Sending & Receiving Bitcoin - is your IP address publically listed or anonymous? If it's publically listed, where can you go to see it? How can you protect it from being listed when sending & receiving?
If I'm not wrong IP addresses are not stored in the blockchain network. I don't think you can find IP address of users from blockchain details.
If that is true then no one would call Bitcoin transactions are anonymous. But if you use exchanges then they may reveal your personal details but not blockchain.
I've heard that people are using TOR or a VPN when creating a desptop wallet like Electrum and I remember reading somewhere that everytime you send and receive a transaction, the IP address where it's sent from or the receiving IP address is logged somewhere.
How did the Silk Rd owner and people selling on that site before get busted? Their IP address must've somehow gotten tracked.
no, your IP address is not logged as far as bitcoin protocol goes. you just send a transaction and in that tx there is nothing about your IP.
but when you are sending that tx, the others who you connect to can see your IP (that is how internet works!) so they can store your IP, but the thing is, you connect to a node and send your tx to. afterwards they are sending your tx also. then more and more and after a while all nodes have your tx (granted they don't reject it).
now if someone wants to know what transactions "YOU" send, they can simply connect to you and monitor you and see what you are sending. otherwise they have to connect to every single node to see which one sends the transaction first so you can say with near certainty what the origin of the transaction is.
how they usually catch those people is through other ways. like them using a centralized service such as coinbase as their wallet, using an email service, buying on Amazon, Apple store,.... with the same funds and things like this that links their identity to their bitcoin. it has never been only bitcoin as far as i can remember.