Bitcoin not so anonymous?

[smoothrunnings]

The IRS has stated that recently they can track down people who are making a profit of Bitcoin without claiming it on their tax return. I wonder if the Core Engineers will start to look at ways to keep Bitcoin anonymous from prying eyes of the IRS and other Governments?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

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[namjar]

Bitcoin is anonymous, only that it is getting compromised because the IRS and everything that is compromised with the legality of the taxes, are always trying to hunt some money.

How would you feel if you are a bank, or something, and you see that thousands of people are making profit with a "digital coin" What would you try to do?

Bitcoin has been created to be anonymous, they are only following the tracks of those who are making a HUGE amount of money, not the ones who are just making $100 or $200 a month (because it is nothing)

Why do you think that they were trying to follow those who were holding more than $20k on 2015 in coinbase? Because that money has made more than x12 since then, and it is more than $440,000 at the moment.

[nullius]

Bitcoin was never anonymous.  Anybody who said it is, was stupid or lying.  Anybody who thought it is, may be in for a rude shock with unknown timing.  The notion that “Bitcoin is anonymous” is a persistent, pernicious myth.  It’s a global ledger, wherein each copy of the blockchain shows in full all transactions ever made.  What is so hard to understand about this?

I wonder if the Core Engineers will start to look at ways to keep Bitcoin anonymous

They have been, for awhile.  But things develop slowly in Bitcoin.  They can’t just smack on a new feature, at risk of accidentally dropping a billion dollars worth of coins on the floor.

[zombie6]

No, your public key is always the same, plus each person can look at any transaction in the blockchain. It is possible to refill all money transfers, but in fact the public key number is not a name and passport data, so only partially if you use the VPS and the proxy then it will be extremely difficult to find you) if you are not engaged in crime in the industrial mast

[nullius]

Bitcoin is anonymous,

[...]

Bitcoin has been created to be anonymous,

STOP MISLEADING PEOPLE.  Bitcoin was never anonymous, not designed to be, and never imagined to be by anybody who understands the simple concept of a global public ledger.

People who read this, before you shoot yourself in the foot, do some research.  Also read carefully, and observe the blatant self-contradictions of people who claim that Bitcoin be anonymous:

Bitcoin is anonymous, only that it is getting compromised because the IRS and everything that is compromised with the legality of the taxes, are always trying to hunt some money.

[...]

Bitcoin has been created to be anonymous, they are only following the tracks of those who are making a HUGE amount of money, not the ones who are just making $100 or $200 a month (because it is nothing)

(How can it be “getting compromised” if it’s really anonymous?  How could the IRS be “following the tracks” of anybody who uses something “created to be anonymous”?  Duh-huh.)

[kueyen]

I think bitcoin is anonymous to a certain extent, but when you have to cash out and bring the money back on the grid, then you are suddenly not anonymous anymore. If there was a way to cash out without using banks or other institutions that are part of the financial system, then bitcoin would have been completely anonymous.

[avikz]

Bitcoin is anonymous, only that it is getting compromised because the IRS and everything that is compromised with the legality of the taxes, are always trying to hunt some money.

Bitcoin is anonymous only for the books but the reality is different. Everything can be tracked through the blockchain public ledger. So we can't call bitcoin truly anonymous.

How would you feel if you are a bank, or something, and you see that thousands of people are making profit with a "digital coin" What would you try to do?

The banks are expected to make negative comments on bitcoin and its usage and that's exactly what they are doing. Some banks are even blocking the account for transacting with a known bitcoin exchange or a dealer. It's a threat to their business because billions of dollars are filtered out of banking channel already and more to go out in future.

Bitcoin has been created to be anonymous, they are only following the tracks of those who are making a HUGE amount of money, not the ones who are just making $100 or $200 a month (because it is nothing)

Why do you think that they were trying to follow those who were holding more than $20k on 2015 in coinbase? Because that money has made more than x12 since then, and it is more than $440,000 at the moment.

That's true! IRS will not employ much manpower to chase the peanuts. They want big players who can generate a sizable amount of tax. $100-$200 earning doesn't make much sense for them to chase.

[nullius]

I think bitcoin is anonymous to a certain extent,

Stop thinking.  It is dangerous to your health.

There is a rich vein of academic research on tracing and correlating information in the blockchain, as well as cross-correlating it with real-world identifying information from other sources.  Professors who know, like, mathematics ’n’ stuff have been working on this for years.  Go read some papers before you opine.

