where is the anonimity?

[pereira4]

Bitcoin can be anonimous and is transparent. You can explore all transactions on blockchain, but you don't know which user is behind the transaction. If you use tor and use a diferent addres every time, you will be more anonimus. When you buy bitcoins on an exchange, the exchange have your id information (not too anonimus). It depends on your use.

It depends on the exchanges, usually they don't have your id and stuff unless you want to deposit fiat money. In Poloniex case, you can deposit and withdraw money as long as it's all BTC without giving any details, but they ask for your real name. Everyone uses fake names on Poloniex tho (unless you want to withdraw above 2000 dollars in a single day but who needs that unless you are rich.
Im not sure if giving a fake name can put you in trouble tho.

[BirtRenaldsFan]

The anonymity is within using several addresses. Just use more than one.

Incorrect. Users can use taint analysis to establish a link between the few addresses. If the user accidentally spend inputs in two different address in one TX, it would be a clear indication of their link.

Accidents happen, but never likely. Using multiple accounts, wallets, VPN'S and so on will give you a ticket to making sure your identity is safe. Not to say that I do this but if anyone was to do this then it'd be completely effective. Even via PayPal, you can be anonymous if you don't actually link your PayPal to your bank accounts. I never did, and I was still able to make payments for things with people who kindly accepted PayPal.

[pereira4]

The anonymity is within using several addresses. Just use more than one.

Incorrect. Users can use taint analysis to establish a link between the few addresses. If the user accidentally spend inputs in two different address in one TX, it would be a clear indication of their link.

Accidents happen, but never likely. Using multiple accounts, wallets, VPN'S and so on will give you a ticket to making sure your identity is safe. Not to say that I do this but if anyone was to do this then it'd be completely effective. Even via PayPal, you can be anonymous if you don't actually link your PayPal to your bank accounts. I never did, and I was still able to make payments for things with people who kindly accepted PayPal.

That's a pain in the ass tho, we should have it easier. Also VPNs don't give you any anonymity... if they want they will request logs and trusting that a VPN will not keep logs is like trusting your favorite exchange will not run with the money tomorrow.. an act of faith.
Ideally we should have every transaction on Coinjoin type transactions by default and nodes somehow run by default with tor integrated to have another layer of privacy without needing to buy a VPN or know how to do any of that. It should be easy for newbies otherwise its useless cause we need a big bulk of privacy-enabled people to reach any decent amount of fungibility.
Thankfully in the Core team they know this so we have people like gmaxwell working on coinjoin type of transaction stuff and confidential transactions etc.

[pompatore]

is trezor anonymous?
can trezor company connect btc addresses to a specific trezor user's IP?

[Niya]

   I was looking at the blockchain.info site, and I noticed that there is a lot of information that can be found out about transactions. Including IP addresses to and from and everything else. Where does the anonimity come in if their is any?

In fact Bitcoin transactions are the most transparent ever. The only anonymous thing is that you cannot say who is the owner of an address just looking at blockchain.info. Anyway, there are several cryptocoins far more anonymous than Bitcoin, like Zcash for example.

[The One]

Lets say you and I trade bitcoins. I give you my address for you to send me some btc, now you have my address. You can now go to the blockchain.info site and look at all my previous and future transactions even if I move them to different wallets, someone can always track your coins, is that correct?

My main concern is, that I don´t want people who I trade with or anyone else finding out how much BTC I have. How do I prevent this?

Think in terms of having many bank accounts.

1 address for regular txs open to public.
1 or more, depending how many btc you have, for long term saving and address is private.

[Ucy]

First of all, bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This means that you don't know exactly who the other person is, but you have someway to identify them.

Secondly, blockchain.info does not give you the ip address of the person. It only gives you the ip address of the node that relayed the transaction to them, which is most likely not the person that sent the transaction. It is very difficult, next to impossible, to determine the ip address of the node that created the transaction.

Thirdly, you should not be reusing bitcoin addresses. By keeping your addresses separate for each transaction, then whoever is sending you Bitcoin will only know that you have at least the amount they sent you. They don't know how much you actually have. Services who also use new addresses for every transaction also protect your anonymity since others won't know who owns that new address. It could be your own wallet, your friend's, or that porn site you pay for.

There are also some services that can help you anonymize like mixers or CoinJoin transactions.

Wow this answer changed everything. I was almost becoming agitated when I saw his question on IP.
So our IPs are impossible to be revealed..
Bitcoin is a beautiful technology.

