Bitcoin Forum

I thought one of bitcoins big selling points was anonymity. Yet I've read some articles about people who have either stolen or embezzled bitcoin and they were later tracked down and arrested. I'm glad they were caught don't get me wrong but how were they caught if bitcoin is supposed to be anonymous?

Bitcoin's strength is not really anonymity. Granted there are ways to make it harder to trace the transactions, but it can be done.

There are a number of other coins/tokens whose primary focus is on anonymity. If that's your concern, I would take a look at some of those.

Bitcoin itself can be pretty anonymous.

But from the moment you gave your ID and address to an third party like Coinbase or Bitstamp, you are giving away part of this anonymity in exchange for the convenience of selling those coins for physical cash, that are controlled by your government. If you want to live only of Bitcoin, buying groceries and coffe with your digital wallet, you can. And you will be "anonymous" for that. But unfortunately, it's still not that easy.

The fact that everybody can see everybody's wallet and transaction is a bad start. One can start trying to track the path of the money.
And if you start selling that Bitcoin you need to give your ID; or you may have bought Bitcoin with your ID and sent to that wallet.
It's a start. They work with probabilities and habits checking. And with more and more businesses asking you to reveal your identity it's hard to hide.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. Not really. It was more anonymous before, when everybody used only core wallet, but many reuse now the same address many use vanity address, light wallets and the anonymity decreases even more.

Maybe it's better this way. Bitcoin is not the best cover for shady people and this may count in the future.



"Lately" quite a number of anonymous coins have arise. Some are better, some are worse; they are not as mature as Bitcoin, obviously. Some may have quite an interesting future, but I can bet that the authorities will not like them :)

I thought the same long time ago. Now i know its not anonymous at all.
Transactions are public, balances are public, u need to only track it to real name user, which is not that hard after all.
Many selling points of bitcoin are not true in time. For example cheap transactions (almost free). Not here anymore.

Bitcoin was never anonymous, and definitely not untraceable, you were wrong in your assumptions, however, bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous just like email addresses, people know an email address is yours when you say it is yours, just like bitcoin addresses.

Bitcoin was and is always pseudo anonymous. You have to give your address to the sender and they will be able to know the transactions, if a powerful entity like a government wants to know what you do on exchanges then they'll easily know how much you buy and how much you sell.

It really depends on how you use Bitcoin as to how anonymous it can be. There are steps you can take to increase your privacy and if you need to be anonymous, you can use mixers and such.

Bitcoin's strength isn't being anonymous though and if you are looking for a truly anonymous coin, you may want to check out some of the altcoins that aim for that.

It depends of how you protect yourself.

If you use Bitcoin Core wallet and use addresses only once, then it's hard
to trace back to you.

But for example if you post an address somewhere on a forum, then maybe
it's possible to find you.
And maybe they caught the guy by tracking his other activities.

All of the guys above are suggesting you can take measures to assure your anonymity, but no-one gave you a solid advice. There are certain sites, mixers that provide you a highly secure service. They scramble your coins with their own and prevent others from tracking your BTC.

Let's say you receive ten $100 bills that have consecutive serial numbers. Someone could check where those particular notes end up and figure out what you used them for. But you could go to a bank and get ten different bills that are basically untraceable.

You could try any, but I highly recommend Bitmixer (https://bitmixer.io) the site in my signature bellow.  

You seems to be a little out of the loop.

Bitmixer just got closed by his owner. Here is the announcement thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2042470.0

I must admit I haven't been that active recently and didn't notice that  :D

Anyway my tip still stands, just swap BitMixer with another BTC scrambler.

Reading a lot of good information here.

Curious as to what the founders had in mind for bitcoin long term. If not anonymity, then what? Ease of access? Cheap? Convenient?

How do Bitcoin donations/sales comply with various money anti-laundering legislations? Is there a way to enforce only eponymous transactions?

Yes Bitcoin is not anonymous.
On the contrary, Bitcoin is the more public money system : everybody can see all the transactions in all the world.
If somebody know one of your Bitcoin address, he know all your transactions with this address.

