So how much privacy do we really need?

[FuzzyQuant]

We all know that Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous but pseudo-anonymous, resulting in many problems like tainted coins etc.
Some cryptocurrencies offer significant more privacy (Monero, Zcash etc) but at a cost.
However my question is more fundamental: How 'much' privacy do we really need for a widely-adopted cryptocurrency?
I believe Bitcoin as-is won't get adopted for everyday transactions. Nobody would want showing his buying habits to the whole world (imagine how many ads and flyers you would get).
On the other hand, I don't believe cryptocurrencies that offer too much privacy will get adopted either, since they will be used for criminal activities and eventually get banned.
My feeling is that we want a currency that offers privacy to some extent, without revealing our transaction to the world but still be possible for law-enforcement to track illegal activities.
What do you think?

100% privacy suits me perfectly. Exactly the same privacy that all the rich guys on the Panama papers and other lists were enjoying.

Great response. Biggest criminals, politicians, businessman always had the anonymity. Bitcoin is in all aspects there just to give to the people what the powerful already had, the control of the money supply, ownership of the actual funds, anonymity, no censorship of transactions and etc.

If I can point out, the Panama papers are no longer anonymous, since everyone knows about them... Also, the whole "what the powerful have" narrative is getting very old. While I am by no means rich, why do bitcoin fanatics always put the rich in the same caricature/box? You don't have to be rich to have access to this "anonymity", which is not really anonymous, since a company or group of people are holding all your information and you've off-loaded the risk onto them and you better pray they know how to truly hide things.

I would argue that bitcoin gives everyone access to a better mechanism, if they know how to use it. Money can surely make a big difference, but it's knowledge that truly makes the difference at the end of the day. Money will buy you someone else's knowledge, but it will never beat you having the knowledge yourself.

There's nothing stopping you from becoming rich, if you are willing to put in the effort and time, most people aren't and therefore will never be rich. It's trite to always blame the rich for everything. You may live in a country where they are more controlling and oppressive, but there's nothing stopping you from re-locating to a place that respects competition and will allow you to rise if you put in the effort. Is it easy? No, but it's better than complaining about the rich.

I imagine that depends on your definition of rich. I don't think advocating action is wrong for seeking success, but the ludicrous wealth typically used for the "rich" in most people's minds (billionaires and such) is not a result of simple "put in X work, get out Y money." Far more variables come into play, such as creativity, connections, etc. A successful person is one that can create opportunities for themselves, yes.

Absolutely no disagreement on that! I'm also not exonerating everyone, there are for sure unfair practices used to gain a competitive advantage, but I feel that this usually gets diluted in casting a bad image on all the wealthy people as an excuse for people's own inaction.

Bitcoin is a tremendous innovation, but people may find a false sense of security in it, making it as some sort of holy grail, which it cannot be. Bitcoin will not make everyone rich, by definition only a minority of players will succeed in this market at the expense of most other participants. However, if people learn to look at bitcoin rationally, they can all derive some sort of advantage from it. I think we need some better debates about what bitcoin can mean to different people, because a lot of people think of it as their path to wealth and riches and most will likely be disappointed, but that's something that will only be proved in time. For now, almost everyone is enjoying a smooth ride up in price! Time is the ultimate test.

Cheers for the input!

[karmakeddon]

Right now, Bitcoin is at its perfect place. If you just follow correct bitcoin practices, you are completely anonymous. The only instances that others will know about you and your bitcoin wallets is if you somehow manage to piss some people off and get doxxed in the process. Other than that, you and your transactions are completely hidden from the world albeit a few public records of transactions.

[bomberb17]

Ok I won't argue any more that Bitcoin is not anonymous but rather pseudo-anonymous, there are thousands google links out there to show you exactly that.
If you don't take this fact but try to convince yourselves and possibly others that bitcoin is anonymous, I guarantee that you are on the wrong path. Today you might create a random bitcoin address, buy some BTC from a bitcoin ATM or from someone on the street and there you are, having some bitcoins on your random anonymous address. In that sense, yes you are anonymous. You might even manage to move these funds around by those tricks some of you described, like using an exchange in the middle (by providing bogus identification, I seriously would not go to that direction since you are falsifying documents, which is a crime - and don't tell me it is not because you are not hurting anyone blah blah blah).

