Bitcoin Forum

Whether bitcoin is really anonymous?
somebody said you can trace the source of BTC such as where the bit coin is from, traded through which exchanger, originally from which BTC wallet, is that right?
Thanks

If you are only dealing in small amounts then yes it is for all intensive purposes anonymous. For very small amounts it is not realistically feasible to trace bitcoin that you purchase on an exchange to your wallet that you control the private keys to. It could be done if an attacker knew exactly where to look (meaning they have other evidence), but other then that no. 

You can also use services like bitcoinfog and bitmixer that "mix" your coins which makes it much more difficult to trace bitcoin back to you. However when you start to deal with very large amounts of bitcoin these kinds of services start to get much less effective.

what means very large amounts?

Bitcoin is not completely anonymous. You might be a nameless address when you transfer bitcoin. Once you want to exchange into fiat, you will loose anonymity. Most exchanges requires you to verify your account with proves of identity.

Not really, but you can mix your coins to keep  anonymous.

IMO It's anonymouse for the average Joe but not for net detectives, which is why there are services such as Bitmixer.

is bitmixer.io reliable?
Actually I just want to be anonymous and increasing privacy, but not doing something wrong, if I mix with some other people's bitcoin,  in some case if there is a criminal inside, does that will influence me?

agree with you,Bitcoin is not completely anonymous now and all exchanges requires you to verify your account with proves of identity.

Already been answered a lot of times. Its not actually anonymous and they can track you somehow. But there are ways to make it anonymous.
Even mixing sites are anonymous, but iff the government asks them for any proof, then they will have to give the information away .

You can buy cash through an anonymous exchange or through cash without giving your identity. You can mine coins as well!

Still your personal name is not attached to the transaction.
But what about the IP address?

That is what makes it not anonymous. It is possible to get the IP address if you look at from where it originated.
However there are altcoins which offer complete anonymity.

How ? what are the difference? both are mined using a device that is connected to the network ,and gets IP Address.

You can't get the precise IP from where the bitcoins have been sent or received from the blockchain. You could always use Tor, a vpn or a free public wifi to hide your private IP if needed.

So the only trace (possibly) is to the miner (source) ?

Bitcoin, especially the big amounts, are nearly impossible to make anonymous. They show your IP anx that usually goes to your identity.

There are altcoins that are not based on bitcoin (or not that much) and there the transfers are automatically mixed and anonymized. It's even a way safer method than relying on somebody else (the businesz/site that mixes your coins)

Test this poll  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=898563.0;all Untraceable cryptocurrency ( Poll ) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=898563.0;all)

If you buy bitcoins without giving your identity, nobody will know you bought bitcoins.

There is any specific limit?

Spend some time and check what are the normal amounts of bitcoin in transactions. More higher you go out of those numbers, more visible you'll be.
There are a lot of ppl watching the big transactions because they may be followed by big dump/price drop.

Where? do you know one.

localbitcoins.

You can also trade your coins with someone for anonymity, say someone in a different country. Maybe through an escrow.
This way as well, you can add layers of anonymity.

Not anymore,it is now requires you to verify your account with proves of identity.

The level of anonymity is related to the effort someone is willing to invest to track the transactions.
For most people, for most transactions - bitcoin is fairly anonymous, especially if you follow best practice and do not reuse addresses.

How would people here quantify anonymity?

BTC doesn't need to be anonimized...  when i want to hide my btc's trail i trade it for darkcoins, put trough Darksend and go trade back to btc

no ID's, no need to verifiy anything!!

30min max :)

its almost impossible to trace because of masternodes are doing their job with mixing coins, there are like 2100 masternodes atm, and counting!!!  who's job is to mix it... even with 2 rounds of mixing its so hard to tell what-where-who ... and if you use 5-6 rounds of mixing... well sir find me someone who can trace it back to you ;)

BTC is as anonymous as showing someone your whole entire accounting information. One of the core devs have expressed concerns over privacy rights advocates realizing just how open and public Bitcoin transactions actually are.

