Ah - we were talking about two end results. I was talking about being able to trace all of a single individual's transactions, whereas you were talking about being able to reveal the identity of a person given an address or a few addresses. It would be extremely easy to identify me.  Oh well. |
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But really, I just want to see someone TRY to track another person's activity to see how feasible it is.
It's not an issue of feasibility, tracking an address's trades are certainly feasible. The question is resources. An entity with unlimited human resources could track down the payments of a person, but there isn't a way to do this without human intervention. The data just doesn't exist to automaticly tie an address to a human being, although that might be made easier using data mining techniques. For example, in a normal transaction a human being would be able to look at the transaction and guess that the smaller of the two outputs is the change, but a computer program doing the same thing is going to be unreliable. The idea that all of the addresses in bitcoin can be traced back to an individual real identity is rediculous because that would literally require limitless human resources, primarily in the form of trained detectives doing classical detective work. That's simply impossible, and that is why bitcoin is as anonymous as the user is willing|able to be. Anonimity is inconvient, and most people don't need that much of it. Bitcoin doesn't really promise anominity, it just makes it possible. I think it would be absurd to make the assumption that the smaller of the two is change. For instance: - I used to mine with deepbit, and when I did, I took payouts of 10BTC or more. - I have payed other people 10 payments of 0.25 BTC, and 12-15 payments of 0.10 BTC or less. - In each of those instances, my change would have been far greater than the sum sent out. How else would it be feasible to figure out which address is change and which address is not? Your entire argument that all transactions for a person are traceable seems to hinge on the fact that you can figure out what is change and what is not, but as it stands, I just don't see how that is possible. You could use a bunch of guesswork, and perhaps get lucky if the person sent to another publicized address (i.e., I donated to a given cause, then they would know which address was change), but other than that, I just don't see how tracing a person's transactions is really possible. |
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What happens during the night/winter?
And why couldn't the Fed just block IP/DNS to the server? They're trying to enact a law to make it legal to do so, and if they do, then all the major ISPs would be forced to block any sites the government asks them to. They could probably do it right now anyway under some "threat to the US" act.
Is Bitcoin worrying you or are you busy with some illegal stuff? Are you buying rights of ownership to DIGITAL CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEY CERTIFICATES on a very secure network employing a very capital intensive group of machines to keep it that secure? A network effectively rendering a very efficient, fluid, secure book keeping system. It is not as anonymous as some people think. Their is a block chain recording each and every transaction. Cash laundering and bitcoin laundering is illegal. Laundering is not a standard feature of the bitcoin network. You would easily be able to prove where you got your bitcoins from by utilising the blockchain. And remember to pay your taxes this year if you profit from any barter transactions in bitcoin. If bitcoins are so publicly traceable, I dare you to try to find my current wallet balance. Or at least, take your best educated guess at it. I do have a couple of publicly-available bitcoin addresses, so what else can you tell about my bitcoining activity from information you can find? With enough time (which I do not want to spend on your dare) and effort (which I would put in something more positive) and resources (which law enforcement agencies do not have a shortage of), your challenge will be met - given enough of your key transfers and some (even the slightest) transparency into the real/traceable online world from you or any of your wallet's key transfer's counter parties. Sometimes your keys combine to make up for a larger amount and the difference from the intended value to transfer gets issued to a new key that you just maybe spent to someone transparent, and voilla! questions asked to this transparent person of how some known illegal money spent on btc transfered to you and then to the transparent person renders your identity from the interrogation maybe. Good luck, it seems like you would have a lot of tracks to cover - is it worth the effort for the average joe who will just prove his innocence by utilising the blockchain. Even if its not a requirement in your jurisdiction to prove your own innocence, your reluctance to do so might be a dead give away warranting investigation. So you could potentially link two addresses together because they were included in the same transaction, but without knowing which of the addresses is the "change" address, how would you know how much I actually sent out and how much I kept for myself? And I'm not worried about being investigated - I've got nothing to hide. I'm not in to drugs or anything that isn't legal, and if my profits turn out to be greater than my expenses from my ventures in Bitcoins, then I will pay my due taxes on it. I believe my effective tax rate this last year was 0.66%, so I'm not terribly worried about how much that will amount to.  But really, I just want to see someone TRY to track another person's activity to see how feasible it is. Not because I am worried about hiding myself (why would I publicly post about my website(s), and my bitcoin addresses if I was?), but because I am a curious person, and enjoy challenges, and like to see what is possible and what is not possible with technology. |
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What moron sent 2 BTC?
Lol, if I was setting up a troll like this, I would SO have several accounts of BTC from which to send 2 BTC to the troll account every day, just to make everyone madder. |
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What happens during the night/winter?
And why couldn't the Fed just block IP/DNS to the server? They're trying to enact a law to make it legal to do so, and if they do, then all the major ISPs would be forced to block any sites the government asks them to. They could probably do it right now anyway under some "threat to the US" act.
