Bitcoin Feasibility and it's future

[Surawit]

@ Trentzb. I still can't believe I have to argue this with you guys. Did you ever use your bitcoin client? Did you have to type in your name and address to use your bitcoin client? NO? NO? and still somehow magically your bitcoin client can tell you who I am? What's my name? My bitcoin address is 1KnRCRAUYKjjbVsAgWNFWdXGwtuFZCfxNe. I'll give you 10 bitcoins if there's a software out there that will tell you my name. Oh? You don't know my name? How about my mailing address and phone number did you get that information too? What do you mean you can't tell that information from my bitcoin address? Do you mean I could be anonymous? Give your head a shake.

Great, with your address I can now examine every transaction you have ever made. And every transaction you will ever make in the future. It's simply a matter of following the chain of transactions until I can find an address I do recognise, then working backwards from there. Maybe you've used MtGox or similar exchange in the past? One subpoena and your bank details are mine.

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[greyhawk]

@ Trentzb. I still can't believe I have to argue this with you guys. Did you ever use your bitcoin client? Did you have to type in your name and address to use your bitcoin client? NO? NO? and still somehow magically your bitcoin client can tell you who I am? What's my name? My bitcoin address is 1KnRCRAUYKjjbVsAgWNFWdXGwtuFZCfxNe. I'll give you 10 bitcoins if there's a software out there that will tell you my name. Oh? You don't know my name? How about my mailing address and phone number did you get that information too? What do you mean you can't tell that information from my bitcoin address? Do you mean I could be anonymous? Give your head a shake.

Dale Weber, Beaverton, Oregon

[trentzb]

@ Trentzb. I still can't believe I have to argue this with you guys. Did you ever use your bitcoin client? Did you have to type in your name and address to use your bitcoin client? NO? NO? and still somehow magically your bitcoin client can tell you who I am? What's my name? My bitcoin address is 1KnRCRAUYKjjbVsAgWNFWdXGwtuFZCfxNe. I'll give you 10 bitcoins if there's a software out there that will tell you my name. Oh? You don't know my name? How about my mailing address and phone number did you get that information too? What do you mean you can't tell that information from my bitcoin address? Do you mean I could be anonymous? Give your head a shake.

Yes there is software that can aid in finding out your ip and thus your name, address, etc from your Bitcoin address and activity. One of them is called BlitCoin, but there are others which have not been publicly disclosed. If you have convinced yourself that you are completely anonymous using Bitcoin then you probably believe you are anonymous on the Internet as well. Good luck with that.

[trentzb]

An alternate method of retrieving the blockchain (and substantially faster) is to download the most recent nightly from tcatm (core dev) at http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/.

Myself, I would trust a blockchain download from tcatm or other core developers but I would strongly recommend against downloading an arbitrary blockchain elsewhere.

1) Extract the tarball into your bitcoin directory
2) Run bitcoin (or bitcoin.exe) with the -rescan flag

Should help you get up to current block count much sooner.

[greyhawk]

@ Trentzb. I still can't believe I have to argue this with you guys. Did you ever use your bitcoin client? Did you have to type in your name and address to use your bitcoin client? NO? NO? and still somehow magically your bitcoin client can tell you who I am? What's my name? My bitcoin address is 1KnRCRAUYKjjbVsAgWNFWdXGwtuFZCfxNe. I'll give you 10 bitcoins if there's a software out there that will tell you my name. Oh? You don't know my name? How about my mailing address and phone number did you get that information too? What do you mean you can't tell that information from my bitcoin address? Do you mean I could be anonymous? Give your head a shake.

Dale Weber, Beaverton, Oregon

I wonder why he disappeared as soon as I posted this.  I'd really like my 10 BTC.

[Robotguy]

That's funny, Dale whatever he said. If it were true I would have given you your 10 bitcoins. Thank you for playing. So lets suppose I sell all of my bitcoin information to Captain Joe Schmuck for touchable tender and he headed off to some cyber cafe and loaded the information on the computer there momentarily to make a few transactions. Who out there is going to be able to trace that? Come on people I'm not a total retard.

It was Beaverdam. LOL.

[deepceleron]

I am still updating my blocks (5 hours after original post). I have a good internet connection (5mbps) and I am still updating my blocks. This is just the beginning. I am borderline angry, hell I am angry. What about por Joe schmuck in 2088? How long will it take poor Joe Schmuck to update his blocks? I'm already starting to hate bitcoin and it is a relatively new technology. Oohh conections speeds will be so much faster blah blah blah. What about Farley Mcgowan who can only afford a $200 laptop and a 1 mbps connection, shouldn't he be entitled to the same luxuries of bitcoin as the rest of us?

 I really really hope this can be resolved somehow. I wish I were more involved in the development of this idea.

 The idea of bitcoin is amazing. The method of bitcoin is burning my britches.

 Anybody, anybody?

You could have searched the forum for 10 minutes and found you can download nightly versions of the whole blockchain here:
http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/

Close bitcoin, put the blockchain files in %APPDATA%/bitcoin, restart, and you only have to download the newest ~1000 blocks or so.