Is anonymity the future for bitcoin???

[franky1]

OP, I believe not, not for a network as mature as Bitcoin. Changing the rules now to make it more "anonymous" and "private" would have consequences.

The Bitcoin blockchain's transparency has its advantages too. It proves, with our own eyes, and without trusting that some privacy technology "simply works", that the ledger is balanced and auditable.

Adding more anonymity and privacy might also attract government agencies to discourage it more, or make more unfavorable laws against using it.

Plus if the Core developers truly wanted a more "private Bitcoin", then maybe do it off-chain, in the Lightning Network. But leave the blockchain alone.

finally some great thought from wind_fury
you have definitely earned 10 merit for this

i may add some points to the 'consequences' and explain the 'simply works'
some privacy concepts being discussed by devs are to hide the VALUE being moved.
this alone can make bitcoin UNauditable and thus challenge the point of a transparent trustable chain where people can see that coins at Z are real because they can be seen right back through the chain back to their original mined block A
many dont care about WHO.. but they still want to clearly and simply know the coins have a clear visible path from A-Z

these privacy codes actually add bytes of data to a transaction and only work when multiple parties mix funds. meaning its not only a bloated multisg transaction. but a multisig with extra bloat for the value privacy.
which means less transactions per hard drive space. which is not an optimisation of transactions vs space. but a de-optimisation

then theres the fact of adding too many features to something that should just be about send A to B. that it opens up risks of bugs where certain checks are not instantly done because theres just so many checks to do. thus causing risks by skipping a check initially to attempt to optimise relay speed, and do checks after. that then cause bugs of their own

as windfury said. if you want privacy that your name wont get attached to a transaction on the chain that you do not want seen. use other services/networks that do not publish details that need to be checked.

bitcoin is about checking and validating data. if we stop checking and validating data. then blockchains become pointless

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[Reid]

the way I see it is that bitcoin already has enough anonymity.  that that is more than enough. you say every transaction is public but even if I show you my address and transaction you still wouldn't be able to know who I am.
and this level of anonymity can even be considered a good thing if you ask me. if bitcoin was fully anonymous we may have had a lot more FUD and attacks against bitcoin. with this small level of anonymity they are still FUDing it and say it is being used for illegal activities when it is not, if there were more then they would have attacked it even more.

True. This the answer to your question.

Look there is not much information in the blockchain but just an Address. You still do not know who the guy is. Maybe if he did sign a message with his information then you can track him easily but not much does that. They still prefer to be hidden.

Exchanges though like Coinbase provides knows some people who uses address for they need to sign up with full info. But there is still a law of privacy so you cannot just get it from them.

Regarding the anonimity. It is already enough to stay private.

[efxtrader]

I dont think anonymity is the advantages of bitcoin. Right now many coin with anonymity features like monero coin. Bitcoin advatages is on network security and its already proven for many years.

[Dimonhamon]

Here you can look from two sides. The first is that the set of digits and letters is already anonymous. The other side is that everyone can see this set of numbers and letters. This is what we have now, this is a golden middle, something between anonymity and openness.

[visionE2]

I think anonymity is a dilemma for bitcoin, because on one hand anonymity makes an opportunity to obscure transactions, but on the other hand, if it isn't made anonymous, then our data is vulnerable to being hacked and misused

[Wind_FURY]

I believe the latest bug, that would have made an "attacking miner" inflate the coin supply, proves that the Bitcoin's transparency and auditability on the base layer is the best.

If a hacker exploited a bug that would inflate the coin supply of a "private blockchain", how would the developers tell if there were 1 coin or 1 billion coins inflated in the total supply?

this is entirely off-topic here since it has nothing to do with the anonymity subject being discussed.

Not entirely, because it serves as a point to make a debate against an "anonymous" and "private" Bitcoin.

But for you, ok. I will start another topic about it or ask some developers.

as for the "attack", don't forget that any block that used this vulnerability would have been an invalid block. the problem was simply that certain versions of bitcoin core nodes were not verifying blocks for detecting this particular problem so they accepted it as valid. but that  doesn't make the supply inflate, it just made those nodes go on a fork and start an altcoin.

But how many nodes were running the version that would accept the "attacking blocks" as valid? Thousands more than the versions that would reject them and crash from what I read. I believe there are more Bitcoin Core versions running with the bug in 0.15.0 to 0.16.2 than the versions that don't have the bug.

But I also believe that because of Bitcoin's transparent and auditable blockchain, the discrepancy can immediately be found. The community, the miners, the merchants, and the developers can then react quickly and deploy a fix.

Non-transparent blockchains might not have the same ease in that situation.

OP, I believe not, not for a network as mature as Bitcoin. Changing the rules now to make it more "anonymous" and "private" would have consequences.

The Bitcoin blockchain's transparency has its advantages too. It proves, with our own eyes, and without trusting that some privacy technology "simply works", that the ledger is balanced and auditable.

Adding more anonymity and privacy might also attract government agencies to discourage it more, or make more unfavorable laws against using it.

