Bitcoin Forum

Hello. Get some info that Bitcoin is not true anonymity. "Once you make the transaction ->it will be put into the blockchain with amount and addresses -> everyone can track your address current balance"

Where there any known cases deanonymization?

Well, it actually is somewhat of a mixture between anonymity and pseudonymity. If you do know the owner of an address, you can track the respective transactions. Thus the anonymity is being void. If you for example send someone BTC, you know their address and can track the funds. Or in case of for example Mt. Gox addresses, people have tracked funds through their wallets...

Yes, academics have written papers on this.

Care to share some sources or examples of those papers? It's an interesting topic!

Any address can be tracked easily. But the owner of address is anonymous. At some extent it is still anonymous. We can generate as many addresses as we can to receive BTC instantly with no one knowing the owner.

It is possible to track your address back to your identity if you somehow associate the address with your identity (using your IP address to transmit a TX, send funds to an exchange that has verified your identity)

Yeah that's part of the pseudonymous nature of BTC. One doesn't know for sure who's the owner of a specific address. But even if you figure that out, one can pretty easily just use another address and thus remain separate from the first one!

Using multiple adresses and shared sends and mixers does remove that.

And what about cash out BTC to USD? How i can see it's weak element. What is the most secure way to cashout money from BTC to USD?

could you give more info about this? are there some software for "shared sends and mixers" or i need to do it by myself?

Shared send is less anonymous and for mixing coins you can use bitmixer.io for example. These are both online and you don't need to install anything.

'Tis the nature of the beast.
Read and learn.

Shared send is a feature on blockchain.info's wallet that allows you to send coins to another address but it will go through several intermediary addresses first and each transaction to each intermediary address has several input and output addresses 

Here is also bitmixer method:
BitMixer has a huge reserve of Bitcoins already in its system. A user sends us their BTC and we cap it onto the end of our reserve chain. We then pay the amount of what was purchased from the beginning of our reserve. This method of mixing means that you do not have to wait for other customers – coins already mixed are instantly available.

Here's a list of research papers (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Research) related to bitcoin (some of them are related to privacy and blockchain analysis)

use Darkcoin, it has built in anonymity

you can still use BTC for store of value, then buy Darkcoin for critical transactions on demand

NO! Don't use Darkcoin! Use Bytecoin or Monero!

Darkcoin was just bashed because the "anonymity" nodes were being hosted on Amazon servers, which are monitored by the government, so they can see everything that was going on.

Bytecoin/Monero are better because they are harder to track, so don't use Darkcoin as transactions, unless you don't care if people see them.

So Bitcoin as a store of value, and BYC/XMR for critical and anonymous transactions.

Bytecoin/Monero = BlockChain Bloat and will never see the light of day as a usable currency...

DarkCoin MasterNodes are spread all around the world and Proof of Service is just the beginning for these nodes...

Firstly I think that bitcoin will have a major privacy issue on its hands when marketing and data warehhouse businesses start (its already begun) to data mine bitcoin info to link user transactions to businesses and services. This can be sold for marketing and other purposes for huge money. Information is power!

Secondly To see how decentralized darkcoins masternodes are - see here https://drk.mn/masternodes.html - 700 all over the world and this is just the beginning.

I used Bytecoin/Monero and it took 1-2 days just to sync the blockchain and its only 2-3 months old. Scalability, incompatibility with bitcoin api where all infrastructure exists and bloat will kill mainstream use. Can you imagine if it had the same number of transactions as bitcoin. The blockchain would need to be shipped on 1 TB harddrives to every user.

With Darkcoin's Darksend+ (RC4 and beyond,) not even individual masternodes know what's going on, as multiple masternodes and virgin addresses each time are used to anonymise your coins.

Subverting enough masternodes to be useful is financially and technically unfeasible, and pointless anyway as ALL Darkcoins will be automatically anonymised prior to sending anywhere, with change also going to virgin addresses each time.

Bytecoin etc. are currently unscaleable to useful levels and have other problems as well.

Yes, as long as your address(es) is(are) not revealed you are "anonymous". You could still be tracked (IP, exchanges, etc) but it would demand some effort.

Getting court order to subpoena exchange can be done fairly easy with patriot act.

All alts are way less secure then bitcoin is. If you want to deal in any serious amount of money then you must use bitcoin otherwise you will be risking your TX being reversed from an attack on the blockchain of the altcoin

Yes, but in this case, unfortunately, the State has got enormous power, and no limits or scruples, so they will do their dirty things, and end up "catching" anyone they want, anyway :/

Is it really possible, with ANY altcoin... I doubt...

Just being smart about your transactions will help tremendously. Don't use your main wallet for transactions that you don't want to be associated with and make use of the mixers if you are truly concerned. And of course don't reuse addresses.

  

That leads me to question; then why has it been done?

If you took some time to study alternate coins, you'd see the majority being really insecure and weak. But there are a few that actually have been secured on par with other high-end alts. How do you think Darkcoin got its $5 value?

A majority of alts will always be poor excuses of coins, but there are things that have been matured and secured so that they may be used with confidence, not as a pump n dump.

I think it's been made clear that BItcoin isn't anonymous in official announcements and discussions but it would take a lot of effort to prove who sent that transaction and a lot of people use disposable addresses and always use a clean one for another transaction.

It is very possible to attack any altcoin blockchain, just as it is possible to attack the bitcoin blockchain.

The higher the hashrate of the network of the specific coin the more expensive it is to launch an attack on the blockchain. With most alts having a small hashrate, it is not difficult to attack most alts.

Sure, with this I agree. No doubt of what you have said here, Harley997, as well as what Yakamoto also said. But I could not agree with cutepuppy's radical statement that "All alts are way less secure then bitcoin is. If you want to deal in any serious amount of money then you must use bitcoin otherwise you will be risking your TX being reversed from an attack on the blockchain of the altcoin".

In fact, I believe that there are some (maybe a few, who knows) altcoins that are safe.

Blockchain analysis techniques have totally removed Bitcoins anonymity, It is just a case of how many resources the forensic analysis team have at their disposal.
If you are talking of an individual Bitcoin users anonymity against aggressive government agencies then even employing mixers and 1 shot addresses is going to be ineffective.

There are some newer Cryptocoins that tout anonymity using various methods of blockchain obfuscation ,of these Darkcoin has the most promise IMO as the development team has been the most transparent and have come up with several unique inovations that other coins were quick to clone.
Darkcoins unique Darksend+  blockchain obfuscation system is currently undergoing an independent code and feature review from noted Crypographer and Crypto coin expert Kristov Atlas, the results of Kristov's analysis are due in about a week.

bitcoin is only anonymous right up to the second that you tell people publicly who the address belongs to

In order to attack any altcoin you will need to put forth some level of effort (read money). Since all altcoins have a very low hashrate when compared to bitcoin (and when looked at alone) it would take a small amount of effort (money) to attack altcoins. If you are dealing in small amounts, say only $5 worth, then it would likely be unprofitable to attack the alt. If you are dealing in larger amounts, say even a few thousand dollars, then an attacker could simply rent a few hundred dollars worth of mining to launch a 51% attack on the network to reverse his altcoin payment to you.