[aestrum]

Bitcoin is pseudoanonymous. Anyone can track how coins are being transferred between addresses, but it's extremely hard to figure out what exactly happened, as wallets tend to generate new address on every transaction. But if the government can get exit addresses at the exchanges, they can establish connections with these addresses much more easily.

[Immakillya]

Bitcoin itself is anonymous. But government is always finding a way to monitor transactions like forcing exchanges to comply with their regulations which is Anti-Money Laudering and Know Your Customer(AML/KYC) policy. That exchanges will also implemented to their system. So people will have to comply in able to use their services. People will forced to give their identification that will be trun over to government and the government will monitor users. Coinbase just turn over their collected IDs of traders to IRS. That is why IRS can monitor every users. That's all i know.

[Sasuke102001]

As far as my knowledge is, I knew that bitcoin was totally anonymous but governments always tried a way to track in the about all the transactions in bitcoin. I guess bitcoin can be traceable because I have seen many people out on the forum boosting the speed of transactions after taking the hash value doesn't that mean Bitcoin can be traceable?

[marky89]

The IRS has stated that recently they can track down people who are making a profit of Bitcoin without claiming it on their tax return.

The primary way the IRS "tracks" Bitcoin traders is through exchanges. If you give your passport and proof of residence to an exchange, your deposit/withdrawal and trading histories can be provided to regulators like IRS.

It became known a few months ago that the IRS is also working with Chainanalysis, which extensively works to link Bitcoin transactions/addresses to identities by scraping the internet and more specifically, darknet markets and forums. It's hard to know how much they know about us from watching our blockchain activity.

Bitcoin is anonymous only for the books but the reality is different. Everything can be tracked through the blockchain public ledger. So we can't call bitcoin truly anonymous.

Bitcoin privacy is terrible, but users can take steps to mitigate that. For instance, most people just use default sending rather than selecting UTXOs. Each output is tainted by its history. Keep that in mind before you send it anywhere, and certainly before you link a bunch of addresses together in a single transaction. Signing transactions from multiple addresses makes it easier to track your wallet because those addresses are forever linked together after that.

[hahahafr]

It is not anonymous, i dont know why you all are saying that is, in fact, it is not. Maybe it was created to develop a new idea for organizing the money, but it does not means that it was just created to be anonymous.

If you are looking for an anonymous coin, then monero/zcash,/zencash are the ones who you should be using instead of bitcoin. Deeponion is crap, so dont use if you dont want to lose your money.

It does not means that it is not anonymous because of that, because you can still use a multi signature wallet and no one will be able to track your addreses or your money.

Anyone can track how coins are being transferred between addresses

[Marry Finch]

The above fact does indicate that bitkoyn is not as anonymous as it was thought. Therefore, the last coins that detached from bitcoin, namely bitcoin brilliant, have a greater degree of confidentiality than the original bitcoin. So, in it in an open for general review magazine blockchein the data about coins in a purse and their balance are closed. This greatly reduces the likelihood of hacker attacks on wallets with large amounts in the crypto currency. If bitkoyn does not solve the issue with increasing confidentiality in the near future, people will simply switch to other coins, in particular, coins that have separated from him in recent months.

[shursight]

It is nice to see a Newbie's fight! Lmao

I think bitcoin is anonymous to a certain extent,

Stop thinking.  It is dangerous to your health.

Anyway, bitcoin has been created to be ANONYMOUS, it is not working as it was before because a lot of people started to use it.

Because it has the records of all the transactions on all over the blockchain, it does not means that it is not anonymous, because it is the public record that makes the blockchain be legit, that has been created to prevent the double spend and all the scammers, and of course, the issue of the coin.

If you want a 100% anonymous coin, go and buy monero, everytime that you need to buy something with bitcoin, you must put your details and ID's almost everytime, so yes, now it is not anonymous, but it was created for it.

[xBitHodler]

Bitcoin is not anonymous, not anymore. Transactions are transparent so anyone can check when and from who certain address has received bitcoins. As far as I know, the introduction of "confidential transaction" will help us to solve this problem partially. What are confidential transactions? The information about sent amount of money will be encrypted so only sender and recipient will know the exact amount which was sent.

[nullius]

In the Twitter/TL;DR world, so few people actually read nowadays.  Who needs it?  Let’s see a picture of how pretty a Bitcoin transaction graph is!

That’s from 2014, from a blog post by bitcointalk user organofcorti, as discussed on this forum.  Anybody who hasn’t seen it is a n00b.

Now, to correct a few bits of misinformation:

Bitcoin itself is anonymous. But government is always finding a way to monitor transactions like forcing exchanges to comply with their regulations which is Anti-Money Laudering and Know Your Customer(AML/KYC) policy.