But I did not start this thread talking about how we use cryptocurrencies today. (where 99.99% of us treat it as an investment).
I am talking about a a day in the future where bitcoin (or some other cryptocurrency) might become mainstream.
This means getting your salary paid in BTC, pay your rent in BTC, take a loan in BTC,  buy your holiday vacation in BTC, pay your children's school in BTC, pay the restaurant in BTC, pay your doctor in BTC.
(Replace BTC with ETH or another crypto of your choice which does not offer anonymity, so no ZEC or XMR)
In such a situation, NO, you are NOT anonymous whatsoever. Period.

[FuzzyQuant]

Ok I won't argue any more that Bitcoin is not anonymous but rather pseudo-anonymous, there are thousands google links out there to show you exactly that.
If you don't take this fact but try to convince yourselves and possibly others that bitcoin is anonymous, I guarantee that you are on the wrong path. Today you might create a random bitcoin address, buy some BTC from a bitcoin ATM or from someone on the street and there you are, having some bitcoins on your random anonymous address. In that sense, yes you are anonymous. You might even manage to move these funds around by those tricks some of you described, like using an exchange in the middle (by providing bogus identification, I seriously would not go to that direction since you are falsifying documents, which is a crime - and don't tell me it is not because you are not hurting anyone blah blah blah).

But I did not start this thread talking about how we use cryptocurrencies today. (where 99.99% of us treat it as an investment).
I am talking about a a day in the future where bitcoin (or some other cryptocurrency) might become mainstream.
This means getting your salary paid in BTC, pay your rent in BTC, take a loan in BTC,  buy your holiday vacation in BTC, pay your children's school in BTC, pay the restaurant in BTC, pay your doctor in BTC.
(Replace BTC with ETH or another crypto of your choice which does not offer anonymity, so no ZEC or XMR)
In such a situation, NO, you are NOT anonymous whatsoever. Period.

I agree with you that bitcoin is not anonymous on its own, but people can definitely find ways to make it as such. I agree that falsifying documents should not be done and I was in no way suggesting people should do that. Some exchanges allow you to move up to a certain amount of bitcoin daily with no documents by the way, but that is besides the point.

And I also agree that it should not be the scope of bitcoin. It wasn't designed for pure anonymity, but rather as a viable economic alternative, which makes it beautiful for the things you mentioned.

I was just suggesting that a truly motivated party could find ways to make themselves anonymous, not that it is a requirement of bitcoin itself though.

Cheers for the input!

[bomberb17]

What's your definition of "viable economic alternative"?
If that's restricted to use cases such as capital transfer or investment, yes its is viable.
But if we want to include more common use cases like the ones I described, I don't think it is.
Which brings me to my original question: how can we fix it? How much more private should bitcoin and other similar non-anonymous cryptocurrencies become such that they would be viable for mainstream everyday use and wide-adoption?
Someone could think a way to leave it as is, and move these transactions to a side-chain or off-chain.
Another solution would change its underlying transaction confirmation process entirely, maybe with something completely new like mimblewimble.
All this without sacrificing accountability.

[FuzzyQuant]

What's your definition of "viable economic alternative"?
If that's restricted to use cases such as capital transfer or investment, yes its is viable.
But if we want to include more common use cases like the ones I described, I don't think it is.
Which brings me to my original question: how can we fix it? How much more private should bitcoin and other similar non-anonymous cryptocurrencies become such that they would be viable for mainstream everyday use and wide-adoption?
Someone could think a way to leave it as is, and move these transactions to a side-chain or off-chain.
Another solution would change its underlying transaction confirmation process entirely, maybe with something completely new like mimblewimble.
All this without sacrificing accountability.

Well, I think most people got confused with the word "private" in your question. People equate private with anonymity.

But for mainstream adoption, it will be a question of multiple factors, none of which have anything to do with the technology really. The technology as-is is already good enough for that, people just need to adopt it on a larger scale and it needs to gain recognition and acceptance, which it slowly is. For example, in Japan, they have declared it an official currency, with many shops accepting it as a means of payment for their goods. There are large online retailers in Europe and North America that also accept bitcoin as a means of payment. So you can already pay for tangible things in bitcoin without ever passing through fiat.

