Bitcoin Forum

The important part is in bold, it suggests that people using Bitcoin should not expect privacy at all.

• Incompetent: because Peter Vessenes doesn't know about mixing services https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Mixing_Services , and have no idea about very real possibility to make Bitcoin transactions absolutely anonymous by default with a feature such as Automatic Coin Mixing Idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94155.0) or P2P coin mixing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93390.0)
• Dangerous: because he thinks it is okay if everyone knows your financial information, in another words he thinks it's fine to carry 10,000 USD in cash walking around in troubled neighborhood at night while loudly advertising that fact.

Earlier today Jeff Garzik said that Bitcoin Foundation scope is limited to Satoshi's vision:
Peter Vessenes has no such limit, what he said contradicts satoshi's vision that it should be easy to make anonymous Bitcoin transaction


I am starting to see it's in Hazek's way. It is nice to have powerful organization to do things for you, but it becomes very annoying the moment its goals is different than what you think is right.

Seems fine to me.

No, Peter knows exactly what mixing service is.

Basically what you just did is assume he doesent know, because he did not mention it.

He never said " because he thinks it is okay if everyone knows your financial information", again you make things up and assume.

Stop it.

Your argument is therefore stupid and has no bearing.

This is the problem of Hazek, Atlas, and the others. You all assume things without asking first and then go cry and go nuts

Everyone needs to relax, have a conversation. The world is not ending tomorrow.

-Charlie

Satoshi only used the word "anonymous" once his paper, and it was regarding the anonymity of the key, not the user. There's nothing in his abstract or in his conclusion that even hints that the anonymity of the user is a primary concern for the network. Your anonymity is up to you, not to the Bitcoin protocol. It's like using email and expecting SMTP itself to provide anonymity.

He did suggest that people generate a new key pair for each transaction as a way to increase privacy.

As for your inflammatory and immature title, I really don't know what to say.

I actually anticipated that kind of reply, this is exactly the same thing you are doing in another thread, replying to only part of the post you are comfortable with, what about the second part of the first bullet point, did he know about Automatic Coin Mixing Idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94155.0) or P2P coin mixing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93390.0) proposals?

What about the contradiction to satoshi's vision?



To address your points:
Probably I should have word it differently: Peter Vessenes doesn't know about mixing services or suggests that it doesn't help to execute anonymous bitcoin transactions

If he would have said it then I would have quoted him directly, my wording was -"because he thinks it is okay if everyone knows your financial information". This is a reasonable assumption on my part because Peter Vessenes suggested that it's okay for Bitcoin users to have no privacy.

My apologies, I wasn't doing that on purpose.

I just didn't think your second part warranted my response because I had no arguments with it.

However now I do.

Satoshi never said Bitcoins were anonymous

Satoshi said "Participants can be anonymous."
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html

Therefore, how can Peter be wrong about something that is true?

In order to be anonymous using Bitcoin, you need to use Tor...thats a very true statement.

-Charlie

This is not my quote, I didn't say it.



I do believe that the person holding the titels Executive Director, Chairman of the Board and Treasurer has to be almost impeccable otherwise he is incompetent and dangerous. As for the rest of your post it is kind of off topic because it neither contradict nor supports the original post, maybe it is implying something but you need to be more clear on that.

so.... what are you going to do about it?

I know. I quoted it to back up what he was saying based on Satoshi's paper.


I implied nothing. I plainly stated that your title is inflammatory and immature.

Perhaps you need to re-read the white paper and show me exactly where Satoshi said that your anonymity was of concern to the network.

Your thread title is a bit overblown. Theres nothing stopping you making a version of bitcoin that aims for more anonymity.

Read https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

What is dangerous is telling an activist in an authoritarian country "bitcoin is anonymous" without further detail.  They believe you, and then get arrested or worse.

Satoshi never claimed bitcoins were anonymous.  They are pseudonymous, and with a lot of work, can be mostly anonymous.

 

I've already explain this, but he did not respond yet

If Bitcoin went up in price and adoption increased while privacy remained unimproved, would that be bad for Bitcoin? Seems like that's the agenda...

What I can, e.g. will try to reduce the amount of money Bitcoin Foundation will collect.


First, you should learn how to use bbcode, you made the same mistake in two posts in a row. Second, I did address your point that the title is inflammatory, my words "maybe it is implying something" referred to the rest of your post. 


Peter Vessenes used the word "myth" regarding "Bitcoin anonymity". It means that he believes that Bitcoin transactions never was and never will be anonymous, which is not true because it could become anonymous see Automatic Coin Mixing Idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94155.0) or P2P coin mixing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93390.0)[/li][/list]. Implementing this feature will make Bitcoin anonymous by itself.

