Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has paved the way for a number of decentralized blockchain systems. Among them, cryptocurrencies are especially prevalent. But, there are still a lot of functionalities that are yet to be implemented. The most basic use case is that of a secure transaction without the need for a centralized authority. Bitcoin implemented it, with one major catch and that is privacy. Don't we all crave privacy?

Originally, Bitcoin network was thought to be anonymous. Everybody felt secure believing that no one could ever recognize them. Later, it was found that it was not the case. The difficulty was public ledger that was accessible by everyone to go through. It contains all the private records. This unbolted the way for a lot of cyber hackers to extract information making it less secure. Also, anonymity was compromised due to the data leaks. Once identity is known of a Bitcoin user, anyone can go through his past and possible future transactions.

In the light of above explanation, should Bitcoin be upgraded by a confidential blockchain system which is scalable too?

Its meant that way. It serves a purpose otherwise any scammer can get away without being tracked. There were even scams happening almost everyday even after they knew Bitcoin isn't anonymous, there more they'd be scamming right under your nose if it is. If you really want privacy, there are more anon coins you can go to like XMR, Zcash and cloak coin to name few.

One of the prominent feature of bitcoin is it ability to hide the identity of it users and that is why it is term decentralized which never need the involvement of any third party. And I think it will remain like that even in the future.

Privacy is something that takes a little effort, but there are definitely ways to enhance it.  You can utilise mixing services, the Dandelion (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/anatomy-anonymity-how-dandelion-could-make-bitcoin-more-private/) protocol, TOR and even the simple things like change addresses and also ensuring that you don't re-use addresses when receiving transactions from different people.

There are other things in the pipeline that would also help, such as Bulletproofs/Confidential Transactions (https://bitcoinist.com/technique-improve-bitcoin-confidentiality-bulletproofs/).

I am surprise by what you a explain concerning the anonymity of bitcoin. I was thinking that bitcoin blockchain is decentralized  and  can only be transacted on P2P basis. But exposing that bitcoin is not anonymous is knocking me off my balance. This lack of secret which will make bitcoin data accessible to all and sundry  through the public ledger is killing. I will support an fork that will upgrade bitcoin to a confidential blockchain that will be secure and scalable.

I also thought that blockchain is a way to total security, but many people say it isn't.
I don't know much about it, but they say that it still can be hacked and so on.
They prefer to believe in end-to-end encryption and not in blockchain.

bitcoin has never been fully anonymous and it has always been fine. some people seem to have a problem with that but that is oke because there are options that they can use like the real anon coins.
bitcoin or at least the on chain transactions will never change in that fact. there may be additions on side chains and second layers to improve the anonymity though.

I have never understood the emphasis on anonymity. Clandestine activate usually associated with illegal activities. And it's not like our data was street out before for everyone to see.
Decentralization was the main problem bitcoin and the blockchain was created to solve. And to ensure transparency, especially among miners, the transaction had to be open for all to see


Leaks and hacks usually result from exchanges which are not well shielded from attacks.

If you demand this sort of privacy that you're talking about, it will be difficult to obtain in the near future also. Blockchain technology and the public ledger system are so designed that they give all the crypto users an easy access to view all the transactions and also to trace back the origin of these transactions. Yes! you're right, certain improvements may be introduced in fact, but you cannot get full anonymity factor secureed with yourselves.

I just want to say that bitcoin with a decentralized system is the most efficient system. If talking about an increase in the secret blockchain system, I think it will go hand in hand with the development of time and technology in the future. :-X

Bitcoin's mission is not as mentioned. The future it promises is known by everyone. If you are looking for something other than that, I think you can find one of the hundreds of projects in progress or ICO process.

I think bitcoin is not really a privacy currency in the first place, everyone can see the balance and the transactions of btc address.
But the solution was found, altcoins were created. There are some private coins such as XMR, XVG, or other cryptonight algo coins.

It would appear that Monero is certainly the true privacy coin, and I doubt that Monero would have the interest that it does if bitcoin truly solved for complete privacy.

