APOD - Anonymous Physical Object Delivery [PDF]

[andrewbadr]

The primary issue is not with IP addresses, though that's certainly one way for information to leak.

The primary issue is with insufficient obfuscation of the block chain. Consider Joe Sixpack who receives his salary in bitcoins (for now ignore that some countries have already made that illegal). He gets one gigantic output at the start of every month and then spends it. Now anyone who happens to receive money from Joe can just trace back the transactions in a block explorer until they arrive at a salary-sized output and make the very reasonable assumption that this is how much Joe earns. Probably he would feel that this is a major privacy violation.

Bitcoin is full of these sorts of things. Fixing it is going to be a lot of work. We started already - the payment protocol is laying the foundation for resolving it and improving the privacy of the system by allowing single logical payments to be created out of multiple independent Bitcoin transactions.

Mike, I did some thinking about this subject a while ago. I'm sure your understanding is much deeper than mine, but there is one idea you might find interesting: limiting the valid transaction sizes (measured in BTC) to some small, finite, exponentially-distributed set. See http://andrewbadr.com/log/11/anonymizing-bitcoin/ for details.

[1715016136]

1715016136

[1715016136]

1715016136

[1715016136]

1715016136

[1715016136]

1715016136

[marcus_of_augustus]

Ok, the specific law that relates to what is "lawful money" in the US, i.e. what is money in the eyes of the law, is specified in the Federal Reserve Act 1913. There is a body of Supreme Court rulings and precedences surrounding the 1913 Act, that you can dig out for yourself. Interestingly, the federal reserve private bank debt notes have been brought into being under the body of contract law not civil law, so as to not fall foul of the constitution whilst still retaining FR monopoly on credit issuance, but the 1913 Act specifies that FRNs can be "redeemed for lawful money".

In fact you do not even have to go look up the Federal reserve Act 1913 (but it could be instructive for your learning), you simply need to take a greenback out of your wallet and read the fine print on it!
"This note is legal tender for all debts public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States treasury, or at any Federal Reserve bank."

Note that just by using FRNs contract law debt notes for commerce, but not redeeming for "lawful money", you are agreeing implicitly to enter into contract with the Federal Reserve and then have to play by their rules.

http://savingtosuitorsclub.net/forumdisplay.php?16-Private-Credit-vs-Lawful-Money

It is quite specific what is "lawful money" ... trying to claim bitcoin as "money" in court could land you in prison as a counterfeiter.

Now, do you want to try to tell the judge what is and isn't "lawful money" ?

[Mike Hearn]

Mike, I did some thinking about this subject a while ago. I'm sure your understanding is much deeper than mine, but there is one idea you might find interesting: limiting the valid transaction sizes (measured in BTC) to some small, finite, exponentially-distributed set. See http://andrewbadr.com/log/11/anonymizing-bitcoin/ for details.

Yes, I think in future we'll be splitting the concept of payment from the concept of bitcoin transaction so a single payment may actually be made using several unlinked transactions that move outputs of roughly the right amounts. The payment protocol work already takes us in that direction. It would close those kinds of privacy leaks although it'll make payments somewhat "soft" in that when somebody sends you a large payment, it might actually take a bit longer to completely arrive (as it'll be delivered in chunks).