Bitcoin Forum

I was reading this new article:
Dark markets: Seeking anonymity in Bitcoin
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/article/589727/dark-markets-seeking-anonymity-bitcoin/

Few quotes:

Off course one can use mixers or jointmarket to increase ones anonymity. They all charge a "small" fee for their service. What will happen when bitcoin introduces zerocash or CT, and become truly anonymous? Will they become obsolete?

If bitcoin becomes anonymous, why would anyone other than the owners of mixing services care what happens to them? I certainly wouldn't.

They all are charging "small" fees for their services. So I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too happy to see their income disappear out of a sudden.

It can not be truly anonymous even if dark market succeeds.
Their will always be a need for bit mixers in my opinion. They don't have nothing to fear.

Why it cant be trully anonymous? There a lot of talk about confidential transactions or zero cash for bitcoin.

It is darknet/market we are talking about. Somebody will eventually create a backdoor to track every transaction. You don't think the big bosses of even the anti virus companies haven't come up with the tools to do that when they have issues. Everybody knew that Bill gates had programming code to get into his products thru this method, why not these darknet programmers doing the code for this?

bitcoin doesnt need to change
let the darkmarket users buy up the dark wallet crap that amir taaki created. and then the legitimate users can just use bitcoin as it is. if you want to stay pseudonymous, simple stop telling the world your bitcoin address and move funds to a new address.

If said backdoor is created to track every transaction. I think those black markets would move over to more anonymous coins. You don't need to track legit bitcoin users, that would be just a waste of time and resource.

Yes but they can pick and choose who they want to do a track down on. Don't under estimate what can be done. It can all be done. Come on! Nothing in this world, especially in the digital world (hasn't Assange taught us anything ::)), is totally secure from someone with an intent to find out what they want to know.

There is no need for bitcoin to be truly and completely anonymous. Bitcoin has enough anonymity to cover most users. People who need the extra anonymity will have to pay extra for mixing services, or buy another alt. I think mixing services will become cheaper in the future because there will be competing services which offer a lower level of anonymity free, like shared wallets and off chain settlement systems.

Backdoor where? In bitcoin? It would be difficult as it is open sourced. But mixing services are a different story. No ones really knows what they do with btc you sent to them. You can just "trust" that they do what they say, and dont log everything or are not working (or run by) with feds to track the coins. So if bitcoin becomes truly anonymous, then there is also no need to trust and worry about any third party service.

The miners will know the IP used to propagate the transaction.

And exchanges and other online services will associate your coins with your identity.

Bitcoin will never be anonymous, so Bitmixers always will be needed

Bitcoin mixers are basically money laundry, so I consider them as illegal. Not sure if they keep the record of their in/out. If they don't, you are trusting them with your bitcoin and they may not return to you after mixing...

For those that think it's anonymous enough, can you explain how an employer would pay salaries or dividends etc.. in bitcoin without giving away too much information about other salaries or overall expenses.  Interested in this process.

If you perform a sybil attack and the user uses a SPV client, there's a good chance that you can determine which it originated from. It isn't fully accurate however, anyone can broadcast the transaction from anywhere. The transaction does not state which IP it proporgated from.
Mixers can also keep logs of the IP info and coin origin, you would not be anonymous in anyway.

I think they would lower their fee's and become more competitive or add some kind of value added features that would not be included into zerocash. I doubt that Bitcoin would go that route, because they are already coming under fire for it's pseudo anonymity. 

Confidencial Transactions might happen on sidechains, making an actual change like that to Bitcoin at this point might be hard and will probably be quite controversial as there are so many different people and businesses now involved.

I think that this will not happen, every new bitcoin startup/business  is trying to centralized the bitcoin to track their users where do they spend their money like coinbase which tracks their users, i think that these mixer will be in the market for a long time.

well this is avoidable, i'll use a vpn or something, or i create my own vpn with a vm and vps

how they can track me then if they do not take the log from the vpn?

And this is supposed to be good? Centralized bitcoin and tracking users. That's why ct or zerocash would be welcome addition, to stop it from happening.