[Coffee135]

IP easy to change. But you can't hide the flow of Fiat into your account from the exchanger. According to this, the government could easily determine that you use with bitcoin. Anonymity is a beautiful tale. But for me it doesn't matter. I'm not a terrorist. Bitcoin is my extra income and I am glad.

[GreenBits]

First of all, bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This means that you don't know exactly who the other person is, but you have someway to identify them.

Secondly, blockchain.info does not give you the ip address of the person. It only gives you the ip address of the node that relayed the transaction to them, which is most likely not the person that sent the transaction. It is very difficult, next to impossible, to determine the ip address of the node that created the transaction.

Thirdly, you should not be reusing bitcoin addresses. By keeping your addresses separate for each transaction, then whoever is sending you Bitcoin will only know that you have at least the amount they sent you. They don't know how much you actually have. Services who also use new addresses for every transaction also protect your anonymity since others won't know who owns that new address. It could be your own wallet, your friend's, or that porn site you pay for.

There are also some services that can help you anonymize like mixers or CoinJoin transactions.

Wow this answer changed everything. I was almost becoming agitated when I saw his question on IP.
So our IPs are impossible to be revealed..
Bitcoin is a beautiful technology.

For the record, IP tracking is possible if they are running a compromised node (the IRS wouldnt go here, but a law enforcement org certainly would, esp if there is a decent amount of money to be seized). Proper address hygiene is vital, and takes away like 75% of what would be used to catch you up. Take it from the deep web dudes; the gov has enough money to find out who is behind an address if there is enough activity, or if the funds ever touch an exchange or financial institution that is regulated by a gov (they have KYC/AML requirements that they MUST observe). if you have a buddy that can convert your crypto to fait, that helps alot 

but if he is sloppy, your security is only as strong as his address hygiene/ security paradigm.

[Wipro]

IP easy to change. But you can't hide the flow of Fiat into your account from the exchanger. According to this, the government could easily determine that you use with bitcoin. Anonymity is a beautiful tale. But for me it doesn't matter. I'm not a terrorist. Bitcoin is my extra income and I am glad.

Use of bitcoin can find it up but person who is having the concern wallet cannot be able to find the person. Thus only people trying to get into the forum. I noticed some whales shows up their faces and some be hidden always. Still some of them only be in the forum to earn some passive alone.

[iram1011]

First of all, bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This means that you don't know exactly who the other person is, but you have someway to identify them.

Secondly, blockchain.info does not give you the ip address of the person. It only gives you the ip address of the node that relayed the transaction to them, which is most likely not the person that sent the transaction. It is very difficult, next to impossible, to determine the ip address of the node that created the transaction.

Thirdly, you should not be reusing bitcoin addresses. By keeping your addresses separate for each transaction, then whoever is sending you Bitcoin will only know that you have at least the amount they sent you. They don't know how much you actually have. Services who also use new addresses for every transaction also protect your anonymity since others won't know who owns that new address. It could be your own wallet, your friend's, or that porn site you pay for.

There are also some services that can help you anonymize like mixers or CoinJoin transactions.

But everything seems baseless when it comes to converting your Bitcoin into fiat using an exchange that has almost all your information and is connected to bank. Governments while making Bitcoin legal are now regulating exchanges and thus can have hold of these information when needed. Also there is a  risk of hacking. Until Bitcoin stays on internet, there are various ways of keeping it anonymous. But when it is converted to fiat. There is an identity threat.

[GreenBits]

First of all, bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This means that you don't know exactly who the other person is, but you have someway to identify them.

Secondly, blockchain.info does not give you the ip address of the person. It only gives you the ip address of the node that relayed the transaction to them, which is most likely not the person that sent the transaction. It is very difficult, next to impossible, to determine the ip address of the node that created the transaction.

Thirdly, you should not be reusing bitcoin addresses. By keeping your addresses separate for each transaction, then whoever is sending you Bitcoin will only know that you have at least the amount they sent you. They don't know how much you actually have. Services who also use new addresses for every transaction also protect your anonymity since others won't know who owns that new address. It could be your own wallet, your friend's, or that porn site you pay for.

There are also some services that can help you anonymize like mixers or CoinJoin transactions.