Is Bitcoin worrying you or are you busy with some illegal stuff? Are you buying rights of ownership to DIGITAL CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEY CERTIFICATES on a very secure network employing a very capital intensive group of machines to keep it that secure? A network effectively rendering a very efficient, fluid, secure book keeping system. It is not as anonymous as some people think. Their is a block chain recording each and every transaction. Cash laundering and bitcoin laundering is illegal. Laundering is not a standard feature of the bitcoin network. You would easily be able to prove where you got your bitcoins from by utilising the blockchain. And remember to pay your taxes this year if you profit from any barter transactions in bitcoin. If bitcoins are so publicly traceable, I dare you to try to find my current wallet balance. Or at least, take your best educated guess at it. I do have a couple of publicly-available bitcoin addresses, so what else can you tell about my bitcoining activity from information you can find? |
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No, because it is stupid to pay $1.00USD in electricity costs to generate $0.75USD worth of BTC when I could instead spend $1.00USD to purchase $1.00USD worth of BTC.
Good point - I should have had that as a poll option. |
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What happens during the night/winter?
And why couldn't the Fed just block IP/DNS to the server? They're trying to enact a law to make it legal to do so, and if they do, then all the major ISPs would be forced to block any sites the government asks them to. They could probably do it right now anyway under some "threat to the US" act.
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Personally, I kind of think that we'd see a drastic bounce-back of the market to compensate for such a drop. I haven't run the numbers recently, but I'd estimate that anywhere above $1.25/btc, I would remain profitable mining. I can't imagine it dropping to $1.25 and not bouncing back. There's too much support here. Too many people who believe in the idea for it to have a complete spiral to the bottom, at least when looking at it from the perspective of a panic-sell situation. I know I'd probably be lining up to buy bitcoins if they were only $1 each again.  |
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Say that the value of bitcoins dropped so drastically that it was suddenly costing you more in electricity to continue mining, compared to the value of the bitcoins you were generating. Say this drop happened last night, and it is the next morning when you realize this. Also assume that the drop resulted in you generating only 75% of the value in bitcoins as what you are paying for electricity to mine. You have no idea whether the market would bounce back, or whether it was a permanent drop to this new valuation.
Would you continue mining?
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I thought there was a "lite" version of the client that didn't require downloading the block chain?
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Mr. Gaddafi,
I am currently very busy, and do not have time to fulfill your request. However, I might have an offer in which you would be interested.
One of the companies I manage is two weeks away from the grand opening of a great gallery of art, and I cannot seem to find enough finger paintings to fill it. I pay each of my artists 2,750 BTC to 7,800 BTC, depending on the quality of their work. Still, I do not have enough paintings in progress. Perhaps it is because not very many people use Bitcoins yet. Since you mentioned your own use of Bitcoins, I can see that you realize the value of using them as a currency, which may make you a great fit for earning a large sum of Bitcoins through my project.
I am getting desperate, and may even be willing to pay a 50% bonus if the painting is completed and shipped to me quickly enough!
Let me know if you are interested ASAP, so that I may give you the details of the work involved.
Best Regards,
"The" Sgt Spike
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The P2P pie is growing ever large, which means the portion of untaxed "income" is growing larger as well. Who wants to take bets on how long it'll take the government to start automatically including some sort of tax on transactions made with these services?
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Wait... 100 users, and it's existed since 2004?
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Guess it's not for me then. I couldn't write a decent 2 page article in just an hour. |
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I'm very interested in using this for importing custom-made key pairs (sec + addr) into a given wallet. Would that be possible even though an address may not have yet been used in a block, and has a 0 value?
Also, when could we expect this sort of a change to be made?
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Thanks anisoptera. Guess I'll need to start looking at how data is stored in the wallet.
Thanks for the heads up Maged! Sounds like that sort of a pull could be very useful!
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It's the inevitable downside to an unregulated and untraceable currency. Without fundamentally changing Bitcoin (and challenging the ideals of it), we have no choice but to accept the consequences.
EDIT: But on the upside, maybe this will help parents become real parents again, instead of relying on the government to protect their children from anything the government deems "unsafe".
It's the inevitable downside to a currency. We have no choice but to accept the consequences. When you give you did $20 bucks, can you tell where he/she spent it? I think the responsibility falls under the parents for controlling what their child is exposed to on the net. It's not the fault of the currency at all imo. This is a good thing just like you say having real parents again. I'd say even cash is a little more traceable. You have banks that track the serial numbers on bills that come through. You know when it was issued, and for how much. You can gather DNA (?) or drug evidence from bills. They can be marked (as some drug stores do, in order to help police track them in case of a robbery). *shrug* |
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I'm calling this the "JerFelix Bitcoin Valuation Model", in case you want to refer to it later. Learn it. There will be a test!
the fatwallet analysts beat you to it: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1090435/m15946753/#m15946753i agree that this is a decent way to think about the fundamental, nonspeculative value of a bitcoin. but it requires that you get the odds of continuing rapid growth right. at the moment, saying that the current block chain has a 10% chance of storing $2 billion in fundamental value sounds unrealistically optimistic to me. it stores only a small fraction of the $55 million 'market capitalisation' figure right now. It doesn't need to be fundamental value - it can be just as fake of a market cap as the current one is. |
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I'll give you 2 BTC for it.
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Since no one is asking the question we are all wondering... how much exactly DO you have stored up in bitcoins right now?
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