For those saying bitcoin is not anonymous, what do you use bitcoin for? and why bitcoin?

i use bitcoin because of the ease of changing my cryptocurrencies to fiat currency, also because it's more likely to be accepted by both parties for international transactions

There's actually two benefits to something like Bitcoin, there was anonymity and I was also the fact that it was decentralized to deregulated. An anemone was basically destroyed by the fact that it's also completely transparent.

All someone has to do is attach a single part of that blockchain to your IP or your location and then they have everything forward from there and everything backwards there I can pretty much recreate your entire Financial history with in that single wallet or single set of addresses.

I heard in reddit before that bitcoin is not anonymous if you are just using it without using mixer anytime they can be trace and if you are not using vpn you can trace easily by investigating and tracking your transaction ..
This is just i heard.. But there are many ways to hide your identity and can't trace your location ..  like using a premium vpn that can block the tracking or scanning of your computer to trace your location and a service like VPS  and other tools .. that can hide your location but if you are just a simple not using vpn and other anonymous tools anytime they can find you..

Yes it's not.
Most products' success lays on an impertinent/approximative nice-to-hear idea.
Myself, the most good reason I heard at the beginning of my journey with Bitcoin is "Anonynimity".

There's always a half-truth that helps to attract people.

Their services like tumbling and mixing. However if the government specially or anyone wants to really sit down and analyze the inputs and outputs from that makes inside or service they can figure out which ones coming out are yours.

As far as deregulated, where the contact Point comes with governments, that is pretty much isolated to when Fiat enters into Bitcoin or leaves Bitcoin, and at that point you can't say that regulating Bitcoin in a technical coding sense because that's the end point or the entry point.

Bitcoin itself is anonymous. But due to interference of governments. The anonymity is turning into a centralised system. Example of this is the KYC (Know your customer)policy. We often experience this when we are going to trade on an exchange. You must provide the necessary document like government issued IDs or passport. So from anonymous, it's turning into regulated system.

Anyway, they are many ways to stay anonymous. There are still anonymous exchangers or tumbling service to stay anonymous. But seems they are getting fewer and fewer.

Decentralized, well if you're just isolated between a couple of people and small it's your pretty much decentralized. And every point where an actual site or service has to apply services to provide service outside of the core services then they're going to have to process information that will take some of the decentralisation away from it.

Also, I guess it's a matter of opinion, as far as the four key goes whether that's a centralized decision being imposed upon the blockchain or something else. You could say, that because it says you're being left up to the individual users that it's not being controlled but at the same time that's a forced choice. And that's some level of centralization.

Actually the strong points of Bitcoin are Fast transaction to anywhere in the world in a very small fee compared to other services which are there right now. Anonymity was a bonus but the exchanger sites wont allow to buy or sell Bitcoins without identifying you as a person so there is no total anonymity.

Bitcoin is not so Anonymous. Not like some altcoins, taking advantage of some mechanism, such as TOR, to hide your address and furthermore to protect your financial history. Hope in the future, some side chains on the bitcoin can have the anonymous feature.

If someone has any information about you like address they can find out about your personality using different techniques. All your activity can be identified.

The know your customer rules usually are applied when bitcoin is converted back to fiat currency. Services like coinbase know who you are before sending money to a bank account.

Some arrests have been made on people selling bitcoin is person for cash under the money transmitter laws.

As to anonymous, it's not by default. The US government even uses companies that specialize in tracking bitcoin.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/irs-now-has-a-tool-to-unmask-bitcoin-tax-cheats

If he is totally anonymous,governments won't approve him. They must have some clue of his owners. We want to pay food with BTC so he must be  approved. Some Alts are anonymous but they aren't in consummation like bitcoin.

it's not competely anonymous but you can easily hide your tracks if you choose to do so, which is pretty much the same. You can mix your coins and no one will ever know where they came from, isn't that similar to anonymity?

Every single thing, every transaction, every balance is known and tracked on the blockchain. Bitcoin is not anonymous, but people may be. The idea of bitcoin is to sever the link between identity and value. This may make it very hard or impossible for someone to  know your identity. But it is not going to allow you to evade your taxes so easily. And if you want to trade bitcoin for fiat then you are out of luck. US Dollars, for example, are owned by the Federal reserve and ALL rules apply when you want dollars.  Whoever told you bitcoins are anonymous was wrong.

