Making Bitcoin Fully anonymous ?

[OmegaStarScream]

I guess we all agree here that Bitcoin is Pseudonymous and not anonymous , It's possible to use mixers,exchanges/gambling websites to mix your coins for the moment but It's just make things confusing and not anonymous for people to track you.

Darkwallet has officially failed and I'm not sure what they did with the funds , Zerocoin/Zerocash project kinda stopped the project and they are now working on an alternative coin called Zcash (and won't be used to make BTC anonymous).

I wanna know now , Is it possible to make Bitcoin anonymous or It's not meant to be in the first place when It first got designed by Satoshi ? If it's possible then would that require some modification in the Core and would need a Hard-fork ?

[marleybobthedog]

Making bitcoin fully anonymous is not a good idea because we will not be about yup know whether the third party had send us payment or not. Like now we can check in blockchain but if it is made fully anonymous then there will be more possibilities of scaming.

[BTCLovingDude]

i am not sure about this but i think bitcoin was never supposed to be 100% anonymous.

Making bitcoin fully anonymous is not a good idea because we will not be about yup know whether the third party had send us payment or not. Like now we can check in blockchain but if it is made fully anonymous then there will be more possibilities of scaming.

being anonymous or not doesn't really change anything about possibility of getting scammed. scammers have been scamming others with fiat even long before bitcoin existed.

[n691309]

Since they moved to altcoins business then for us using bitcoin we should use many different ways to be anonymous and few of them can be by using different IP addresses different wallets different exchanges and different bitcoin mixers and we end by paying some fees which worth or not.

[altcoinhosting]

IMHO, bitcoin wasn't designed to be anonymous, however, you can always achieve a reasonable amount of anonimity by combining a couple of methods... If you combine enough methods, it becomes virtually impossible to trace coins back to you...

For example, if you combine some of these things, over a secure VPN/Tor/proxy server (or a combination)
- one, or even better, several mixers
- exchange BTC to monero or a cryptonote-based currency, withdraw to a second exchange an change back to BTC
- use gambling sites with a central hotwallet
- buy freshly mined blocks directly from a pool owner

I would like to see a governement trace you if you used a combination of these 4 methods while always being connected over a different, trusted VPN + a proxy or Tor.

Offcourse, like n691309 already said, each of these methods will cost you some satoshi's and a lot of time...

[TraderETH]

I think we can use bitcoin mixing services like bitmixer and cryptomixer or another cryptos coins mixing services who can be trusted and it will make keep be anonymous, although we must pay fees for using their service.

[~Bitcoin~]

Using multiple bitcoin mixing services for one mixing could be good solution to remain anonymous even if one mixing service give info about mixing to authority in case of investigation. However most of the normal people who use bitcoin in daily life doesn't care much about remaining anonymous so i think the anonymity bitcoin provide itself is enough for most of us and for one who need complete anonymity are and will keep on using mixing services, gamblings sites, exchangers etc to mix up coins.

[davis196]

I guess we all agree here that Bitcoin is Pseudonymous and not anonymous , It's possible to use mixers,exchanges/gambling websites to mix your coins for the moment but It's just make things confusing and not anonymous for people to track you.

Darkwallet has officially failed and I'm not sure what they did with the funds , Zerocoin/Zerocash project kinda stopped the project and they are now working on an alternative coin called Zcash (and won't be used to make BTC anonymous).

I wanna know now , Is it possible to make Bitcoin anonymous or It's not meant to be in the first place when It first got designed by Satoshi ? If it's possible then would that require some modification in the Core and would need a Hard-fork ?

No cryptocurrency will be 100% anonymous.

Making a cryptocurrency 99,99% anonymous will require big investments and huge efforts.

That`s just my opinion.

[vero]

the reason for what became completely anonymous, although our transactions can be traced through txid but will not be easy to find the identity of the user bitcoin.

[Jeremycoin]

I think it's just not meant to be fully anonymous at the first time because a currency can't be fully anonymous. The reason is because if it fully anonymous then how can we know the owner of an address, how could we make a transaction to someone if we don't even know that the address belongs to someone we wanted to trade with.

