Bitcoin should never become fully anonymous- don't fool yourself

[ChiBitCTy]

One thing I often hear is how bitcoin should become a fully anonymous cryptocurrency.  No, it shouldn't.  If people want bitcoin to truly become mainstream then making bitcoin fully anonymous would destroy that goal.  I believe in these types of currencies, such as with Monero whom I support fully.

Here's why- the governments wont allow it.  Right now the U.S. government is working on bitcoin/cryptocurrency legislation that Steve Mnuchin (Secretary of the US Treasury) is putting together and recently said should release soon. I'm fearful of what's to come and bitcoin isn't even anonymous at the moment.  Governments can kill the exchanges.  Sure there's always over the counter, but that's not going to bring this to the heights we all hope it's headed.

Think of it this way.  How many countries still don't allow for women to vote or even show their face in public, how many countries don't allow for freedom of speech, how many countries still don't allow freedom of press...and you think they'l be okay with a massive global currency they can't control what so ever?  Not a chance.

I hope LN is something that stays on another layer and is used for anonymous transaction or something else is created so that bitcoin has both options..but making it fully anonymous wont work out well.  As a financial advisor this is something seemingly obvious to me after spending over a decade in finance and seeing how this kind of stuff is received by governments. 

Would love to be wrong or hear how it could still work. 

[nelson4lov]

Bitcoin provides anonymity but to a certain extent. Since all transactions are available on a publicly viewable ledger, transactions can still be traced but will require extra digging work. That's one of the major reasons why Bitcoin users patronize the services of Bitcoin Mixers.  Whole other altcoins like Monero and Zcash are privacy-centric, people still tend to use bitcoin with Mixers for their transactions.

The number of Bitcoin users that use Bitcoin Mixers continues to grow: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/65771/use-of-bitcoin-mixers-by-darknet-entities-is-on-the-rise-new-report-reveals

[eaLiTy]

One thing I often hear is how bitcoin should become a fully anonymous cryptocurrency.  No, it shouldn't.  If people want bitcoin to truly become mainstream then making bitcoin fully anonymous would destroy that goal.  I believe in these types of currencies, such as with Monero whom I support fully.

BTCitcoin is not designed by Satoshi to be anonymous, if you are able to get the database of every UTXO then you are not truly anonymous unless you tweak some things. I do accept the fact that government will not allow any anonymous currency to thrive and i always wonder how these anonymous currencies will survive when the regulations becomes strict for every exchange.

Think of it this way.  How many countries still don't allow for women to vote or even show their face in public, how many countries don't allow for freedom of speech, how many countries still don't allow freedom of press...and you think they'l be okay with a massive global currency they can't control what so ever?  Not a chance.

The countries you are referring to might be living before a century than you and i are living, i do understand the countries you are referring to and i have visited Saudi where they had restrictions but now they are trying to liberate women rights because the new king wants to give liberation for women and they allowed woman to get driving license as well as open movie theater which is a big deal and  the main land Iran where i have seen restrictions for woman even though you can enjoy but it is not legal but they have Kish Island where woman enjoy the most without any restrictions.

What i am trying to tell is, it is possible to have a liberal currency with BTCitcoin as we will have some countries accepting BTCitcoin.

[Yamifoud]

I look into the moment will come that Bitcoin and its transactions are no longer anonymous. It probably will come sooner as the government will try to regulate and legalize the use of crypto, everything wanted to be controlled and much more to stop illegal activities which some of them are using cryptocurrency.

As to the fact that our address and its transaction already have a blockchain record and traceable enough, I feel this a start of losing our goal to keep anonymous. At this point, we're still unknown but sooner, it can't be anymore especially when the leading country has taken an action to that.

[coupable]

By its nature, bitcoin is not anonymous and can't help someone being anonymous while making a paiement.
Fully anonymous. Maybe it's technically possible;
I remember reading about the possibility to conbine between blockchain for bitcoin and Mimble Wimble protocole. This should help make a fully anonymous transactions without a single trace about the persons behind it. So unless you use an exchange, the use of bitcoin can remain private and anonymous.
Conservative dictatorships can't forbidden people from using a btc wallet connected directly (without a third part) to the blockchain network or just written in a paper wallet. I think that by the growth of use cases for bitcoin, the anonymous concept can be realised.