It's pseudo-anonymous. Unless you don't link your Bitcoin address with your identity and take other basic privacy measures you should be anonymous.

bitcoin has been creates as a decentralized coin which hide the users' identity. But we can see the transaction history of a bitcoin address.I think in future ,if it can be hidden ,bitcoin will provide more privacy.

everyone wants privacy and bitcoin is offering a very good level of privacy when you use it correctly. what it doesn't offer is full anonymity and it was never supposed to do that either.

wrong. in fact "originally" bitcoin was known NOT to be anonymous, then as the market grew and more newbies came in SOME started thinking it is funny anonymous while the rest knew it is not.

...public records... not private.

it is publicly available, you don't need to be a "hacker" to extract anything! you just have to have time to waste analyzing the blockchain and it has nothing to do with "making it less secure"!

all you can do is speculate.

no. because not only your "explanation" is filled with flaws but also the design of bitcoin is perfectly fine.

Satoshi created Bitcoin to be pseudo anonymous to grant people enough anonymity to keep their financial matters private. So, by not re-using Bitcoin addresses, people will be able to protect their financial privacy. <You do not want someone to know how much money you have, when you pay for some service with your Bitcoin address, right?>

Bitcoin does not offer you more anonymity than what you are granted with cash and that is exactly what Satoshi wanted, when he created this technology.

If you want more anonymity, use mixer services.  ;)

I don't think data leaks can expose anonymity unless they hack the exchanges for personal details, but i think those guys are only after the coins. Anyone who wants privacy will simply use monero or other similar coins instead

but the problem is when you are using exchanges then you are not using bitcoin. you are using a centralized service that is leaking your identity and removing the privacy from your bitcoin usage not from bitcoin itself. and that is one of the biggest mistakes that OP and usually others make when it comes to bitcoin and privacy. they think in terms of these services but they make the  conclusion for bitcoin.

Surely bitcoin will have to be made more anonymous and many people are working with many solutions. What I don't know is which solution will have the upper hand, if a hard-fork or a layer2 solution.

On another note, I think it's time that AIs are used to create an untraceable blockchain. Many might not realize it but AIs already co exists with us simply because mobile phones do and almost all high end mobile phones and computers has AIs in it. Not the scifi robotic kind of AI but the chip forms or whatever other forms.

You are right, it is offering much less anonymity than cash, not all my cash transactions get to be visible in a public ledger.

I support the view of the OP that the current level of pseudonymity is not satisfactory, that with every transaction you leak vital personal data like the IP addresses, KYC records, even CCTV footages. For a dedicated individual or a group with enough time and other resources to deeply analyse the blockchain and link it with other records it may be possible to get a close to exact picture of all your transactions, your account balances etc.

It does not directly point out your identity, though there are some people who specialize in snooping 'taints' which leads to identifying a certain person who might have posted the address somewhere. Besides, the goal of the blockchain is to provide a ledger of transactions that is verifiable and can be viewed at any time, while still providing some sort of privacy and anonymity to those who are involved in the transaction. If we are to make the blockchain private, how sure are we that everything is credible and how are we going to check transactions when we need to?

Well this is a naive question. Just the same as you don't have to publicize your first and last name to be able to claim ownership of the bitcoin amount stored in an address (you use your private key, don't you) just the same you don't have to publicize the transaction amount and information making it possible to link adresses and create transaction history. There are cryptographic ways that make it possible to prove information is correct while no information is in fact revealed publicly. Read about zero knowledge proofs.

And there are already some other cryptocurrency coins that are more private than bitcoin. Why can't bitcoin evolve in this direction too is beyond me. It is like making it easier for smaller altcoins to replace bitcoin eventually.

Bitcoin was created without being centralized, but maybe developers have other reasons so that the lack of anonymity in bitcoin transactions. If you want to trade with high anonymity, of course there are still many coins that have that feature, you just convert it to the coin and then start trading

it should be able to be used as an example to increase the privacy of bitcoin users. when the transaction is running the public can see how much bitcoin and where bitcoin will be transferred. so I think privacy is important to use for security in use.

It's a widespread common mistake that people frequently make. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous. It's not completely anonymous, which means, the transactions are crystal clear but the identity is, unless revealed, unknown.

The public ledger don't store any private data, all it contains are block of transactions.
Theorically, it is possible to know both of the sender and the receiver, but this process can't be done by any one who want's to. It requires a lot of experience and reseach.
Besides, using mixers and vpns will make it harder.

