Bitcoin Forum

I am a bit confused here, since the blockchain of the Bitcoin is public, anyone can get the complete transactions of the Bitcoin. If someone knows your wallet address, he can look all the transactions you made and where your Bitcoins flow to.

It won't be difficult to write an analysis software, to find out the links among wallets, and the usage of bitcoins. So from this sense, there's no real anonymity with Bitcoin. Do I miss something there?

Try to tie the bitcoin address to a person. Thats the hard part.
Yes, their is definitly a "paper trail" but not much more than that.

If someone told you Bitcoin is anonymous, please punch them in the teeth for us. Bitcoin is, at best, pseudonymous. Analysis software, however, won't help a snoop if the Bitcoins are laundered properly. In proper laundering you get many other peoples' coins sent to fresh addresses presumably not linked to your legal identity. Someone could probably tell it was laundered, but have great difficulty trying to figure out where "your" coins went (if even possible).

Bitcoin is not anonymous automatically.

Bitcoin can be used in an anonymous way, but it takes a lot of effort and knowledge.

Anonymity can mean different things to different people.  For "true anonymity"  it needs to be 100% impossible for ANYBODY to know that you even have any bitcoin.  This sort of anonymity isn't impossible with bitcoin, but it certainly isn't easy.  In most cases the person or business that sells you the bitcoin has some sort of identifying information about you (Name or userID on some website at a minimum) and the person or business that accepts bitcoin from you frequently has some sort of identifying information about you as well (mailing address, physical description, etc).

The average bitcoin user gives up a lot of anonymity without even realizing it.

Bitcoin can be anonymous, but you have to put the effort in.

If you go to a store and pay with cash are you anonymous?  If go deposit cash to you bank account are you anonymous?  If you mailed someone some cash are you anonymous?  So just like with cash the level of anonymity is up to you and none of it is 100% since by definition a transaction takes two parties and the other party must know something about you even if it's just your bitcoin address.

you could use the shared feature form blockchain.info or inputs.io to hide your transactions. probably the easiest way to ensure a higher anonymity

Yea, while you may be able to track where the money went, unless you see an address that belongs to a company that could give the ip of the person using their services, there is no way to connect a transaction with a person. Even then, that person might be using something like Tor which would make it very unlikely you  would ever be able to know who a person was.

Bitcoin could be anonymous if you know what are you doing. Like using a mixer and other things I cannot disclose here.

That is why I create lots of lots of bitcoin address, one for real life, one for bitcoin forum and etc. This way I can reduce the expose :)

This is one of the reasons why I use a new address for EVERY TRANSACTION I receive and I NEVER RE-USE an address I've used in the past.

Best idea

But only if you care about anonymity, otherwise it seems bit administrative complicated  :)

There are more reasons for the practice than just anonymity.  For example, it also improves security, making it more difficult for a thief/hacker to determine your private key.

Regardless, I don't find it administratively complicated at all.  As a matter of fact, I find it more administratively simple.  I can identify exactly where each and every transaction that I've received came from and what it's for, because I know that it came from the person that I gave the address to for the reason that I gave them that address.

Need to receive bitcoins?  Simple.

• Click the new address button
• Give the resulting address to the payer

I also like this with this we can hide our all transactions and its very difficult for others to check all transactions of address holder

Is it anonymous? Well, depends on who you're talkin bout. Big brother can do pretty much anything they want and nothing will save you from that. 

Using a new bitcoin address for every transaction simplifies things greatly for me. I've teamed up with others for many projects, some big(ish), some small. If there's ever any question about a specific payment or movement of funds, being able to look up the receiving address and see only one transaction eliminates almost all doubt and confusion about it; it becomes very obvious who sent what to whom when.


Back to the OP:

Is Bitcoin really anonymous? The Bitcoin protocol itself does not need you to identify yourself in any way. Once you send or receive any bitcoins, however, it is very difficult to not reveal something about yourself due to the nature of most business transactions.

You can always use TOR, or a proxy, and hide what you do. Even in China :P

Big brother is powerfull and TOR will not save you. All your ISP logs, including every packet is shared with big brother. Beat that!

Free wifi is everywhere.  Use it.