[btccashacc]

i personally feel that bitcoin is good enough for me, i mean i'm not a criminal thus i dont have any problem if bitcoin is fully anonymous or just pseudonymous, but i understand sometimes we need to make our transaction is private or untraceable, well there are some method that makes our transaction is annoymous like mix our coin on mixing service, convert our bitcoin to monero, or others however it requires little cost.

[Dahhi]

I wonder why everyone wants to go anonymous anyway...

It's not like we are all drug dealers

[awesome31312]

A good way to make Bitcoin fully anonymous is to sell it and buy monero in its place.

[BingoDog]

I wonder why everyone wants to go anonymous anyway...

It's not like we are all drug dealers

That is not the point. Of course that not all Bitcoin users are using it for criminal activities but some of people just don't want that everyone knows they are Bitcoin users, especialy in the countries where governments are not very friendly to Bitcoin. Or where tax have to be paid.

[awesome31312]

I wonder why everyone wants to go anonymous anyway...

It's not like we are all drug dealers

Drug dealers are not the only group of people who want privacy. People like Snowden or journalists who will get beheaded for talking smack about their government on the internet do too.

[OROBTC]

...

Most people using BTC are not using it for anything illegal.  And most people using it are small users.

Therefore, mixing Bitcoin and staying away from breaking the law should be enough on its own for "pretty good privacy".

If/when Mycellium starts automatic mixing with their rumored new wallet will make that easier.  The more people mixing, the harder it becomes for our privacy to be cracked.

[franky1]

no matter what you do, you cannot cure the human factor.

EG
OP, recognize this
3KfPAawFK8qG8KmRBHfkyNtvJwSLwHDJam

sorry but now this address is know to be linked to you.
and that did not require any bitcoin code or detective work raiding through the blockchain..

next if you were to use funds to buy a car.. by checking the car outside of your house and then seeing you dont have enough FIAT income declared on a tax return to cover the cost of a car.. your caught again.

no matter what you try to do to the code to hide money. the human element of asking for money or spending money is where it fails. and always will fail.

no one cares about how many hands it has passed through. all they care about is how much you received and you spent. and that can always be found out by checking the human element.

[Milkduds]

Breaks down to hard you want to make some one sweat to figure out the money trail. Right now companies/government are unable or unwilling to commit time or resources,but that could change.

If I had a substantial amount,I would be using as many ways to throw the scent as possible. Often think gambling sites are overlooked for this factor.

[Lauda]

You are thinking about this from a very limited perspective. Do you really think that Bitcoin would ever be legalized in places like the US if it were 100% anonymous (hint, nothing is 100% anonymous)? The answer is obviously no. Generally I'm very pro-anonymity and privacy, however it should be opt-in, not opt-out. There are some proposals that will help with the anonymity such as Tumblebit.

A good way to make Bitcoin fully anonymous is to sell it and buy monero in its place.

This sentence does not make sense, and has nothing to do with making Bitcoin fully anonymous.

If/when Mycellium starts automatic mixing with their rumored new wallet will make that easier.  The more people mixing, the harder it becomes for our privacy to be cracked.

I don't think it's a question of 'if' anymore, but rather just 'when'. I've read about that feature not long ago, should be very useful indeed.

Drug dealers are not the only group of people who want privacy. People like Snowden or journalists who will get beheaded for talking smack about their government on the internet do too.

Correct, however there are plenty of methods to obstruct blockchain analysis to a certain degree. In addition to that, they can't really prevent you from converting to fiat (you can always face-to-face with someone for cash).

[unamis76]

I don't remember Darkwallet being officially closed down/development ceased. If I very well remember, the project was open source, so anyone can take it further.

Nevertheless, I think OP has answered his question already: Bitcoin isn't meant to be fully anonymous, and I'd like to see it stay that way for years to come, if not for eternity (and I'd like to see whatever comes to replace Bitcoin in a distant future adopt exactly the same stance about anonymity).