Yep, machine learning is everywhere.

It serves a purpose otherwise any scammer can get away without being tracked. You can utilize mixing services. I think it will remain like that even in the future.

not exactly right. it is not with every transaction that you leak these things. for instance when i am sending a tx from my wallet i am not leaking CCTV footage! and regarding IP there is no concrete way of proving that when you (as a node) send a transaction to the network that tx belongs to you or you are just relaying it after receiving from someone else.
not to mention that your comment is confusing because you continue with "analyzing blockchain" whereas none of the things you said are even going in the blockchain (like your IP). there needs to be a network analysis and a huge number of nodes that connect to nearly all the nodes in the network to analyze who is sending what and it is extremely hard and it gets harder as the network grows.

Bitcoin is not really annonymous; its pseudonymous. If it really was annonymous, it would be quiet impossible to track down the scammers. I am happy with the way it is.

Bitcoin is very important currency in the world.So bitcoin use many privacy side.there are many people are not use privacy system and they are not concious for btc or cryptocurrency market.

People have the habit of always complaining, it does not matter if something is right that they will always look for a defect. Cara bitcoin needs adoption and we do not need more anonymity to have problems with governments and banks, anonymity = problems with governments and banks and we do not want this. Yes it would be a good suggestion that bitcoin is faster and cheaper, but we do not need that bitcoin be more anonymous because it will not bring benefits. If someone needs something anonymous, then use mixer and anonymous altcoins that will have your problem solved

for me ill leave that way bitcoin being psseudoanonymous if in exchange is mass adoption and embrce of the bank and government institution and also criminal are trackable, but you realy wanna use absolute anonimity there is a lot of privacy coin out there to choose such as deep onion, monero, cloackchain etc... its just a matter of choice

In fact, I think Bitcoin has been able to make most users "anonymous" compared to traditional currencies. We often hear that Bitcoin is used by some criminal groups for money laundering, although it can still be traced to them, but compared Traditional banking, it is obviously more difficult to track the real traders of the blockchain.

Quite a few mistakes in your explanation, as pooya87 explained in his reply, but your question is legitimate in my opinion.

I'm very much in favour of keeping all records public, as they are now. Bitcoin was never meant to be a privacy focused coin.
There are far better alternatives if you want privacy. Now I don't have too much knowledge about the technical side of things, but I would think that there are far more interesting features to add, besides privacy.

As others have said, you can also use TOR, so that's already one way that you can greatly improve your privacy when using Bitcoin.

I'd put all the time and effort in getting schnorr signatures added for example. Seems way more useful than adding more privacy measures.

Bitcoin is a decentralized system and people loved it for this. Though the tracking is a good thing as it will also track the scammers, it breaches transactor's privacy. This news is unknown to many. Don't know how others will take this news.

Most people have already moved to privacy coins on the dark web because it's very difficult to mix bitcoins and you never really can be sure if it was done right and the trail is gone.

It's the best you can get.
Tell me one thing that makes you anonymous when it comes to transacting money?
Banks need your information.
Western Union does too.
Moneygram is the same.
So where will you go? There is nothing more secured than bitcoin for now. So better use it instead of the companies that I listed or else all your information will be leaked throughout the world.

Something to change? None. It is perfect in my sight. Better just change the way you use it.

Hackers will not get anything from you if you will not provide anything to them. Specially your private keys or any passwords that will lead to where you stored your private key.

That is why from the start I just jot down my private keys in a piece of paper. Actually, 2 pieces of paper, one for my wife. Voila! you are secured thru infinity and beyond.  ;D

Due to your reply I believed you don't have the knowledge of data because with the exclusion of exchang been hack for users personal information once someone data(information) is leaked then such person anonymity is exposed cause there people who a good in using it to track down.

Bitcoin is not as private as everyone else is thinking, Bitcoin is private when you have not sold or transferred it to someone, If you make a transaction, most likely someone knows who you are!

if a hacker targets an account that would be a problem for the perticular user.because though we are depending on blockchain that actually hackable.but i am not telling that its weak.its atleast that strong that a hacker need to waste his 1 month to get a way.

https://www.chainalysis.com/ has recently done some research on Whales and they extracted detailed information on how many whales are hoarders and how many are actually active traders etc. These companies do not need CCTV footage, they simply use sophisticated forensic software to analyse data on the Blockchain.