Adoption at the level of the dentist, etc. will happen when further mainstream adoption will continue, keep in mind that it is a very new form of currency/technology and that the adoption rate has already been faster than anyone expected. I don't think Satoshi Nakamoto would have predicted this rate of adoption in under a decade... Historically, new currency regimes have been approached with high skepticism, even though they were imposed by governments for the most part.

For wider acceptance there will need to be (in order of importance in my opinion):

1) Proof of price/exchange-rate stability -> The fluctuations in the price at the moment reflect speculative moves, which are not quite compatible with a widely accepted currency. It will take time for the price to somewhat reach an equilibrium before the next ramp of adoption/acceptance can take place. It may even take a massive crash at some point, followed by bitcoin's survival to this massive crash (actually a highly likely scenario if you ask me, but this is another debate).

2) People building extra services features, which is already slowly happening (banking integration, lightning network to offload the current blockchain bottlenecks, etc.)

3) Governments slowly confirming their regulatory stance, such as Japan

Basically, these all have to do with market-perceptions and market activities and less with the technology itself. I strongly believe that a calming/stabilizing of the speculative flows will be a requirement for the wider adoption and that this will only happen through time and a serious crash to wipe out most of this activity (as has been the case with most speculative manias surrounding actually viable things).

[aleksej996]

If I can point out, the Panama papers are no longer anonymous, since everyone knows about them... Also, the whole "what the powerful have" narrative is getting very old. While I am by no means rich, why do bitcoin fanatics always put the rich in the same caricature/box? You don't have to be rich to have access to this "anonymity", which is not really anonymous, since a company or group of people are holding all your information and you've off-loaded the risk onto them and you better pray they know how to truly hide things.

I would argue that bitcoin gives everyone access to a better mechanism, if they know how to use it. Money can surely make a big difference, but it's knowledge that truly makes the difference at the end of the day. Money will buy you someone else's knowledge, but it will never beat you having the knowledge yourself.

There's nothing stopping you from becoming rich, if you are willing to put in the effort and time, most people aren't and therefore will never be rich. It's trite to always blame the rich for everything. You may live in a country where they are more controlling and oppressive, but there's nothing stopping you from re-locating to a place that respects competition and will allow you to rise if you put in the effort. Is it easy? No, but it's better than complaining about the rich.

We will never know if we have the full list of people involved in Panama papers, as they weren't leaked in their raw form as a trusted source as Wikileaks would leak them. There is suspicious lack of US persona in it. Julian Assange spoke about this multiple times and said that he doesn't support the censorship they imposed. So it was more likely used to target certain people then actual leaking of sensitive information.

I also don't agree that rich must be a problem, I purposefully didn't mention the rich in my reply. However, money does give you power and the power of anonymity is one of them, so they aren't the problem, but the power they get compared to the rest is. There are people with power that aren't rich as well, but this doesn't excuse the rich, sense money always gives you power and they will always be part of this elite.

I don't discriminate against the rich, there is a lot of good folks that are rich and even use that wealth for good causes. However, I think that you are discriminating against the poor here, not out of a bad intent, but you simply can't understand the limits of poverty as you never saw it. For you it seems trivial to travel, but for the majority of people that are poor is not. You can't just buy a plane ticket if you are poor, you simply don't understand how poor majority of world population is, let along the millions of the poorest countries. Besides, getting into a developed country, like US for example, is not that easy either, even if you manage to get to there. During war time people have no choice, but to leave the country, it is either that or certain death, so they do their best to move. Many people died in the effort of migrating during a refugee crisis, as you might have seen pictures of toddles washing up on shore, that to be honest, the world wouldn't even hear about if it wasn't a shore of a developed country. And the ones who got to their destination safely went to an incredible amount of effort and huge risk for their lives and future. It is not as easy as you might think. No one is insane enough to not get out of a country they have no future in, but it isn't easy. You know the amount of problems European countries had with these people migrating peacefully. It isn't that easy to move and it is even harder to get accepted once you do.

Ok I won't argue any more that Bitcoin is not anonymous but rather pseudo-anonymous, there are thousands google links out there to show you exactly that.
If you don't take this fact but try to convince yourselves and possibly others that bitcoin is anonymous, I guarantee that you are on the wrong path. Today you might create a random bitcoin address, buy some BTC from a bitcoin ATM or from someone on the street and there you are, having some bitcoins on your random anonymous address. In that sense, yes you are anonymous. You might even manage to move these funds around by those tricks some of you described, like using an exchange in the middle (by providing bogus identification, I seriously would not go to that direction since you are falsifying documents, which is a crime - and don't tell me it is not because you are not hurting anyone blah blah blah).