I am actually a human being with only one head.




And satoshi's vision was to help Participants to be anonymous


But Peter Vessenes doesn't share that vision.

Satoshi was actually hugely anti-establishment, anti-bank with libertarian tendencies but noooooo, Bitcoin is somehow non-political regardless of why Satoshi made it.

Sorry I did not give you enough time to respond.

Honestly, you may be able to claim what Satoshi's vision was because he wrote it out for us, but you don't know what Peter's vision is. Furthermore if you did, Peters vision is not the same of the foundations.

Very true, and unless he clarifies we can only make educated guess. And I would like to point that I do not imply that his opinion shared by the rest of the people involved in Bitcoin Foundation who I deeply respect.

Good point, he should clarify this ASAP!

Thanks for pointing that out, you did not have to, but you did and I respect you for that.

-Charlie

I sure hope it is otherwise he shouldn't be executive director. It would clearly be a self-declared conflict of interest.

Tor is ancillary and overboard when it comes to Bitcoin privacy.

It is pretty easy to both create wallet addresses (https://www.bitaddress.org/) and generate transactions completely offline (https://www.strongcoin.com/blog/the_easiest_way_to_create_secure_offline_bitcoin_transactions). Then all you need to do is push a transaction (http://blockchain.info/pushtx) and if done with a site where minimal if any logs are kept then use is completely anonymous. Just make sure it is not a honeypot (http://www.howtovanish.com/2012/09/why-bitcoin-acceptance-should-be-a-bellweather-of-liberty-proponents/). Pandora's box has been opened.

Plus, Matonis being on the board is going to be a big loud and mean privacy pitbull with both bark and bite.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii9/son-of-god/Picture142.jpg

Not entirely true. You need to also be very careful about how you use your addresses. Any time you pay to or receive from another person you need to be aware they could be identified and queried about the transaction. Any cross-links between your own addresses will tie them to such a possibly known transaction as well. Right now most clients don't provide a good indication of address connectedness. You have to manage this yourself.

As an example, the std client will send change back to one of your addresses when you pay someone. So if you want to be anonymous you need to ensure the change doesn't get returned to an address that was used in some other identifiable transaction. Advanced users previously used coin-control for this (not in the std client), or blockchain.info has features for address selection as well.

Being careless with addresses can lead to identity leakage.

I really hope he is.

The OP is an idiot and don't really care to participate in the rantings and ravings of loos.

Still I thought I would correct a factual mistake by BkkCoin.  The Satoshi client doesn't send change back to an existing address, it always sends change to an unused address from the address pool.

WRT Tor and anonymity, it is still not easy:

1) Protocol fingerprint shows you are using the bitcoin protocol

2) If coins are not mixed perfectly, you can be vulnerable to network analysis.

What's the big deal about anonymity, anyway?  If you're so concerned about anonymity, then you're going to have a problem when you go to...oh, I don't know...the store?  

Do you know what I do when a Bitcoin transaction gets complicated or shady?  I call the person.  We talk.  We work things out.  It's fine.

The 'anonymity' side of Bitcoin isn't really about anonymity at all --  it's about making sure that you're in control of your financial identity instead of a 3rd party controlling it for you.

Anonymity is important to many users. Some perhaps for legality reasons but also in many cases because of political reasons or cases where something shouldn't be illegal. Contributing to organizations that are blacklisted, eg. wikileaks is only one such example. Trading in places like Argentina or China or Iran. While these may not be very workable in many cases today I think people want Bitcoin to be useful for that in the future. Throwing it away because some group wants to monetize Bitcoin today is something I'm very much against.

Part of the whole reason for Bitcoin was to ensure people could transact without restraint, everywhere. In many places there are no guarantees of freedom to do so and anonymity is the only way to allow it to happen. By not taking it seriously we once again misconstrue the  needs of the general USA user with those of the worldwide Bitcoin users. The comments of the foundation director make it clear he sees Bitcoin thru the needs of Coinbase and US based money transfer. Perhaps the foundation should be called The American Bitcoin Foundation?

He did say "attractive to the libertarian perspective" as if he wasn't one, frankly. It could be he only needed the anarchists and libertarians for the early adoption benefit.

If you feel general dissatisfaction about someone's posts but can't or do not want to form coherent argument than you can use "Ignore" button, and so am I.

You beat me to answer this, and your post is better then was mine.

I think THIS is the disturbing sentiment that the OP was initially responding to, not whether Vessenes believes bitcoin is anonymous or not, but the sense that he doesn't CARE about anonymity.

