Bitcoin Forum

Looks like Jeff Bezos wants to get involved in Bitcoin... the wrong way:

Amazon filed a patent to de-anonymize Bitcoin transactions and sell the data to law enforcement (http://darkcitycrypto.com/index.php/2018/04/19/amazon-filed-a-patent-to-de-anonymize-bitcoin-transactions-and-sell-the-data-to-law-enforcement/)



Amazon wants to get his nose into the coins of the users, so you can already see how things will work if Amazon ever accepts Bitcoin, they will attempt to track everything and sell your information, just like Facebook.

This is a very interesting technique of hedging against the price volatility...
They accept bitcoin, they will make some money from bitcoin users' purchases, but they will make much more money from selling the data of the bitcoin transactions and the personal data of the related users.
This is a kind of problem with online shopping, you have to give out your personal data (real name, shipping address) to get the things you buy... and Amazon knows this, and knows that this data is more valuable than the other stuff they sell...

I'm curious as to how this will work in practice. Sure, Amazon could link my real data to a bitcoin address if I bought physical goods from them and paid in bitcoin, but why would I ever need to use that address again? With the existence of bitcoin mixers and coins like monero, I can easily anonymise some coins and send them to Amazon from an address I'll never use again. All they could link me to is that one single payment.

However, I suspect the people that actually care about privacy won't use Amazon anyway, and the people that don't care that much about privacy have already had all their private data leaked by Facebook.

I think the transparency of Bitcoin's blockchain is one of the factors why governments might be interested in it and why they haven't banned it right away - they might monitor transactions while (some) users think that they are anonymous. But Bitcoin's ecosystem always tried to solve this problem with solutions like mixers and potential additions to Bitcoin's protocol like Schnorr signatures, and if the situation with privacy will improve, maybe we'll start hearing more hostility from governments and banks than now.

It's a good idea to help it to go mainstream and gain more trust from the public, but amazon would do better if they just created their own coin instead. If anyone wants privacy there are plenty of other good anonymous coins to choose from.

Well there's nothing stopping them from developing advanced tools that will track where is money moving to and from. The biggest lack of bitcoin is that transactions are transparent, it is okay for them to be transparent as then we know whats happening, but when companies/ governments start to track users then it can become the problem. Although I am sure that some secret agencies are collecting such data for long time now. The biggest problem is that then you have to use things like mixers where you have to relay on 3rd party.



Why create their own coin, you mean an ICO to milk other people more? Anyways if they ever accept bitcoin then price will soar for sure, I think that they at least know how huge impact they can have on the space.

You can always move your coins to a different address and if someone asks, you can tell "no they ain't mine no more, i sent them to somebody else." Nobody can know it. That's beyond retarded.

Do they realize one can always use 2 different addresses. One for daily shopping, one for hidden hodl stash. So what's the point? Also Wtf is there to patent? They should spend their time and money to improve their distribution network instead of indexing crypto users.

Do amazon even accept crypto payments? (as far as I know they don't, yet. fix me if i'm wrong) Is this what we are looking at? Are they about to accept crypto?

This is very bad PR for them. First they accept bitcoin now they want to fight against it? It makes no sense to me... I hope that we will see some soft fork that will make bitcoin transactions more anonymous. Crypto was created to avoid goverment control, but people now just want regulation. I don't get it!

Greed know no limits. Not content with selling stuff, now they want to sell people's data, people who didn't agree at that. This couldn't have come at a better time as Zuckerberg is being investigated in Congress. I hope this give Bezos the negative publicity as Zucc.


Can't the regular users already track these anyway? More like they'll just scour the records and compile the data and sell it.

Some centralized f*cking company want to kill the decentralization.
Decentralized currencies and DApps could and their very existence could be a real threat to those centralized organizations.

Dapps and crypto based projects are being developed to compete with centralized applications.
As a example Effect.ai(A NEO based project) is developing a M-Turk which is better than Amazon M-Turk.

Decentralization will be a real trend with time which could be a real threat to centralized organizations.
So this news is no surprise to me.

Shame on you Amazon.

They can only sell their transaction logs and information of their customers who uses it, but IMO they would not succeed in tracking everything since it is very easy to create a new wallet to use when transacting with amazon. The only problem is the user's address and other personal information that they can sell. I hope they wouldn't resort to it.