But I did not start this thread talking about how we use cryptocurrencies today. (where 99.99% of us treat it as an investment).
I am talking about a a day in the future where bitcoin (or some other cryptocurrency) might become mainstream.
This means getting your salary paid in BTC, pay your rent in BTC, take a loan in BTC,  buy your holiday vacation in BTC, pay your children's school in BTC, pay the restaurant in BTC, pay your doctor in BTC.
(Replace BTC with ETH or another crypto of your choice which does not offer anonymity, so no ZEC or XMR)
In such a situation, NO, you are NOT anonymous whatsoever. Period.

There are two things you might be missing here. First, there are many things like Bitcoin mixers and decentralized exchanges, even marketplaces and so on. Even sending to a newly generated address before paying for stuff will give you a deniable accountability, by allowing you to claim that that address isn't yours and that you sent the funds to it. So staying anonymous with Bitcoin isn't impossible at all, but you need to have rest of the services work with you on this most of the time, these services could be anonymous by themselves, they need Bitcoin. That is the second point, Bitcoin is anonymous, you need no personal information to use it, it is using these other services that expose you, but that can be fixed as well and certain parts of it already are.

As for the bogus identification, you already know my stance from my previous posts.

The answer to your question is, all of the privacy we can get, as I still never heard of a good argument on why not or even on how would be possible to stop these private technologies in a first place. It is important to keep in mind that wondering on how world should look like makes no sense if there is only one possible way it can go and will go. What is the point of the question when there will be better and better privacy no matter what you do. You can't stop it, it isn't your choice to make, you don't have an alternative option.

[AmXProX]

Either we keep the blockchain public for everybody or we don't.

The main idea of bitcoin is the decentralization and independence of governments. This means that it's not possible to block a normal user from seeing your transaction history but allowing your government to do that so they can "track criminals" without giving them too much power.

People can get a little more privacy by not re-using their addresses. This way is harder to link all the payments to a single individual.

So it is still possible to identify the person who use that address? Can they track it by going back on the transaction transfers?

[MarioSPGroup]

Bitcoin is not anonymous, you can use bitcoin mixers and that can help you with privacy. Monero have much better protection and anonymity, but it's not 100% private as I know. How much privacy do we need, well I don't think that we need privacy if governments let us to be free and experiment with out bodies and minds, if you wish to use drugs use it, pay legally and enjoy, why do you need to hide when you pay for sex? Or you wish to hide that you are buying women clothes?
I would like to give my support for transparent bitcoins, we will know where the money from tax is going, who is paid and how much for work in government sector. Social justice can be better if we know where the money is going. Bitcoin can help us in that.

[cr1776]

...
The answer to your question is, all of the privacy we can get, as I still never heard of a good argument on why not or even on how would be possible to stop these private technologies in a first place. It is important to keep in mind that wondering on how world should look like makes no sense if there is only one possible way it can go and will go. What is the point of the question when there will be better and better privacy no matter what you do. You can't stop it, it isn't your choice to make, you don't have an alternative option.

You are correct.  A few additional points, to some of the people above.
1. Always remember that when seconds count, police are just minutes away.  That is why many over in the US like to handle their own protection when possible.
2. Likewise, the same people who want the population of the US disarmed because that should be left to the police and other officials are the same people who are protesting about BLM etc and say the police can't be trusted.  So, you should trust the police, but can't trust the police.  Got it.
3. The same politicians who don't like citizens to have guns are surrounded 24/7 by armed guards often paid for by the citizens of the US.  If the politicians disarm first, then I suspect the rest of the US might consider it.
4. What is funniest is that this same group is arguing that Trump == Hitler and yet they want everyone else to give up their guns! If Trump were Hitler, I would personally want guns to fight with instead of meekly submit to the gas-chambers.  Some people prefer to surrender though.
5. Everyone deserves privacy and anonymity if they want it, rich or poor.  Many of the most powerful written works were done anonymously because the author (e.g. Thomas Paine, Hamilton et al, Liu Xiaobo (should've been anonymous) etc) feared for their lives.  If all of their transactions were public the world would be a much less free place because many wouldn't have been printed.  Writing alone is not enough, paying for printing, paper, distribution etc costs money.  Having your entire financial ledger public means you might as well use your name.  No one knows beforehand that a certain person needs and deserves privacy so even excluding the discussion above, that alone is enough to ensure everyone has it.