I remember arguing with MNW once about anonymity with regards to bitcoin, and he kept pushing this whole transparancy/openness mantra. This attitude seems extremely prevalent on the west coast (Vessenes's coinabul is Seattle based), with the whole San Fran tech scene throwing a party over social networking and posting every personal tidbit about your life on the internet for all to see. This is a recent phenomena stemming from the social networking trend of late --- this is not the original intellectual foundation of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was founded on the cypherpunk tradition, which itself traces back to the early days of cryptography. "Openness" and "transparency" are silly key words that the california tech media loves to bandy about, and as we are increasingly seeing with Facebook, are in fact VERY dangerous. We ought to have the CHOICE whether or not to disclose information in an open and transparent manner, and the key to that is ANONYMITY.

Bitcoiners: Treating the issue of anonymity in such a casual, careless manner is effectively shitting on the very foundations that gave rise to this technology and this community. The Bitcoin Foundation has, in my eyes, expressed a strong desire to further Bitcoin in a positive direction and this I believe is worthy of commendation. With that said, it MUST affirm its commitment to this principal ideal.

It's the nature of the code that Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous.  You can't wish anonymity upon the code just because you feel a certain way (i.e. "sentiment").  Look what's happened on this forum alone...people get scammed and now the SEC is apparently involved in a particular case.  This means that people are tracing Bitcoin transactions as we speak and connecting transactions to various persons.  This all happened before the Bitcoin Foundation; none of this is new.  Any radical change to the protocol would likely require a forking of the blockchain anyway and the success of that fork would be determined by a miner vote, i.e. hashing power.

Besides, look at how many people use Bitcoins and run to file a complaint as soon as they've been scammed.

Moreover, look at the value of Bitcoin itself.  The only reason Bitcoin has the fledgling economy that it does is because of the exchanges.  Without exchanges as centralized value markers, people wouldn't be buying any goods or services.  And yet only a handful of people are shouting for the exchanges to close operations despite the fact that the exchanges go against the "sentiment" of Bitcoin (i.e. they involve 3rd parties that happens to collect your name, address, and several forms of identification). Maybe in the long, distant future we won't need a centralized exchange, just as in the future Bitcoin might not need a "Foundation" so to speak.

The Foundation will bring more organization to the community.  The community needs it now, just as it needs the exchanges now.  In the future, maybe they won't be needed.  But seriously, there are so many other aspects about Bitcoin to highlight than its anonymity factor ???

The thread title is bombastic and poorly chosen. However:


+21000000


+21000000

I would have been far more comfortable about the BF if it had been created with additional privacy advocates like Falkvigne on its board, instead of pure business interests.  I trust Jon Matonis, but he will clearly be  outnumbered in any decisions that where market growth is pitted against privacy.  Similarly for USA-centric versus non-USA representation.

If it had simply been called "Bitcoin Chamber of Commerce" instead of "Bitcoin Foundation", and adopted a charter limiting itself to advancing Bitcoin business adoption and nothing else, I think the privacy constituency would feel a lot less threatened.  But the minute you call yourself generically "Bitcoin Foundation", it creates an expectation of balance and fairness.  And certainly, as it stands today, privacy interests and non-USA interests appear to have gotten the short end of the stick, via a less-than-transparent board creation process.

FYI: Being absolutely anonymous is technically impossible on the internet and in real life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymity

I'm sure you're right about that and I didn't think thru my example very well. You would still need to be careful as some time later that change address will get combined into another transaction that may be identifiable. My intent was mainly to make it clear that anonymity isn't as easy as pushing a trx to a site without traceable IP or logs. You have to consider both before and after the transaction in question.

Despite these and other theoretical ways to trace I'm not aware of an example of anyone provably tracking stolen funds to date. Anyone?

Oh hay! No scandal this week? Well lets do some Character assassination to keep ourselves busy.

This is a strategic decision. Think about it. Now that the Internet is here, not even the most repressive government can keep their citizens from blogging and reading western media. But that only happened because the Internet got here.

Obviously people disagree with me, but I don't believe having an infiniteish number of addresses to potentially work with gives anyone real anonymity automatically. You have to work damn hard to stay anonymous and by default bitcoin doesn't give rise to privacy beyond the "numbered bank account" that swiss banks used to have. You're only anonymous as long as you aren't doing anything with your money. The second you spend it your invisibility cloak is chipped away at, no matter how small. The government or anyone else could always honeypot you  and gradually figure out more and more about your real identity over a large amount of time.

Being anonymous is an individuals responsibility and is crazy hard work to really do. Ironically the people who really need anonymity are the ones that have the hardest time really getting it. That said, I think everyone should work hard to be anonymous, if only because it gives even greater safety to the few who really need if it we are all practicing responsibly. I don't think Bitcoin itself lends itself to being anonymous any more then the internet itself lends itself to being anonymous. In theory yes- but when the internet interfaces to the real world: then not so much.