I heard about an application that gives you the ability to be anonymous. Unfortunately I can not remember the name. Does anyone use? Can you recommend it?

Bitcoin is not anonymous, if you buy via bank transfer, credit card or any method that requires verification or ID. Your transactions can be traced to their origin via blockchain analysis and exchange logs, even if you use a bitcoin mixer.

Bitcoin is more private, if you buy with cash or gift card, but your location can possibly be traced.

In both cases, your IP address will be logged. Use Tor to change your IP address. Create a throwaway email address without personal information when you buy or sell bitcoin or signup for a web wallet.

If you need privacy and anonymity use monero (XMR) via Tor.

How to mix your bitcoin through monero:
1) Create two monero (XMR) addresses, more info here getmonero.org
2) Convert your BTC to XMR with shapeshift.io, send to monero address 1
3) Send funds from monero address 1 to monero address 2 with at least 5 ring size (4 mixin) – you can churn for better untraceability
4) Convert XMR to BTC with xmr.to, send to a new bitcoin address from a new wallet

Shapeshift and xmr.to keep logs, but if you send your BTC to monero address 1, churn and transfer to monero address 2, then send your monero to xmr.to, this should offer more privacy. Due to ring signatures and a non-transparent blockchain, it should be difficult to prove that monero address 1 sent x XMR to monero address 2.

In the future there will be an option to use monero with the i2p network (kovri).

Edit: Dash and Zcash are not anonymous. Use monero. Source: https://moneroforcash.com/monero-vs-dash-vs-zcash-vs-bitcoinmixers.php

BTC transaction is not anonymous, but it has privacy.  As long as you do not let anyone know your BTC address then you are fine.  But it is almost impossible, there are times people will know one of your BTC addresses, and it can trace down to other BTC address that you own.

For anonymous coins, do check out
Zcoin (XZC)
Zcash (ZEC)
Monero (XMR)
DASH

Bitcoin is called pseudo-anonymous because:
1. You can generate an account using nothing but pure mathematics. This part is certainly 100% anonymous.
2. Unfortunately, in order to interact with other people who own bitcoin (buying and selling), you'll have to reveal some amount of information to them (your address at a minimum). It's the paper trail that's created by these interactions which allows people, organizations, and governments to track transactions.

Bitcoin may not be 100% anonymous, but there are a lot of coins that just set them up as the main goal and they're good for them!

It is only anonymous if you use several wallet addreses and multiple ways to send payments, like using mixers for receiving and sending money to someone, but if you are using a single addy for all your payments, then it is obviously that you are not fully anonymous, because anyone can track you by your blockchain history.
Anyway, just like other user said, there are altcoins that were created for 100% anonymity, like monero.

If you get into the history of bitcoin the creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, created bitcoin to be a peer-to-peer digital cash. You should be able to find the whitepaper pretty easily and it's explained there. The cypherpunk group was experimenting on a new type of currency not controlled by the government and Satoshi posted the whitepaper and started the first blocks with Hal Finney. From there bitcoin started to gain traction in the darkweb with DPR and Silk Road. After several US government inquiries the bitcoin foundation testified before congress to not ban the technology and/or coin due to bad actors using it, after all bitcoin is just a tool to be used. From there investors started to use it, and it is now what we see today.

If you are looking for anonymity. Monero is the one true king.

It is not 100% anonymous. It is semi-anonymous in the sense that your wallet address is a complicated alpha-numerical sequence. Two ways you can be found out are if you reveal yourself or you take part in some sort of

criminal act and then the FBI or whoever will find you. They have a abundance of resources to use and you better believe they will find you. This is why we need true anonmyous coins like Monero, Dash, Deep Onion, Cloakcoin,

Spectre, and the many others trying to make cryptocurrencies anon!

Yes, you are right, because btc is the first crypto currency, so it maybe have some flaw. However, there are lots of new coins and there are anonymous.