The whales are the prime targets for hackers and they need added protection to hide their wealth from these attackers.  ::) This is one reason why anonymity is very important.

Having a payment system with a public ledger has its advantages, too: Imagine a world where Bitcoin is everywhere, and all payments of all governments are in the public domain... Full accountability!
Privacy for the layperson is important, though. So the solution Bitcoin needs to find, will have to balance those two sides. Not an easy task, but I'm sure the devs are well aware of that.
In the meantime you can use Monero.

Bitcoin will be improved and upgraded to be suitable for use in the future to help investors feel secure with their investment.

Maybe it’s best if there is the "right" level of privacy. So that privacy is the default for small amounts and everyday transfers but with agency style effort it is still possible to track a few larger transactions. I have a feeling people might not be ready for total privacy yet.
Whatever your view on the "right" level of privacy might be, think about what level will rise in value the most. Probably something in between Bitcoin and Monero. Bitcoin (Lightning) with some privacy improvements should come close to the sweet spot.

In my opinion, Bitcoin is an evil cryptocurrency that requires a great deal of privacy. Bitcoin is a big worthy currency in the crypto market, which can earn a lot of money. And most importantly, security is needed in each of our cases. In order to know how to use Bitcoin, privacy is very important. The rate at which the hackers are increasing, the privacy of the issue has become very important in our lives.So bitcoin and privacy are related to each others.

As of my knowledge, only transactions are getting viewed in Blockchain. The uniqueness of blockchain is that you can view all of the funds of a certain people if you know what are there addresses or transactions. Scammers are easily tracked because of this technology. In my country, if the wallet has been hacked or the wallet used in Modus Operandi scheme, you can report it and the wallet will be locked. The blockchain technology serves as incorruptible wallet that should be implemented in the Government as a public ledger so that the officials will get rid of corruption. I've started a topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5048345.msg46757862#msg46757862) about this but nobody replies on my thread. Maybe it's uninteresting.

Yeah hopefully Bitcoin's high security will remain in future. We can use Bitcoin without losing our private information and by this we don't need to worry about our transactions history.

Decentralize system is very effective system for cryptocurrency. I'm very surprise to know that Bitcoin is not a decentralized crypto system. But I will be very glad if they update it in future ;).

Well, i believe that satoshi was creating bitcoin so that bitcoin will become a global currency in the world.
If bitcoin want to become a global currency, it will need to become public so it can be adopted by peoples around the world.
But this is only my opinion. If you want using crypto with high privacy, i recommend to use monero.

 All cryptocurrencies are running on the ever popular blockchain technology. Piracy cannot easily be classified or quantified in the world of cryptocurrency.  I believe the world of crypto  has been affected by scams which is affecting the the progress of bitcoin. I think some regulations can be put in place to protect the value of bitcoin.

Bitcoin can be upgraded to be privacy coin but i think it will affecting on the price. Bitcoin already known as anonymous coin and as store of value. Right now many altcoin have more feature than bitcoin but as store of value, bitcoin more trusted

as i know bitcoin and all platform that use blockchain system have the high security, and of course, in the privacy, we can see that the transaction that we made from bitcoin us anonymously, and we can see that when we create the new wallet we don't need to send our identity right? i thin bitcoin and blockchain system is the most secure

I think if I don't distribute private keys to phishing sites, I think it's still safe. but it must be admitted, the security of this system must be increased again. especially when the market exchange can be hacked.

if you want bitcoin more anonymously why not just use  mixer or anonymous altcoins, then I think everything you want will be fulfilled.

Indeed, maintaining security is necessary and mandatory, it should indeed be anonymous bitcoin. But the more people join, the more people want to know something from the holder, so security starts to be disturbed, so to overcome this, we need to save the data safely which will be able to disturb our security.

yes, the security of bitcoin transactions must have double security, but at least anonymous bitcoin can avoid any dark network hacking.

the hacker will go to the core ledger, and then use each block. but that is difficult. only some hackers can do it.

Bitcoin is a confidential site because it has the power to keep its users identity confidential and does not require a third party to work here. That is why Bitcoin accounts are protected from hackers. I think Bitcoin will also protect its privacy in the future.