Either way, it seems like a reasonable and practical assumption to work on bitcoin without a focus on anonymity to push it forward. As long as nothing is added to bitcoin that deliberately makes it less anonymous, then no fault, no foul, no?

I love it when people cannot read.  Let's look at this post a little bit more carefully: "often people can be determined".  This is not only factually correct, but it certainly takes into consideration the case where somebody uses some extra effort to anonymize themselves.

If you don't follow me, please look up the word "often", then read this paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/PASSAT/SocialCom.2011.79

Well, it is trivial to watch stolen coins move through the blockchain.  You don't know who has them etc.

Obviously you can't certify an anonymous business.  The certification is a big goal of the foundation.  The people certifying can't be anonymous either.

The other goal is preventing forks in the Bitcoin network, and designing changes.  The foundation ensures its the authority by paying for development.  I think paying "foundation taxes" and voting don't require giving up anonymity, that's what public key cryptography is for.  Voting is best when it's anonymous.  

Although, that is really plutocracy instead of democracy.  If you think that each person gets one vote, no matter how much money they contribute, then anonymity doesn't work.

Oh, and Satoshi is the most anonymous "person" I know of  8)

No, the foundation ensures it is one of many paying for development.  (if nobody else pays anyone else, then, yes, it is the only one paying)

Anyone can

• Join the dev team
• Hire your own dev team

and participate in the open source process.

That is why we make it so easy to fork the code: easy software replacement and easy dev replacement.

RED = You fail hard.

Fact of life, BTC do get stolen, BTC are use for hideous crimes.  Don't you think BITCOIN is facilitating these enough already ?
Anonymous by default would surely kill bitcoin in the long run.

How about you start a mixing service and I pay you to report the IPs of people who stole my BTC ?  Seems like a win-win situation.

I'm still stunned. It seems that, from THE Bitcoin Foundation announcement, all of a sudden we need some representants to handshake VISA, banks and governments and anonymity=the_sure_end_of_bitcoin.

Probably the next startup will be "THE Bitcoin concentration camp" where all of you, foundation fanatics, could reeducate the last libertarians that still fight for the Satoshi project.

I believe that financial privacy is very, very important. Peter Vessenes, according to him doesn't share that opinion, and he also doesn't know some technical facts about Bitcoin Anonymity. Taking this into account, how do you think I should change the thread title?

I do not just "wish anonymity upon the code", see Automatic Coin Mixing Idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94155.0) or P2P coin mixing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93390.0)



Generally, smart people do not lose their money to scammers, so I don't think there should be even a choice between preserving financial privacy or making it a little harder to scam someone.



Sometime there is benefits in giving up some privacy as a trade off, but I disagree with the implication that it should be an easy choice.



If Bitcoin client has feature such as Automatic Coin Mixing Idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94155.0) or P2P coin mixing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93390.0) that would make the cost of uncovering someone's identity astronomically high, but mathematically speaking you're correct.



I am not sure if it is an irony or not, so I am going to take it for the face value. We can certainly speculate that it is the master plan, but I didn't see much that would support it.



Probably, most of it is currently true, but it doesn't have to be this way, there is a fairly easy fix.



Unless Peter Vessenes clarifies his statement, I can assume that he doesn't care if Bitcoin users will have less privacy.



I do not believe that we should give up our financial privacy because people getting scammed or use Bitcoin for illegal transactions.

You are nuts.

Real anonymity is impossible in bitcoin, and difficult to approximate.  He isn't saying that he doesn't care about anonymity, he's saying it is hard.

If you think they're so important, fork the client and add those features to your version (or pay someone to do it). As long as it can be done on top of the current network and block chain, there's nothing holding you back. That's open source. There is no need for "the" devs to add anything to "the" client. You don't even need their approval.   People that want your features will use your client.

Then again, the current devs are not *against* privacy or anonymity features. Otherwise, TOR support would have been removed instead of improved in recent versions. It simply doesn't have the priority that you'd like it to have, because there's many other things left to be done before the label of "-beta" can be removed. So layering complex systems on top of the base transactions is left to others for now.

I see a lot of lip service being paid to this "anonymous transactions" idea. A lot of ideas and big discussions, but no one really taking it all the way to an implementation. There are attempts such as "coin control", but that leaves all the burden on the user, and mostly provides a false sense of anonymity.

The Open Transactions project has done a lot of work on (mathematically) anonymous transactions and it can be used with Bitcoin. Maybe you could take a look at that if you're truly serious about this.

Bashing an organization that wants to take Bitcoin to the bigger public, just because you don't agree with a part of their priorities, is very non-constructive and won't help you advance your own goals at all.

CoinLab*

Nice to know we're on your mind though ;)