It is a way of putting decentralized currencies at a disadvantage and it is sad that amazon participates in this loss of prestige, although it could also be negative for them because many of their users who use cryptocurrencies will stop using their services and their demand will go down, let's see how this is unleashed to future

Well that will be difficult to achieved due to the fact that bitcoin is decentralized and the blockchain technology is built in a way that it is very impossible to be trace that is what make bitcoin unique and free from all forms of control.

Time will come, amazon will die and new existing ICO for online marketplace will come. Amazon is now overrated and it is a mistake for the people to trust their service. They did not respect the ideology of bitcoin, decentralized and transparent to the people. If ever it will happen, the buyers and sellers of this giant tech are at risks.

So this means it is time to buy on Open Bazaar market and let Amazon die

He's a little late to the party, there are already a few blockchain intelligence tools that are looking to map the blockchain, including tracking wallet owners and interlacing it with KYC data (obtained from somewhere?). That's why Bitcoin isn't as private as it could have been, publicly identifiable addresses limits its privacy value.

This is really very interesting. And this also it putting a tombstone on the dreams of mass adoption preserving anonimity. You won't be able to have both.

Whoever had such dreams was as delusional as those thinking that using Coinbase wouldn't end up in IRScentral. I mean it's really ridiculous how deluded people are. Amazon is working with NSA for a while, their Alexa thing is an spying robot straight from Orwell.

Anonymity will never be mainstream. Governments are anti-anonymity, they want to know where your money is and what are you doing, that's what government's do. Who is surprised about corporations complying with that?

What would Amazon possibly gain from doing otherwise? how would Amazon possibly let people buy anonymously and get away with it? These things don't work like that, as long as governments exist.

so when Facebook got in troubles for 'leaking' user information, Amazon can't be touched for the same issue
Amazon will be able to avoid it by shielding behind the idea of public blockchain, eh?
They will defend themselves saying those info are already available publicly,
they just gathering, processing and presenting those data in a better readable understandable form :-X

Amazon would gain big profits from selling user's information and behavior to marketers and anyone who needs such data
and they could let people buy it anonymously but not true/pure anonymous as the buyer would hope :D
in the end they will also sell all the buyer's data to their (buyer) competing companies :P in the same business sector 

I think these big Corporations will gather these data create some new subject like "Selling Engineering" in which they will target the particular individual and decide what they should try to sell that individual at what price or so on (Extensions to Analytics,Forecasting or Customer Demographics etc.)
I think Selling Engineering  (or whatever system these corporation will create) will just be legal form of Social Engineering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)).

They can't do that because Bitcoin is totally anonymous.  It said so on a netflix documentary.

While this is something that is sad to see, it was bound to happen at some point. Private companies see the ability to make some money, with the resources they already have (Amazon Web Services) and they seize the opportunity. But with private companies pushing to do this the community will get stronger with anonymity, so we will evolve. to fill what they throw at us.

Not good for bitcoin anonymity. We better not pay on amazon with crypto.

The Amazon platform, by contrast, would be selling individuals' data directly to buyers. These parties could include advertisers and, following language in the patent itself, "Government" and "law enforcement" agencies; telecommunications providers; and others.

This kind of defies the most important feature of bitcoin that is anonymity.

LOL. Amazon can kiss my ass and eat their products for all I care. Seriously?! Do they even think that there would be anyone dumb enough to be using bitcoins or any other altcoins in their online shop with those kinds of conditions? They must be clearly out of their minds! Here's a middle finger for you amazon bastards. We don't need your services and would not want it even with a 90% off deal. Crypto people ain't that stupid to fall for your puny efforts to take advantage of us.

You could always pay from different wallets and then whatever "shipping address with the bitcoin transaction data" they compiled and republish (sold) would be useless.

Guys. I don't really understand what the point of this process is. Why track your customers. After all, this way you can forget about anonymity. :-[

The thing is, it's just impossible to buy anonymously from big retailers like Amazon, they wouldn't be able to deal with the on-chain volume, it would be a disaster, so they would need to resort to the usual third parties like Bitpay and other platforms which by default are compromised.

Then we would have a LN node which may or not be viable anonymously.

Of course big block sizes aren't also the solution.

