probably someone trying to track all your monies and link you as the underground kingping..
This keeps getting repeated but no one can explain how that would work.
These transactions do not make it to the block chain—they exist only in the mempool of servers for a temporary period as they never get confirmed. As such I do not see how they can link anyone to anything.
If you think otherwise, please can you explain how?
If I were running things, I'd do something such as:
- Instruct 'licensed' operators to keep log certain transactions even if they don't make it into the blockchain ('1IRSnnnn...nnn' for instance.) This should be low overhead since they are free to discard all other such spam, and the metadata can easily be supplied by pretty much any full node if a vendor is not running his own. And the nature of Bitcoin means that the tag cannot be forged.
- Instruct 'licensed' operators to only accept payments from wallets which can be demonstrated to have been tagged as per the above. If they choose to accept other payments, the funds may be subject to forfeiture.
- Instruct the Bitcoin userbase that they may achieve various kinds of tagging by declaring their stashes in a legal manner. Again, the nature of Bitcoin means that performing this simple action could achieve almost immediate satisfaction. And only 'terrorists and criminals' would resist you know.
Of course there needs to be a certain adoption in mainstream-land before such a strategy could be successful. But probably not a huge amount. BTC that are not spendable at even a fairly small minority of potentially useful things (TigerDirect, Dish, etc) are going to be notably discounted in a free market.