As far as my knowledge is, I knew that bitcoin was totally anonymous but governments always tried a way to track in the about all the transactions in bitcoin.

Yes, “AML”/“KYC” is poison for privacy and freedom.  But that’s not even relevant here:  Governments and exchanges are not the only ones who can trace Bitcoin transactions.

Instead of shooting off your mouth on an Internet forum, you could try your own blockchain tracing with BlockSci, available as an open-source project.  First, read the paper.

Also have a look at this paper on how merchants and third-party web trackers can correlate web cookies, names, physical addresses, etc. with blockchain data.

There are also some neat papers on attacking the privacy of Bitcoin mixers; but if you want me to assemble a bibliography for you, you’ll need to start paying me.

Correlating “KYC” identity data in an exchange is the easiest way to identify Bitcoin users.  Obviously.  But it’s not the only way; and if you think it is, then you are in for trouble at some point.  As is anybody who takes your forum advice.  Don’t mislead others with careless, foolish, and factually incorrect talk of Bitcoin being “anonymous”.

P.S.:

It is nice to see a Newbie's fight! Lmao

I think bitcoin is anonymous to a certain extent,

Stop thinking.  It is dangerous to your health.

Anyway, bitcoin has been created to be ANONYMOUS, it is not working as it was before because a lot of people started to use it.

Because it has the records of all the transactions on all over the blockchain, it does not means that it is not anonymous, because it is the public record that makes the blockchain be legit, that has been created to prevent the double spend and all the scammers, and of course, the issue of the coin.

If you want a 100% anonymous coin, go and buy monero, everytime that you need to buy something with bitcoin, you must put your details and ID's almost everytime, so yes, now it is not anonymous, but it was created for it.

I may perhaps consider your opinion and explain to you why you’re wrong, if you could explain to me how many “newbies” have longstanding familiarity with the academic literature on Bitcoin transaction tracing.

Also, I could argue Zcash vs. Monero; but that’s offtopic in a Bitcoin forum.

Also, I think my “first fight” was over here.  Though it’s tough to say; I’ve been busy.  There are just so many “ill-informed nincompoops who overestimate their own competence [and] enjoy voicing opinions to which they are not entitled”, to quote myself from that first link.

Now, stop claiming that Bitcoin be “anonymous”, or I will taunt you again.

[fanbeila]

The IRS has stated that recently they can track down people who are making a profit of Bitcoin without claiming it on their tax return. I wonder if the Core Engineers will start to look at ways to keep Bitcoin anonymous from prying eyes of the IRS and other Governments?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Every one already know that bitcoin is only pseudo anonymous.So,every transaction is registered in a public ledger.So,if the government officials want to track your transactions,they could easily do it.

And if you want to be safe from the radar of the government,you could better use mixer services where you would be given new bitcoins so that no one would be able to trace your transactions and identify you.I think that's the only possible option left to use bitcoins safely being untraced.

[patt0]

The IRS has stated that recently they can track down people who are making a profit of Bitcoin without claiming it on their tax return. I wonder if the Core Engineers will start to look at ways to keep Bitcoin anonymous from prying eyes of the IRS and other Governments?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

I'm sure that making bitcoin more private is probably on the Core dev team agenda, but I doubt that is something that has a high priority level. Bitcoin is somewhat anonymous, since your identity is not tied to your wallet or address, but of course we all know that everything is public in the blockchain, so by the time someone knows you are the owner of an address, they can track down every transaction you make. They won't know what they are, unless they also manage "to ID" the other addresses, but they can see how much you have there, and how much you have been spending.

You can of course keep changing addresses, and do your best not to get identified by a particular address, so I'm not really worried with this. As far as the IRS goes, don't forget that regulation is important for bitcoin, in order for it to become legit and get more adoption. I have no plans in evading taxes, and I don't think anyone should do that.

Anonymity is important, but I hope the Core team is focused on the scalability issues, and in developing off-chain solutions like the lightning network. That is the very important update that we are all waiting. Anyway since segwit provides many off-chain solutions, I'm sure that it will be easy to increase the privacy of bitcoin transactions.

[drachman]

The IRS has stated that recently they can track down people who are making a profit of Bitcoin without claiming it on their tax return. I wonder if the Core Engineers will start to look at ways to keep Bitcoin anonymous from prying eyes of the IRS and other Governments?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Bitcoin has never being anonymous, especially now if you buy your coins from an exchange or you use a payment method that reveals your identity, also if you try to cashout your bitcoin you are going to need to reveal your identity so there is nothing to do.