I don't want someone else deciding "how much privacy WE really need."  Please just speak for yourself - if you don't want privacy, that is your choice, but don't impose your judgments on the rest of the world.  That is wrong and immoral in a free society.

[bitbunnny]

Bitcoin is not anonymous, you can use bitcoin mixers and that can help you with privacy. Monero have much better protection and anonymity, but it's not 100% private as I know. How much privacy do we need, well I don't think that we need privacy if governments let us to be free and experiment with out bodies and minds, if you wish to use drugs use it, pay legally and enjoy, why do you need to hide when you pay for sex? Or you wish to hide that you are buying women clothes?
I would like to give my support for transparent bitcoins, we will know where the money from tax is going, who is paid and how much for work in government sector. Social justice can be better if we know where the money is going. Bitcoin can help us in that.

My thoughts exactly. I agree that Bitcoin has lost a great deal of privacy and law enforcement and tax authorities have much better insite into Bitcoin transactions than they had before. Because of lower amount of privacy some users have abandoned Bitcoin and embraced Monero especialy on dark markets.
But not all users everywhere in the world have the same experience of privacy. In Europe privacy is very important and it's much appreciated but in US the situation is different.
For me privacy is important and I don't want to reveal everything but on the other hand I'm ready to give up some part of anonimity for some greater goal, like anti terorrist fighting or something similar.

[paxmao]

I imagine that depends on your definition of rich. I don't think advocating action is wrong for seeking success, but the ludicrous wealth typically used for the "rich" in most people's minds (billionaires and such) is not a result of simple "put in X work, get out Y money." Far more variables come into play, such as creativity, connections, etc. A successful person is one that can create opportunities for themselves, yes.
[/quote]

My definition of rich is having enough money to not consider money when deciding what I want to do. I personally would not need a lot for that.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

There are big problems when it comes to fungibility with bitcoin. Im tired of being told im a criminal and a drug dealer if I demand more privacy.

I have been demanding more privacy for obvious reasons that have nothing to do with illegal activities. For example: If you are an artist, and you are taking donations for your paintings or music or whatever.. why other people have to see how much money are you getting? If they see that you got paid a lot, they may think, "oh wow, this guy got too much money, I will just pirate his music, he will be ok anyway".
Don't you get how stupid accepting donations in Bitcoin is? unless you are an anonymous artist, people will see how much money you are getting.

And this goes for anything else. This is why BTC needs to improve his privacy immediately. I know gmaxwell was working on Confidential Transactions so that would solve how much BTC you are getting, but im not sure how that will work in practice. In order for it to work, you must be able to create a "Confidential receiving  address" and this would mean that any BTC sent there is forced to be obfuscated in it's amount, this would allow for anonymous (at least in quantity) donations.

[aleksej996]

There are big problems when it comes to fungibility with bitcoin. Im tired of being told im a criminal and a drug dealer if I demand more privacy.

I have been demanding more privacy for obvious reasons that have nothing to do with illegal activities. For example: If you are an artist, and you are taking donations for your paintings or music or whatever.. why other people have to see how much money are you getting? If they see that you got paid a lot, they may think, "oh wow, this guy got too much money, I will just pirate his music, he will be ok anyway".
Don't you get how stupid accepting donations in Bitcoin is? unless you are an anonymous artist, people will see how much money you are getting.

And this goes for anything else. This is why BTC needs to improve his privacy immediately. I know gmaxwell was working on Confidential Transactions so that would solve how much BTC you are getting, but im not sure how that will work in practice. In order for it to work, you must be able to create a "Confidential receiving  address" and this would mean that any BTC sent there is forced to be obfuscated in it's amount, this would allow for anonymous (at least in quantity) donations.