Plus if the Core developers truly wanted a more "private Bitcoin", then maybe do it off-chain, in the Lightning Network. But leave the blockchain alone.

finally some great thought from wind_fury
you have definitely earned 10 merit for this

Hahaha. Thanks.

[coinwizard_]

The focus now for bitcoin is what to do in an overloaded environment. It is clear that transaction speeds needed to be improved and the fees lowered. For privacy there is monero and zcash which will attract the darker crowd

[Ava Duvall]

Anonymous, in my opinion, is just a situation where we can be careful of our identity or not, and in bitcoin we can make thousands of wallets at once which will make us difficult to track. But if you only use 1 wallet, the owner of the wallet will be revealed.

In a way yes, but I dont think anonymity isn't  good thing it leads to black market sales and illegal transactions. so there are many more cons than pros to anonymity.

[Herbert2020]

as for the "attack", don't forget that any block that used this vulnerability would have been an invalid block. the problem was simply that certain versions of bitcoin core nodes were not verifying blocks for detecting this particular problem so they accepted it as valid. but that  doesn't make the supply inflate, it just made those nodes go on a fork and start an altcoin.

But how many nodes were running the version that would accept the "attacking blocks" as valid? Thousands more than the versions that would reject them and crash from what I read. I believe there are more Bitcoin Core versions running with the bug in 0.15.0 to 0.16.2 than the versions that don't have the bug.

But I also believe that because of Bitcoin's transparent and auditable blockchain, the discrepancy can immediately be found. The community, the miners, the merchants, and the developers can then react quickly and deploy a fix.

Non-transparent blockchains might not have the same ease in that situation.

all i'm saying is that it wouldn't have inflated the supply. we already had a bug like this many years ago with an overflow bug which i believe some miner by accident created a block that created a gigantic amount of new coins instead of giving him 50BTC+fees! the bug was caught and since there was an alert system in place back then and the network was small everyone was alerted fast and the bug was fixed while invalidating that block.

as for "anon" coins which i believe that is what you mean by "private or non-transparent" blockchains they also have certain consensus rules checking these things. it wouldn't be impossible to detect invalid blocks like this in an anon coin like Monero for instance. otherwise they wouldn't have worked at all in first place. which is why i said this is off-topic.

[badaovodich]

Anonymity now makes people think negative is money laundering, so to be transparent for Bitcoin we need to show the activity clear and honest.

[gesdan]

anonymous is the great thing in one side and bad thing in other side, for the user of bitcoin anonymously its mean that the transaction that they make is secure and nobody know about it, but in other side it will makes the government think about the criminals that happen because of the anonymity of bitcoin, and this is makes some country in the world is banned bitcoin

[BITSSA : BITCOIN EXCHANGE]

We at Bitssa.com believe that anonymity will create a trust deficit in Bitcoin as a viable investment option and a value storing digital currency. The only reason why there is so much confidence in the market for Bitcoin is that all the transactions are available in the public domain in real time. This is why people have trust in Bitcoin. We all know that Bitcoin is based on the highly secured, sophisticated and advanced Blockchain Technology. As every transaction on the block needs approval from various sources on the network, it makes Bitcoin trading a transparent and accountable process. Therefore, to do away with the 'public character' of Bitcoin and bringing in anonymity will compromise with its security feature and further create suspicion in the public's eyes. And most importantly, adding anonymity will also facilitate terror-funding, illegal transactions, and black money laundering, etc. Hence, it is extremely important that Bitcoin should retain its essential character as a highly secured, transparent and accountable value storing virtual commodity rather than becoming a dangerous instrument in the hands of a few mischief-mongers willing to commit financial crimes if anonymity is granted to it.

[Wind_FURY]

as for the "attack", don't forget that any block that used this vulnerability would have been an invalid block. the problem was simply that certain versions of bitcoin core nodes were not verifying blocks for detecting this particular problem so they accepted it as valid. but that  doesn't make the supply inflate, it just made those nodes go on a fork and start an altcoin.

But how many nodes were running the version that would accept the "attacking blocks" as valid? Thousands more than the versions that would reject them and crash from what I read. I believe there are more Bitcoin Core versions running with the bug in 0.15.0 to 0.16.2 than the versions that don't have the bug.

But I also believe that because of Bitcoin's transparent and auditable blockchain, the discrepancy can immediately be found. The community, the miners, the merchants, and the developers can then react quickly and deploy a fix.

Non-transparent blockchains might not have the same ease in that situation.

all i'm saying is that it wouldn't have inflated the supply. we already had a bug like this many years ago with an overflow bug which i believe some miner by accident created a block that created a gigantic amount of new coins instead of giving him 50BTC+fees! the bug was caught and since there was an alert system in place back then and the network was small everyone was alerted fast and the bug was fixed while invalidating that block.

I agree, and if it would inflate the supply, honest miners would notice it early. But I am not debating that.

as for "anon" coins which i believe that is what you mean by "private or non-transparent" blockchains they also have certain consensus rules checking these things. it wouldn't be impossible to detect invalid blocks like this in an anon coin like Monero for instance. otherwise they wouldn't have worked at all in first place. which is why i said this is off-topic.