[Kemarit]

Let me quote the man himself:

When you send to a bitcoin address, you don't connect to the recipient.  You send the transaction to the network the same way you relay transactions.  There's no distinction between a transaction you originated and one you received from another node that you're relaying in a broadcast.  With a very small network though, someone might still figure it out by process of elimination.  It'll be better when the network is larger.

If you send by IP, the recipient sees you because you connect to their IP.  You could use TOR to mask that.

You could use TOR if you don't want anyone to know you're even using Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is still very new and has not been independently analysed.  If you're serious about privacy, TOR is an advisable precaution.

And ten years after, Bitcoin is at the heel of government, they are now enforcing exchanges for KYC and anything that can identify us.

International bodies like  Financial Stability Board (FSB), Financial Action Task Force FATF are already pushing a regulatory framework on Bitcoin and crypto in general.

https://www.fatf-gafi.org/documents/documents/virtual-currency-definitions-aml-cft-risk.html

[joniboini]

And ten years after, Bitcoin is at the heel of government, they are now enforcing exchanges for KYC and anything that can identify us.

The network itself is still quite good for privacy to some extent. It is impossible to expect the government would allow any asset or any exchange to accept users without any KYC, they're doing some business and need to hold some responsibility. The AML thing and so on is almost guaranteed to be mandatory when you use a centralized service. So, the solution would be don't use them. It's your call.

[Debonaire217]

Intrinsically, bitcoin provides anonymity support, most of the time, people need to transact, and sometimes they didn't notice that this intrinsic anonymity is fading because of some transactions. One of which that I encountered is when you wish to withdraw funds from your BTC address, you undergo KYC from your local exchange and there, you provide your identity or personal information such as Name, Address, Birthday, which is crucial to remove your anonymity. Whenever someone wants to trace you, you aren't anonymous at all.

[jseverson]

Here's why- the governments wont allow it.  Right now the U.S. government is working on bitcoin/cryptocurrency legislation that Steve Mnuchin (Secretary of the US Treasury) is putting together and recently said should release soon. I'm fearful of what's to come and bitcoin isn't even anonymous at the moment.  Governments can kill the exchanges.  Sure there's always over the counter, but that's not going to bring this to the heights we all hope it's headed.

I don't disagree, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It effectively means Bitcoin's development is going to be limited by what governments dictate. Sure some of us can live with just a pseudonymus Bitcoin, but what if they go after something else? With this reasoning, lawmakers are going to be able to mold Bitcoin into what they want with legislation, and we all lose out for it.

I mean, it's cool in this case because there are workarounds in mixers, layers, it was never designed to be fully anonymous to begin with, etc., but IMO future laws should never be a consideration in mapping out development.

[Assface16678]

As we can see the bitcoin becomes popular from the previous years and it is not anonymous let's say the creator it's self because he doesn't want to show himself right now because it is a huge responsibility to taken the coin which is not going good to get more attraction but the creation of it the bitcoin becomes public for over a year's which is a good thing we have. There are a lot of people using this kind of coin even the altcoins because they see the potential of this coin to make more profit on them also even this coin is going to the public the transaction on itself is in a private, all of the transactions are secured with a cipher and decoder also with the help of the blockchain technology this kind of innovation becomes safer because it is not prone to hackers all of the information are going to encrypt into a new block which is create a piece of new information and another cryptography even this is secured the transaction are still transparent which the users can see the outcome of this coin of there is some confirmation happening or now.

And ten years after, Bitcoin is at the heel of government, they are now enforcing exchanges for KYC and anything that can identify us.

The network itself is still quite good for privacy to some extent. It is impossible to expect the government would allow any asset or any exchange to accept users without any KYC, they're doing some business and need to hold some responsibility. The AML thing and so on is almost guaranteed to be mandatory when you use a centralized service. So, the solution would be don't use them. It's your call.

Becomes a decentralized use of the bitcoin the government restricts this kind of method of payment and transaction so they create a platform that the user can now securely using the KYC to identify and limit the transactions becomes now centralized.

