Bitcoin Nodes Go Ultra Private Thanks to TOR Network

[Pepz79]

According to recent data from Bitnodes, 2020 has brought a large new movement of anonymity within Bitcoin nodes, many of which went anonymous thanks to the TOR Network. What do you think, guys?

[Bitcoinmeetups.org]

I hadn't heard about that. Is it really secure?

[LorenoCoin]

It is an excellent method to make sneaky transactions, I understand that Bitcoin cash and monero are the ones used for anonymity, but tor is very useful for BTC when you want to be invisible and gives you the ability to change your IP address every time want, ideal if you are going to trade in the Deepweb or you just don't want anyone watching you, to activate the tor browser always requires a little more time is everything.

[jseverson]

OP's (possible) source:

https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-nodes-go-ultra-private-thanks-to-tor-network/

I hadn't heard about that. Is it really secure?

Anonymity does not necessarily imply security. I don't think this has any real impact on overall network security. It makes it harder to trace individual nodes though, so good for them.

It is an excellent method to make sneaky transactions, I understand that Bitcoin cash and monero are the ones used for anonymity, but tor is very useful for BTC when you want to be invisible and gives you the ability to change your IP address every time want, ideal if you are going to trade in the Deepweb or you just don't want anyone watching you, to activate the tor browser always requires a little more time is everything.

Tor can help, but do remember that the blockchain is a public ledger. It doesn't matter if you change up your IP if an observer can track your movements through your transactions. Tor can only really help you if you were already anonymous in the first place.

That being said, it's far more important to break the links between you and your addresses through mixers or CoinJoin, both of which can be made more effective by using Tor.

[LorenoCoin]

OP's (possible) source:

https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-nodes-go-ultra-private-thanks-to-tor-network/

I hadn't heard about that. Is it really secure?

Anonymity does not necessarily imply security. I don't think this has any real impact on overall network security. It makes it harder to trace individual nodes though, so good for them.

It is an excellent method to make sneaky transactions, I understand that Bitcoin cash and monero are the ones used for anonymity, but tor is very useful for BTC when you want to be invisible and gives you the ability to change your IP address every time want, ideal if you are going to trade in the Deepweb or you just don't want anyone watching you, to activate the tor browser always requires a little more time is everything.

Tor can help, but do remember that the blockchain is a public ledger. It doesn't matter if you change up your IP if an observer can track your movements through your transactions. Tor can only really help you if you were already anonymous in the first place.

That being said, it's far more important to break the links between you and your addresses through mixers or CoinJoin, both of which can be made more effective by using Tor.

once I used a privacy currency that used tor, there was a lot of controversy about sneaky transactions, many believed that only by hiding the hash could anonymity be achieved, without knowing what better option was a mixer, maybe you can't hide the volume of the everything.

[adaseb]

I am assuming this is mostly so someone can broadcast a raw transaction anonymously, however the transaction itself will still be public once the nodes and miners actually end up mining the block.

So is this really useful? Because if someone say "Satoshi" wants to broadcast his transaction, he can send it to some bitcoin node and that node will propegate to all the nodes its connected too and eventually within a few seconds it will be in the pending transactions for most pools. However how can one prove which node was the first node to broadcast that transaction? It seems this would be difficult to pinpoint unless the very first node would be some government node?

Wonder if this will actually get any use. Maybe someone with more expensive can chime in and explain why TOR nodes are needed?

[jseverson]

Wonder if this will actually get any use. Maybe someone with more expensive can chime in and explain why TOR nodes are needed?

They're not at all needed, but according to one source:

A particular reason for this increase isn’t known. However, the privacy-minded TOR network has been a helpful tool in dealing with network problems while setting up a node. When someone is setting up a Bitcoin node, it’s quite a hassle to make sure other nodes can see it. They need to set up port forwarding on their routers, which is different for every router. TOR routes around this problem altogether. All users would need, is a TOR browser.

It's also possible that they simply don't want to be pinpointed. Either way, this trend isn't necessary, and isn't even necessarily beneficial for the system as a whole.

[NotATether]

Public service announcement: Tor does not make your bitcoin transactions anonymous.

Each person using bitcoin has a wallet address that is making transactions logged on the public ledger and can be viewed on blockchain.com. At best, all of your transaction origins/destinations/amounts are publicly available without anyone knowing you're the one who made them, and at worst your wallet address is traced back to an exchange (this one in particular pwns you with your KYC documents) or an online wallet.

Even if you're using an offline wallet that only connects by TOR with Tails OS and you keep changing IPs, people can still use address clustering to determine which addresses are controlled by the same person, because your wallet address does not change. And if you change it, address clustering can link it too. And as soon as you cluster the address of the other person you send bitcoins to, if they are connected to KYC documents and deanonymized, they will know who you sent money to which will make it easier for them to track you.

Once again, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If you want anonymity use an altcoin with an obfuscated ledger like Monero. Even that is not 100% anonymous, see this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2867811.0

[mk4]

It is an excellent method to make sneaky transactions, I understand that Bitcoin cash and monero are the ones used for anonymity, but tor is very useful for BTC when you want to be invisible and gives you the ability to change your IP address every time want, ideal if you are going to trade in the Deepweb or you just don't want anyone watching you, to activate the tor browser always requires a little more time is everything.

Yeah, no. Tor only helps you in privacy in terms of somewhat not letting authorities like your ISP know(or at least harder) that you're actually running bitcoin-related software. You can actually easily test this out yourself. Make a transaction using your preferred bitcoin wallet software through Tor, and as expected, your transaction will still be fully viewable using any block explorer.

Also, bitcoin cash really isn't anonymous either.