So you must have like 100000 Bitcoin address by now?

Big brother can't peak into my TCC a.k.a. Tin Can Connection.  Beat that! 

It is pseudonymous. It can protect your privacy if you use it properly.

I've been using bitcoin for approximtely a year.

Is there a reason that you think I engage in more than 300 transactions per day?

Also, since I never re-use addresses, many of my addresses and private keys can be deleted once I'm done with them.  At the moment, my Bitcoin-Qt wallet has exactly 22 addresses listed in the "Receive" section.

Actually, if they can see the string that you use to connect your tin cans, they can listen in pretty easily with a laser and some electronic equipment.

A CitM attack would probably be most cost-effective.

ROFL.  That needs a picture.

That only partially works because all those individual addresses will be linked to each other when you send bitcoins from your wallet unless you take extra precautions.

Using inputs wallet is one of the easiest way to mix your transaction, so your transaction won't appear on the blockchain. The negative side is the owner of that site will be able to track the transaction easily, and may share it if required by laws..  ;D

I don't think that I said using a new address for every transaction would provide anonymity, only that it would "reduce the exposure", which it most certainly will.

Sorry but i'm kinda noob, how do you delete a address? I'm using Bitcoin-Qt as my wallet too.

It can be done, but it's not easy. Just ignore them would be best.

I suppose it's not really something you want to be messing around with as a noob.  There are some opportunities to mess things up if you aren't careful.  There are a few ways to do it, but here's the method I use most often:

• In the "Console" section of the "Debug Window" under the "Help" menu, run dumpprivkey for each address that you want to keep.
• Write down or otherwise store all the private keys that you got from your dumpprivkey commands
• Shut down Bitcoin-Qt and wait for it to completely close
• Rename your wallet.dat to wallet.old
• Start up Bitcoin-Qt
• You will have a brand new empty wallet with a single new bitcoin address
• Create as many new addresses as you'd like to receive bitcoins from your previous wallet
• Write down or otherwise store the bitcoin addresses from your new wallet that you will be using your old wallet to send to
• Shut down Bitcoin-Qt and wait for it to completely close
• Rename wallet.dat to wallet.new
• Rename wallet.old to wallet.dat
• Start up Bitcoin-Qt
• You will be back in your old wallet with access to your bitcoins and old addresses
• Send the bitcoins as you desire to the addresses you wrote down from the new wallet (I use createrawtransaction to get control over which bitcoins go to which addresses.  This allows me to avoid linking addresses together if I don't want them to be linked)
• Wait for all your transactions to receive at least one confirmation
• Shut down Bitcoin-Qt and wait for it to completely close
• Delete wallet.dat (And when you do this, your old addresses are now gone, including change addresses. If you don't have the private key or a backup somewhere any bitcoins that you accidentally forgot to move are lost permanently)
• Rename wallet.new to wallet.dat
• Start up Bitcoin-Qt
• The bitcoins that you sent to addresses in this wallet should now appear
• In the "Console" section of the "Debug Window" under the "Help" menu, run importprivkey for each private key you dumped from the old wallet.
• The addresses that you wanted to keep are now all in the new wallet

While the process of creating and using a new address for every transaction isn't very "administratively complicated", this process of deleting old undesired keys certainly is.  It also carries significant risk if you don't know what you're doing or aren't careful.  It would be nice if the Bitcoin-Qt was modified to "archive", or "hide" addresses that aren't needed any longer.

There are simpler methods, but they don't provide quite as much control over what is deleted and what is kept.

In general, until/unless additional tools are created for Bitcoin-Qt, I'd advise against trying to repeat my process.

A safer and easier process that doesn't keep any old addresses and links some addresses together can be described in the following 5 steps:

• Run a second wallet somewhere (MultiBit, Electrum, blockchain.info, or just a second computer with BitCoin-Qt)
• Send all bitcoins from the first wallet to an address (or addresses) in the second wallet, leaving an empty first wallet
• Once all transactions have confirmed, shutdown the first wallet and delete its wallet.dat
• Start up the first wallet with a now empty new wallet (all old addresses permanently deleted and inaccessible)
• Send all bitcoins from the second wallet back to the new address in the first wallet