Basically there's no way around this, so if Amazon said you could buy anonymously, you have to assume they are lying. Anonymity is never possible unless peer to peer, not peer to corporation.

Everybody should care about privacy where Bitcoin is concerned, shouldn't they? Of course that is the major reason wallets generate addresses after addresses after each transaction. You don't want moggers/hoodlums/bandits tracing you to your home because of a purchase you made on any shop, not even from Amazon. I think this Amazon technique will backfire. It is an innovation thought in error.

Of course they should, but many do not. The bitcoin community certainly has a higher-than-average proportion of people that care about privacy at the moment, but as we go more mainstream, that proportion will fall. You only have to look at the huge number of people who are quite happy to share their entire lives with Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Instragram, Twitter, etc. so long as they can continue to post selfies with plates of food and share cat memes.

Which leads me back to my original point that you quoted.

If you want widespread adoption you can forget about anonymous crypto.

Bitcoin will  remain transparent or be pushed back to the fringes.

Who cares anyway. I would rather btc goes to 100-250k and pay the tax than it gets reduced to the fringes  and goes to 2k

You need anonymous crypto then look to the alts that are designed for this purpose.

I remember the first US hearings on crypto and they said they would NEVER accept anonymous crypto. I don't think they changed their minds.

So you don't get both it seems.

It's not incompatible. For peer to peer transactions you can still be anonymous, but businesses are forced by governments to comply with KYC/AML.

Governments cannot inforce KYC/AML at the protocol level, otherwise Bitcoin would be worthless.

We'll have increased amount of privacy in the future with schnorr sigs et all but this doesn't change the fact that businesses and exchanges are forced to comply KYC/AML so again, only p2p transactions can be anonymous, unless you are buying in Silk Road or somewhere else, most likely illegal.

In 2014, Amazon, the popular online store filed a patent for a Streaming Data Marketplace which would give them access to online data streams, analyze and combine them with other data sources, and sell the results as a finished product to  various agencies. It's a big move by Amazon.

It's really obvious that this rejection of bitcoin is from the government as a result of the government needs to make it less anonymous. But the truth still remains that the anonymous state of bitcoin is what made people to invest in it at first. I totally agree and want regulations, but the government should know that they can't be in  control of everything. I love Amazon,  but if they will want to sell and track me unnecessarily  then I better find an alternative.  

When people start using mixers, coinjoin transaction, hop in and out of exchanges, the amount of infomation which can be gleaned from bitcoin addresses will be minimal. If Amazon manages to scrape some of this information, let them. I hope how they will deal with privacy laws regarding customer information.

The world's largest Internet retailer in terms of profit and market capitalization, Amazon received a patent for technology to create a trading platform for streaming information, which will allow users to make real-time crypto-currency transactions, and government agencies to track them.

Initially, the company filed an application for a patent in September 2014. The application, approved by the patent office on Tuesday, describes a system in which "a data stream can be obtained and further correlated and combined with data from a second source in a combined system" that will simplify the process of information exchange and control for various commercial and public institutions.

According to a document published on April 17, the streaming analytics service will allow developers to create consoles with real-time data updates, detect atypical data and generate warnings, issue recommendations, and take other business and operational decisions with access to up-to-date information. Applications can account for changes in seconds for companies of all sizes. Streaming information can also be stored in several availability zones and at specific time intervals. During this interval, the data will be available for reading, re-addressing, duplicating, or moving to long-term storage.

Why track your customers? Because there is an insane amount of money in selling peoples information online. Advertisers (and goverments) will pay do much in order to try to sell you shit. That’s the world we live in today.

Crazy, eh? Amazons shareholders are happy though

Hahaha.

But seriously there are anonymity features being developed that might make Amazon's "patent" useless, like Mimblewimble and Coinjoin. The Lightning Network can also be used as a layer to make you transactions private.

What is more interesting for me is, what is Amazon's agenda? Do they plan to use the patent as leverage against the network?

Plus Jeff Bezos is part of the Pentagon's advisory board. So it might be "for the interest of our national security". Hahaha.

I think this is likely not true because of the contradiction happen in the sentence. Patents are intangible asset which reserves rights in the intellectual property you have.
You cannot used patent to obtained a tracking device in just bitcoin users.