I think that everyone needs privacy, not just a certain type of people, like artists or any other group. It is for all of us. The most obvious reason for privacy is that you can't trust the government, simple as that. They could freeze your bank accounts tomorrow if you speak your mind against the government. This is what they did to Wikileaks, they hurt no one and it was just obvious politics. When they used Bitcoin for donations, Bitcoin got some high profile from the government and Satoshi left soon after, maybe for that reason. You never know when you will need to speak your mind and how bad your government might get, so we should all, absolutely all of us, have complete and full privacy if we choose to do so.

[moore100]

So you want to say that Privacy coin shouldn't be a Privacy coin? So what's the point then of the Privacy coin if it's not private and trackable by some third parties?
This topic is completely illogical. The Privacy coins Like ONION,Monero and others are exactly built for this purpose that nobody can find who is sending the coins.
It's not only used by criminals there is many people who use it just because they like to keep it all private and doesn't want for everyone else to know how much money they spend on Coins that are not private enough.

[AmXProX]

We all know that Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous but pseudo-anonymous, resulting in many problems like tainted coins etc.
Some cryptocurrencies offer significant more privacy (Monero, Zcash etc) but at a cost.
However my question is more fundamental: How 'much' privacy do we really need for a widely-adopted cryptocurrency?
I believe Bitcoin as-is won't get adopted for everyday transactions. Nobody would want showing his buying habits to the whole world (imagine how many ads and flyers you would get).
On the other hand, I don't believe cryptocurrencies that offer too much privacy will get adopted either, since they will be used for criminal activities and eventually get banned.
My feeling is that we want a currency that offers privacy to some extent, without revealing our transaction to the world but still be possible for law-enforcement to track illegal activities.
What do you think?

It will be depending on your purpose, if a person will use the coin for illegal activity then they will result on getting the more anonymous coin if it is for some legal activities and just as an investment then bitcoin will be an option.

No matter how much privacy you had on the coin if law enforcer eventually had a law to force people to track something then they will.

[shata]

It's debatable, 1 user has the potential to take any action, it will be difficult for the government to track addresses that perpetually transact and eventually stop tracking when the addres are replaced in a complex way.

I try to be neutral if the government wants my account privacy to be known then I will give it away, I can create another address for personal use.

As an ordinary people, I think we need more than 80% of our privacy. But to those who joined in show business or politicians, they don't have any privacy anymore because their life must be transparent to the people so no one can accused them of something bad that could change their reputation.

[kancutbrewok]

the privacy we do is huge, because it allows our account from hackers who want to hack our account. opinion of a newbe

[dunfida]

Either we keep the blockchain public for everybody or we don't.

The main idea of bitcoin is the decentralization and independence of governments. This means that it's not possible to block a normal user from seeing your transaction history but allowing your government to do that so they can "track criminals" without giving them too much power.

People can get a little more privacy by not re-using their addresses. This way is harder to link all the payments to a single individual.

Even if a certain user wont really make re-using his address can already give the anonymity that we do seek but for extra layer of anonymity then this kind of way would really be suggested and thinking of that there are mixers in the market as of now if you are really serious on it. By the way bitcoin is created for peer to peer system without 3rd party involved and anonymity is just really a bonus after all this is why it did caught the attention of the community. These two things is really a good feature of this new way payment system. We can already get the privacy we do need in bitcoin and even now if you try to trace the owner of said of the said address would really be hard for you already. How much more on using mixing service then it would really be much more harder.

[The_Dark_Knight]

You are not realistic by saying
"It's our right to be 100% anonymous" or "I don't steal".

Anonymity is the right of any citizen of a modern civilized country, up to some extent. There is a red line which separates the anonymity right and the use of anonymity to conduct illegal business. If someone crosses that line, the government should waive the anonymity right for that person in question and investigate what's going on. Else if we all demand unlimited anonymity, the country will fall into anarchy. It's like demanding our right for free speech, but at the same time swearing at others. The government should protect the privacy of its lawful citizens on the other hand of course.
You might say that you don't steal and that you are righteous, but statistically there will be some people who misbehave in a society. And this must be controlled or the society will fall into chaos.

The issues with what you are saying is that will require a tyrannical state, anyone can access free tools on the web to encrypt their computers, text and communications, and to some extent the technology is so good that not even government will be able to break it, even if such technologies were made illegal there is no way to put the cat back in the bag, anonymity is now in the hands of the people and not in the hands of the government.