Bitcoin Forum

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5vckkl/danish_police_first_in_the_world_to_hunt_down/

It's common sense, blockchain is open, if you are stupid even Bitcoin won't help.
Use mixers. BOOORING...

Mixer transactions are also on the blockchain (as you know, but others may not). The fact that a mixer was used only serves to draw more attention to those transactions. Mixers only make it more difficult to trace, but not impossible:

https://www.elliptic.co/law-enforcement/

http://time.com/3689359/bitcoins-track-anonymous/

Even if transactions can be traced its not a deal breaker. Sending bitcoin to the dark net markets isnt in itself an illegal activity and neither is buying from these markets (at least not in my country). Im sure there are some legal things to be bought on these markets as well as all the drugs and other things.

Everything is possible and Bitcoin is the best solution for anoymous transactions if you know what you are doing. Fuck BANKS!

I completely agree. Just to be clear: I love BTC. I'm a holder and user. I keep seeing people on an almost daily basis say that "BTC is anonymous" so yet another reminder for noobs that BTC is not anonymous (even if mixed) is warranted, I think.

Not a new thing, but still.. Novice users should know that

This does not concern me. I do not use bitcoin for anything illegal. Even if they audit all my bitcoin transactions, they will find nothing that can compromise me. While bitcoin is legal in my country, I am safe.

Blockchain is transparent, but u are safe. No one ask your info for creating wallet. No one know your profile seeing address.

You can still be tracked. Using blockchain analysis you'd be able to view a transaction.
It also looks quite shady if you use one regularly.

It is quite difficult to trace a wallet and an address unless a person publishes their addreses. Otherwise, it is virtually impossible to trace someone's address.

Everybody who does some research before using Bitcoin should know that it is not anonymous. If someone is told so and believes it blindly, then you kind of deserve it to learn it the hard way. Also not all mixers are safe and depending on the services and exchanges and such you use you can still be uncovered. If not today maybe in 10 years when technology advances, since it is all in the ledger forever.

But they do if you want buy or sell, so in the end you are not anonymous.
That is concern in bitcoin code and it can be fixed with couple tweaks.

That was my first thought, too. Why feel sorry for criminals?

Trouble is, most crime is victimless, it is created out of thin air by drafting laws. If the filth at the top decides to outlaw Bitcoin tomorrow, you are a criminal too. And the blockchain history will serve as evidence against you.

It is only a question of time until technologies like Monero, Dash or Zcash will get alot more attention, and that will not be good for the law abiding crypto community.  :-\

That is correct but there are multi wallet sites KYC policies where you are ask to submit your details and government issued ID's in order to have a higher transactions,or else they get you deactivated or on hold.They are becoming strict now, and some governments are recognizing bitcoin as a legal tender in line with this,bitcoin exchanges need your info's to be legit.

people still believe bitcoin is anonymous?

that's just half true.
if you use, even if just one time, this address to send/receive bitcoin from some place where they know you, it maybe be enough to track you down.
remember silk road? search a little about how the owner were tracked and you will see.

First of all please refrain downloading anything or even worse installing anything in regards of mixing bitcoins and hiding transactions because they all are trying to steal and hijack everything you've got on your machine.
Can you masters of blockchain teach me how to track the below bitcoins?

-I send 100BTC to BitMixer and give them 10 new addresses and ask them to send 20 coins to 1 addy 15 coins to another addy and the rest of the coins to the 8 other addresses, or I just provide them with 1 addy and ask to send 9 coins every 2 hours.

unless you are trying to mix small amounts where fees deducted and the amount would be too obvious to track in blockchain there is no way to track them down doing all the analysis in the world.

Thats why we called it an open ledger because it is open for public every bitcoin transaction can be traced.

So bitcoin is not so anonymous as it seems. Well, everything has it's downside to.
If you want to have an anonymous transaction then you must not depend on the anonymity of the crypto currency itself
Sometimes tools for anonymity are also convinient if you want to add some security to your transactions and avoid who ever is tracking you but if you're not doing some illegal things there is no need to cover your tracks.

So you're saying if 100BTC leave an address and are added to another address in 20 hours, that's a regular thing.
I doubt that would go unnoticed somewhat...
Sending to 10 different addresses is fine, but then you have a greater fee involved and could encounter greater issues later on.

Also, you can still trace that the addreses that sent the coins to the sending address are your coins and it may look obvious that it's an address owned by a mixer (although I don't have any examples to suggeston hwo that would work although I doubt one address is just used and discarded per transaction).

Exactly, as long as you stay in the legal area there is nothing wrong with that and the fact that Bitcoin could be traced can't harm you. But the truth is that Bitcoin has lost a lot of its anonimity that it had at the begininig and that the transactions origins are much more easier to trace. That is the reason why some people like Monero very much.

"The guy was busted because he had 5 big packets all labelled to be sent to him, when the police searched his place they found a USB key that had an unencrypted word document containing his bitcoin address, recovery seed and his private key. He pretty much went full retard in regards to security. They shouldn't give the Danish government too much praise."

IMO, if he deals drug business, he should use a more secure way to protect himself, if i were a criminal, I will use brain wallet. Not a simple way he did.

Thanks for reminding, but that does not require a certain degree of knowledge to know that. By knowing what is bitcoin and its basics, we already have the idea that we have a public ledger which is very transparent and can be access 24 hours/7 days. Anyway, hope this helps to the newbie who thinks bitcoin is anonymous and does not fully study bitcoin and just listen to what other's opinion for their knowledge.

Well that is true that it is public, but we can always use methods that would hide our activities so that we cannot be traced. First is always use a freshly generated address to received the bitcoins then use a mixer to send it to elsewhere. That will make it look clean. The problem though, is cashing it out. Laundering is not easy as just mixing coins.

Hiding is hard when we know the government will always intervene in bitcoin, with the use of bitcoin mixer they say it is possible to hide our transactions but I have not tried it once since I do not do shady things. Maybe if gambling will be declared illegal in our country I'll try it since I know the penalty is not that serious though.

Some people in this community really go ahead and think that bitcoin is anonymous on its nature and no one will be able to know who made a transaction, in all honesty it's pretty simple to find out what you're doing with your bitcoin through probably around 10 mins of searching through google and here (if a member of course)


The media made this false narrative when it came to Silk Road in saying that Bitcoin was this "big bad online anonymous drug currency" which led people to believe this, so I think that's where the false narrative came from.

Its not anonymous, but pseudo-anonymous. So its easy to anyone to search and find out what's is the activity on one's address. Exchanges requires you to give them your information for KYC and AML complaint. I also did my own investigation once on my cousin's wallet and found out where his putting his bitcoin.  ;D