How Anonymous is Bitcoin? A Backgrounder for Policymakers

http://www.coindesk.com/anonymous-bitcoin-backgrounder-policymakers/

my advice to OP : learn more about Darkcoin, its not only a great tool to anonymize your transactions but
is also constantly developing new technologies (InstantX for speedy transactions and Two Factor Auth on blockchain level for
higher security)

but BTC should be like this, TRANSPARENT LEDGER and open book ;)

thats why u use BTC 2.0 = Darkcoin ... just use darksend for one time and you will what im talking about

in the beginning, criminals and the rest of the criminal underground heard about BTC's anonimity... they jumped in and didn't even realized they are putting everything on public ledger ... man they were wrong

BTC transactions are not anonymous anyway, but all of it is locked into a public ledger

In any case, the owner can not be tracked

How we can't tracked? ???

There are definitely other alt coins that are much more anon.

Yeah, some ways. You could try to use a mixer, however not  going to help, if you commit a serious crime, as they will be able to get the mixer to give up on your initial transaction. You could transfer it through various exchanges, and you should be good.

bitcoin is not completely anonymous, if you have some free time and technical bitcoin knowledge

Monero for example - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0

I think the best altcoin if you want complete anonymity is Darkcoin . They happen to have a whole development only for making it completely anonymous.

Yes...it's true. Especially after recent rush of updates finally the darksend mixing is kickin' !!

It depends how you use it.

maybe yes, maybe not. because I do not know the beginning of bitcoin :)

There are lot of ways, you can make bitcoins anonymous.
You could also look at darkcoin for that.

I don't think that bitcoin is completely anonymous as one can track an address and find the list of transactions that have taken place through the address although the owner will be unknown.

Well the owner's identity can be found using the nodes/transitioning of transaction.

Really? I did not know as there is no name assigned to a wallet of a person but may be we can get to know the owner based on his forum profile link/posts. The main fact is that blockchain does not have any kind of verification required by one to open a wallet and so the identity is anonymous.

The identity of the owner is traceable through the IP addresses that is used. Thats how the government usually traces some of the crimes

Oh OK. Then that way the identity is too not anonymous but since one can own "n" number of wallets, it should have some kind of verification required before using the wallet to trace the identity of a person.

Well Basically and comparing to the other payment methods , Bitcoin is really annonymus because you don't need to provide any of your real informations to get a Bitcoin adress/wallet (Name , Age , country , adress etc ... ) . also those exchangers in my opinion defeats the whole purpose of the Bitcoin because they do need those informations .
Now , yes Bitcoin can be traced (x Adress sent to x adress , or x adress received x adress with x amount) but those informations are really not useful and cannot lead to you .
Bottom line , Bitcoin is indeed Annonymus if you know how to use it . and like Satoshi nakamoto said people should a new adress for each transaction if they want to stay annonymus .

~ Madness

if you want full anonymity , use an altcoin that is made for that instead , i'd reccomend Darkcoin however there's probably others aswell.

You can store much value in any altcoin that offers more anonymous transactions and they are less safe.

If the altcoin crash, then you would lose your Bitcoins. Alt coins are extremely volatile, they can crash at any given time. For bitcoin anonymity is easy to achieve too. Use a mixer to mix your coins and use the coinchoose function in Bitcoin core to prevent it from being linked to another address.

Bitcoin is not anonymous but use of Bitcoin can be if you know what you are doing.

The problem is as a wallet address is associated to a person everything you've done and are yet to do can be traced. There are ways to regain anonymity but it wont be easy for the average user. I don't see this as a real problem today but in the future when this information is easily accessible companies will use your personal private information against you. There have been situations like this already; Target for example found out a mans young daughter was pregnant due to her buying patterns matching those of a pregnant woman before he even knew.

Unless a solution to these situations is found this could become a real problem. I can see it effecting insurance to mortgage rates and a multitude of other things.

bitcoin is not anonymous , use darkcoin instead.

The example is not applicable for Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin address are generated for every new transaction, no one can specifically trace it to a single entity accurately as they may as well as been spent before by other's. If you don't tell everyone about your address online and use a new address for every transaction, no one will know who are you. Bitcoin isn't meant to be fully anonymous in the first place.

it is not completely anonymous but you can use mixer and exchanges etc so that it will hard(or even impossible) for others to trace you

The blockchain in itself can trace back anything, only the fact if an address can be known is entirely up to the user's wishes :)

Tracing a transaction can be more or less difficult, regardless of the medium of exchange, depending on how well you protect your own identity. There are many ways to trace one or more of the parties involved in a transaction, regardless of what currency is used, so anonymity is largely dependent on many things besides the currency.

TT