The topic is, "Is anonymity the future for bitcoin?", which I answered, "no". The reasons I already said in this post, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5033221.msg45928287#msg45928287

Now that you get the context, let's make a hypothetical scenario where there was a bug that could inflate the coin supply in an anon coin like Monero. A bug so bad that the nodes would relay those blocks containing invalid transactions as true.

I know it will be detected, and I know that it will be fixed, but how can it be audited that 1 coin or 1 billion coins were inflated in the total supply, and in what block height did the attacks start?

[buwaytress]

We at Bitssa.com believe that anonymity will create a trust deficit in Bitcoin as a viable investment option and a value storing digital currency. The only reason why there is so much confidence in the market for Bitcoin is that all the transactions are available in the public domain in real time. This is why people have trust in Bitcoin. We all know that Bitcoin is based on the highly secured, sophisticated and advanced Blockchain Technology. As every transaction on the block needs approval from various sources on the network, it makes Bitcoin trading a transparent and accountable process. Therefore, to do away with the 'public character' of Bitcoin and bringing in anonymity will compromise with its security feature and further create suspicion in the public's eyes. And most importantly, adding anonymity will also facilitate terror-funding, illegal transactions, and black money laundering, etc. Hence, it is extremely important that Bitcoin should retain its essential character as a highly secured, transparent and accountable value storing virtual commodity rather than becoming a dangerous instrument in the hands of a few mischief-mongers willing to commit financial crimes if anonymity is granted to it.

As much as I see the points in anonymity possibly challenging the existing Bitcoin blockchain's recognised value as an auditable, verifiable method of payment, I don't know about this trust deficit in it being viable investment.

I feel that people are confident in Bitcoin because it works, it continues to get better at working, and survives threats all the time - more and more people are accepting it for payment, more and more are using it properly. All these investors and people who use it to store value don't really care about the inner workings, not when majority owners probably never signed a transaction themselves, much less know their private keys.

Transactions will still be verifiable for the parties involved, though maybe true not auditable externally without permissions, if anonymisation features were to be implemented.

After all, the "public character" of Bitcoin is still - wrongly - that of a private and anonymous money. Started out like that, and somehow still has that tag (just check the media headlines). This is the false logic that if you make something better at protecting personal freedoms, you do so at the cost of facilitating all that bad terrorist shit. States use it pretty well, let's not help them sell the kool-aid.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, I believe not, not for a network as mature as Bitcoin. Changing the rules now to make it more "anonymous" and "private" would have consequences.

The Bitcoin blockchain's transparency has its advantages too. It proves, with our own eyes, and without trusting that some privacy technology "simply works", that the ledger is balanced and auditable.

Adding more anonymity and privacy might also attract government agencies to discourage it more, or make more unfavorable laws against using it.

Plus if the Core developers truly wanted a more "private Bitcoin", then maybe do it off-chain, in the Lightning Network. But leave the blockchain alone.

these privacy codes actually add bytes of data to a transaction

Plus it also causes the blocks to be bigger that would cause the network to "scale down" instead of "scale up", and make it more centralized.

Bitcoin's regulated block size limit is there for technical reasons. But I believe it will help Bitcoin out-live every altcoin.

[DIGGDAWALL]

NO, it`s already impossible to keep Your identity. KYC is the main gate to the BTC road nowadays.

[Bobtong]

Firstly, I think there is no such thing as a complete anonymity in the web
Secondly, Bitcoin will face huge legal problems which will decrease a demand

[audaciousbeing]

As we can see each and every transaction for bitcoin is publicly registered to the blockchain where in all of us have access, so I am just thinking if anonymity or providing privacy will be the next move for bitcoin. Just my thoughts, you can add yours here and let's discuss it.

Based on this, anonymity is different from transparency. Being able to see every transaction on the blockchain is transparency and the moment that is available it becomes impossible to forge. If this is applied to every human endeavor, the issue of corruption would be a thing of the past with its influence reduced to the minimum level compared to what we have now because the whole of corruption happens when some things are shrouded in secrecy.

Total anonymity for bitcoin won't be there for long judging by recent happenings and developments. Although, there would still be element of doing your transaction across borders without interference but doing it illegally could mean the anonymity would be lifted due to information provided for KYCs purposes and the ability for one bitcoin address to the linked to another no matter the number of addresses it touched.

[elwiswoodie]

it seems that bitcoin will indeed become an anonym even for the future, I am very sure that cryptocurrency needs to be improvised so that it can be adopted en masse by governments around the world
maybe we should wait for creative developers in the future, so that bitcoin is more familiar in public
even though they must be anonymous

[dohh]

As we can see each and every transaction for bitcoin is publicly registered to the blockchain where in all of us have access, so I am just thinking if anonymity or providing privacy will be the next move for bitcoin. Just my thoughts, you can add yours here and let's discuss it.

No, the future lies in transparency and tracebility. You may like it or not, but this is where it goes. BTC has no place in future.