[Darker45]

Here's why- the governments wont allow it.  Right now the U.S. government is working on bitcoin/cryptocurrency legislation that Steve Mnuchin (Secretary of the US Treasury) is putting together and recently said should release soon. I'm fearful of what's to come and bitcoin isn't even anonymous at the moment.  Governments can kill the exchanges.  Sure there's always over the counter, but that's not going to bring this to the heights we all hope it's headed.

I don't disagree, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It effectively means Bitcoin's development is going to be limited by what governments dictate. Sure some of us can live with just a pseudonymus Bitcoin, but what if they go after something else? With this reasoning, lawmakers are going to be able to mold Bitcoin into what they want with legislation, and we all lose out for it.

I mean, it's cool in this case because there are workarounds in mixers, layers, it was never designed to be fully anonymous to begin with, etc., but IMO future laws should never be a consideration in mapping out development.

Personally, I don't mind using a pseudonymous currency. I am quite contented with it. But, indeed, what if the rest of the people do not want to settle with it?

Or can we just consider pseudonymous as the middle and acceptable ground between anonymous and identified currency? A sort of a demilitarized zone between two countries trying to annihilate one another.

Otherwise, you could actually develop a fully anonymous currency which is going to be banned and will never ever reach full adoption for being such or try to tone down the feature a bit and perhaps gain acceptance.

[bbc.reporter]

@ChiBitCTy. The government agrees with your statement hehehe.

In any case, I read this new article. This might be relevant to the thread on having anonymity and privacy without changing anything.



Chris Belcher, an independent developer whose Github’s history shows hundreds of commits across various Bitcoin-centric applications, released his new implementation proposal for CoinSwap last week.

Belcher’s approach builds on CoinSwap’s earlier solution — that of utilizing a “swap” method to conduct transactions. At the time, the framework relied on conducting transactions via an intermediate wallet instead of a direct transfer, causing wallet addresses to be “masked,” effectively.

But the protocol proved to be difficult to implement and never came to fruition, notes Belcher. A relevant Bitcointalk thread has not shown activity since 2016, meaning the project was, indeed, left abandoned.

However, the Bitcoin developer noted CoinSwap holds “great promise,” and is the “next step for on-chain bitcoin privacy.”

Meanwhile; Belcher noted the approach may look similar to the Lightning network but features several improvements over the latter. One is presenting better liquidity for users, with Belcher stating “it’s hard to imagine the Lightning Network will ever reliably” route a 200 Bitcoin transfer to any node in the Bitcoin protocol.

Read in full https://cryptoslate.com/this-bitcoin-developer-is-using-swaps-to-solve-btcs-long-running-pseudonymous-privacy-issue/

Source https://gist.github.com/chris-belcher/9144bd57a91c194e332fb5ca371d0964

[davis196]

Who is trying to make Bitcoin fully anonymous?Can you mention a few BTC developers,that are currently working on this?
Is there an upcoming Bitcoin hardfork,that is aiming at more anonymity? I don't know about such hardfork.
Basically you are a discussing a possibility that might never happen.
I don't see any logic in the "if bitcoin becomes more anonymous,governments will destroy it" hypothesis.
Monero is more anonymous than Bitcoin,but no government had destroyed Monero so far.It's still alive.
The governments might try to destroy Bitcoin not because it's more or less anonymous,but because it is an alternative to the fiat financial system.

[pooya87]

~ would destroy that goal.
Here's why- the governments wont allow it.

for someone who talks about bitcoin "goal" you seem to now know what it actually is.
the main bitcoin goal has always been to create a decentralized currency that nobody can censor. that means you should not care one bit what the government says about bitcoin. in fact bitcoin was created because of the government and banking system severe corruption. of course they won't "allow" it and it has nothing to do with anonymity.
the fact that most governments have accepted bitcoin is because they know they can't stop it.

P.S. bitcoin will never be fully anonymous and it has nothing to do with what people want or don't want. it is because of its design.

[witcher_sense]

In my opinion, it was a very clever decision to make bitcoin not fully anonymous by default. The reason why that was so is because it helps bitcoin to be money of people. When we talk about cryptocurrency, we often mention that it helps to provide financial sovereignety and freedom. Freedom itself means people should have a choice. People should make transactions and control their money in a way they want. People's money belongs only to people. If they want transact in an open manner, they can do that without additional actions. If they want some anonymity (bitcoin can provide a decent level of anonymity if properly used) they can do that as well. It is merely matter of freedom and choice. I want to use my money as freely as possible. Everything that takes out that  variability makes money very ineffective in terms of freedom of choice.