It can't be a 100% anonymous.

How else would you track down your transactions that have been made.

You still get a txid ofcourse and you still know to where you send the coins... It only is difficult for others to trace the movement of specific coins around the blockchain as they get shuffled before arriving.

These Bitcoin mixers don't work that well anyways and are far away from 100% reliability. So what will happen to them, I don't really give a damn! I never have used one and most probably will never use it in the future!

Bitcoin mixers will remain in internet till the bitcoin dies. Bitcoin mixers will always be needed for extra security and anonymity.

Unless it is a p2p distributed mixer behind the TOR, an official mixer would be heavily regulated like all other financial institutions

Bitcoin will never be truly anonymous. For bitcoin to be anonymous we need to rely in other apps that insures anonymity to the users. If bitcoin was an anonymous crypto it would have no need for mixers

I think our expert Vijay Michalik confused some terms here, or maybe did not explain it properly. Bitcoin CAN be anonymous but is not private, by any means.
Your transaction can be viewed by anyone, and if your address will be exposed or found your every financial record will be public.

Well, i still can't figure it out with what Vijay Michalik says, True anonymity in Bitcoin is only a myth.

What does he mean with anonymity. Is that anonymity is 'invisible'??

Bitcoin can not be truly anonymous, because all Blockchain transactions are public  ;) If Blockchain will develop new technology for transfers, then yes, may be BTC mixers will loose their market niche  ;)

In answer to the OP if bitcoin ever became truly anonymous then the bitcoin mixer companies would obviously have zero purpose and would no longer exist. 

I don't however think that this will happen as the more bitcoin becomes accepted in the mainstream the more information people need to give to companies such as Coinbase etc in order to legitimately withdraw their bitcoin to fiat.

Every service has it's role in the system and contribute and add to it's weaknesses. The pseudo anonymity of bitcoin were being addressed with mixers and some people are using it,

to fulfill a need for total anonymity. I am not saying mixers give these users full anonymity, but it's a step towards that goal. If some feature are included into the Bitcoin protocol to

fulfill that need, I would say these services would eventually become obsolete or people will use them as a added layer to their anonymity. You get some users for example using

more than one anti-virus software or firewall... so these "extra" services will still have a place in Bitcoin.  ;)

Right. I wanted to write the same. There are ways to go anonym.
And what exchange and identity? If you buy and sell p2p via localbitcoins or any other local markets there is no identity you have to give to anyone.
If you know how to use certain services you can go completely anonym with Bitcoin.

I think he means that same what official bitcoin webitse's FAQ says:

https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#is-bitcoin-anonymous


Above is partial FAQ answer. For more read the full FAQ. Other resources about bitconis anonymity can be found here as well: http://www.bitcoinisnotanonymous.com/

Eventually the need for mixers will decrease.

Just look at an average joe. Why would he use a mixer and pay extra fees to buy a shirt? It makes no sense.

The small group of users will probably invent a dedicated service they managed and control.

Technically, there is nothing stopping a normal user from being anonymous. It is not the nature of the crypto, it is the nature of what is being done with it.  Use an anonymous computer, synced wallet and never use those coins for anything that requires an exchange of information.  It is when a person needs to exchange to hard currency or drops that address on something like this forum(nothing against the forum), that is when the anonymity leaves. If the markets, dark or not, become more prevalent, where the need to exchange is then gone, that is when there will be nothing to even think about.

Of course, on the other side of that coin, if the bitcoin begins to truly replace something like the USD, then the anonymity is again lost.  Your paycheck will go to bitcoin and you will start spending bitcoins instead of money at places where you information is stored or at least available.  Even buying a soda at the corner store will have your face associated with that wallet address.  At that point, to have an anonymous side of you, you would have to literally exist as two people.  One person that uses the common wallet address and buys things and another that keeps an address secret and uses that address for less than upfront purchases.  And, of course, never exchange funds from the secret wallet to the public wallet or it would all be lost.

Not much will change or happen to Bitcoin mixers if Bitcoin becomes anonymous. It already somewhat is. You just need to us a ton of addresses.