If you only want to hide the fact that you bought at a common sexshop or invested in a ponzi then an exchanges is alright. Though when someone is doing illegal things and the exchange can be forced by law to give details then this wouldnt be a good choice.

Though mixers would be still a risk too. There are not a few cases, in the US, where companies were forced to run their services while government is watching the data. They were not allowed to speak about that. So you never know. Trusting third parties... always a risk.