[jseverson]

-snip-

Otherwise, you could actually develop a fully anonymous currency which is going to be banned and will never ever reach full adoption for being such or try to tone down the feature a bit and perhaps gain acceptance.

Well these already exist, so we're all good in that front. Plenty of people use both Bitcoin along with Monero/Dash. I don't think I ever see anyone push for full anonymity in Bitcoin either -- they mostly ask why it isn't, considering its reputation brought about by pop culture.

Just to be clear, I don't mind whether Bitcoin is fully anonymous or not. What I take issue with is going out of our way just to please the government. It works out in this case because Bitcoin was never meant to be fully anonymous to begin with, but if that had been in the development roadmap and was scrapped just because of regulatory threats, then it would become a problem.

So yeah, I understand the OP's reasoning and what he said certainly made sense, but IMO the reason why Bitcoin should never be anonymous is because it doesn't have to, nor was it ever intended to be; dodging regulatory measures just happened to line up conveniently with that, not vice-versa.

[hatshepsut93]

In my opinion, it was a very clever decision to make bitcoin not fully anonymous by default.

I doubt it was a conscious decision by Satoshi. He probably did know how to implement privacy similar to what XMR did later, or more likely just did think it would be a problem, because he assumed that addresses won't be reused much and that chain analysis will be difficult. And maybe he is still right to some extent, because chain analysis is difficult if mixing is involved, which is why criminals go unpunished, despite Bitcoin's supposed weak privacy.

[slaman29]

I think Bitcoin shouldn't focus on being fully anonymous BUT if one day there is a technology that it can adopt to become anonymous, I don't see why not. Allow people to be able to choose to make their coins more private or more anonymous, that should be the way. Everything boils down to private choice in the end right?

[Lorence.xD]

In my opinion, it was a very clever decision to make bitcoin not fully anonymous by default. The reason why that was so is because it helps bitcoin to be money of people. When we talk about cryptocurrency, we often mention that it helps to provide financial sovereignety and freedom. Freedom itself means people should have a choice. People should make transactions and control their money in a way they want. People's money belongs only to people. If they want transact in an open manner, they can do that without additional actions. If they want some anonymity (bitcoin can provide a decent level of anonymity if properly used) they can do that as well. It is merely matter of freedom and choice. I want to use my money as freely as possible. Everything that takes out that  variability makes money very ineffective in terms of freedom of choice.

Having a fully anonymous bitcoin will only make things worse because this will be a very good bridge for illegal activities, if you support this complete then you support money laundering and other illegal activities because that is what full anonymity will enable, I do not support full anonymity but having the privacy of users to the extent that the government can intervene is a better thing. Plus, this compromise will help in paving a way for bitcoin to be injected into mainstream finance. In the first place, why would you support full anonymity in bitcoin when you know that you are not doing something illegal, this elitism in bitcoin community is making the progress of the cryptocurrency regress and move backwards, and I find frustrating and sad because there are members of this community that are consciously excluding people and they do not want other people to know about this, they do not want others to learn in short. I know that many will disagree and others will be livid with my statement but I will stand with I say and I am open to criticism.

[witcher_sense]

I doubt it was a conscious decision by Satoshi. He probably did know how to implement privacy similar to what XMR did later, or more likely just did think it would be a problem, because he assumed that addresses won't be reused much and that chain analysis will be difficult. And maybe he is still right to some extent, because chain analysis is difficult if mixing is involved, which is why criminals go unpunished, despite Bitcoin's supposed weak privacy.

It is hard to say now whether that was an conscious decision  or not. What we know for sure is that Satoshi came up with the idea on how to solve a problem of having to rely on central server to control digital transactions. It was done very well and bitcoin has been working for more than 10 years so far. Without interruptions.

If Satoshi wanted bitcoin to be "electronic cash" then it is quite understandable why bitcoin is not fully anonymous. Physical cash is traceble to some extent, it has serial number so if needed it can be tracked. When doing physical cash transactions, we can clearly see that balance is changing upon trading between seller and buyer. It is not possible with anonymous currency since we don't know balances, addresses, persons whom we are dealing with. That is not how cash works.