But everything seems baseless when it comes to converting your Bitcoin into fiat using an exchange that has almost all your information and is connected to bank. Governments while making Bitcoin legal are now regulating exchanges and thus can have hold of these information when needed. Also there is a  risk of hacking. Until Bitcoin stays on internet, there are various ways of keeping it anonymous. But when it is converted to fiat. There is an identity threat.

Exactly. The fines for not performing proper AML/KYC on a customer transferring over 10k value in x time frame are steep, and the ultimate risk on an aggregious enough violation would cost the exchange the ability to operate period. Ask BTCE and the myriad, pissed off BTCE users on the board (the furor on that one died pretty quick, no? ). It is the governments job to ensure there is no malfeasance associated with its currency, unless it is getting a cut of the action (ask Ollie North about that one). If you want to skirt the rules, dont buy anything that is highly government regulated. That would include fiat (you are buying fiat when you exchange btc for USD) and specie (precious metals).

its hard enough with the regulations that concern fiat, without even involving bitcoin. they will report a 2K transaction if they deem it 'suspect', this has happened to me personally, many, many times.

[craZyLovE0916]

First of all, bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This means that you don't know exactly who the other person is, but you have someway to identify them.

Secondly, blockchain.info does not give you the ip address of the person. It only gives you the ip address of the node that relayed the transaction to them, which is most likely not the person that sent the transaction. It is very difficult, next to impossible, to determine the ip address of the node that created the transaction.

Thirdly, you should not be reusing bitcoin addresses. By keeping your addresses separate for each transaction, then whoever is sending you Bitcoin will only know that you have at least the amount they sent you. They don't know how much you actually have. Services who also use new addresses for every transaction also protect your anonymity since others won't know who owns that new address. It could be your own wallet, your friend's, or that porn site you pay for.

There are also some services that can help you anonymize like mixers or CoinJoin transactions.

But everything seems baseless when it comes to converting your Bitcoin into fiat using an exchange that has almost all your information and is connected to bank. Governments while making Bitcoin legal are now regulating exchanges and thus can have hold of these information when needed. Also there is a  risk of hacking. Until Bitcoin stays on internet, there are various ways of keeping it anonymous. But when it is converted to fiat. There is an identity threat.

Exactly. The fines for not performing proper AML/KYC on a customer transferring over 10k value in x time frame are steep, and the ultimate risk on an aggregious enough violation would cost the exchange the ability to operate period. Ask BTCE and the myriad, pissed off BTCE users on the board (the furor on that one died pretty quick, no? ). It is the governments job to ensure there is no malfeasance associated with its currency, unless it is getting a cut of the action (ask Ollie North about that one). If you want to skirt the rules, dont buy anything that is highly government regulated. That would include fiat (you are buying fiat when you exchange btc for USD) and specie (precious metals).

its hard enough with the regulations that concern fiat, without even involving bitcoin. they will report a 2K transaction if they deem it 'suspect', this has happened to me personally, many, many times.

Yeah, and the government is serious about enforcing Bitcoin companies to KYC also, just look at what happened recently to BTC-e they were shut down for facilitating money laundering because they did not know their customer and lost lots of their funds as a result.

[ufaiz50]

   I was looking at the blockchain.info site, and I noticed that there is a lot of information that can be found out about transactions. Including IP addresses to and from and everything else. Where does the anonimity come in if their is any?

bitcoin over to Pseudo-anonymous (Pseudonym) we can disguise our IP even though you see their ip in blockchain does not mean it's their IP's doing the transaction. although you know their IP I think you don't know their identity.

[TrueCryptonaire]

   I was looking at the blockchain.info site, and I noticed that there is a lot of information that can be found out about transactions. Including IP addresses to and from and everything else. Where does the anonimity come in if their is any?

The IP address you are saying is the relay IP address of the node from which the transaction was broadcasted and is not the IP address of the person who have sent the transaction. And the said location is also of the particular bitcoin node and not the user. Bitcoin is not truly anonymous as the addresses can be linked with each other and also their available balance and from which address it came, so on this fact you can say that bitcoin is not truly anonymous. But there is also a benefit of using bitcoin and this transparency of transactions as anyone can verify the transaction so it is quiet handy in case of trades.

[JollySkipper]

Bitcoin is not anonymous that's why Monero and Zcash are coming in. Anonymity is a very hard thing to exist in our time.

[FJNuñez]

The anonymity is wherever you know where to find it. It is also coming with the Grin blockchain and the MimbleWimble protocol, but right now Samourai Wallet is the best way to transact anonymously on the BTC network.