Bitcoin is on interpols radar

[realnowhereman]

Doesn't hold up.

Bitcoin movements are unidentifiable. The only conceivable trace is at an exchange and that tells you nothing about who any withdrawals get sent to.

You seem to be confused as to how the blockchain works...

In what way? (I am certainly not confused, I am writing an alternative client so am very familiar)

If I am a criminal then how do Interpol link my real world identity to some bitcoin addreseses? If they do find my mtgox account, and I have sent bought coins to another, freshly generated, address how will they find the real world identity of that address?

The blockchain offers no identifying information. Only where bitcoin touches the real world is a connection made and its pretty trivial to mix coins to break the financial link in the chain so real world connections are isolated from each other.

While the "bitcoins are anonymous" crowd are obviously wrong, it is not impossible to protect your identity even with a public transaction table.

[tiker]

You're assuming they're looking for you by your bitcoin address.

You send $$ to Mt.Gox which gets put into account with bitcoin address 1abc...

You log into Mt.Gox and transfer from address 1abc.. to 1def...

Mt.Gox logs your IP address for you logging in and transferring.... now we go to the internet provider of that IP address and start tracing that way.

[Raoul Duke]

You're assuming they're looking for you by your bitcoin address.

You send $$ to Mt.Gox which gets put into account with bitcoin address 1abc...

You log into Mt.Gox and transfer from address 1abc.. to 1def...

Mt.Gox logs your IP address for you logging in and transferring.... now we go to the internet provider of that IP address and start tracing that way.

Exactly, that's how we found YOU! Better look out 

[Bricks]

Regulators taking an interest in bit coin is something that should be welcomed.  Any currency will always have a number of enquiries into it. It's a sign that it's growing up.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Regulators taking an interest in bit coin is something that should be welcomed.  Any currency will always have a number of enquiries into it. It's a sign that it's growing up.

1+. Beat me to it.

[evoorhees]

Hmmm I can think of nothing that would spread awareness of Bitcoin around the world faster than a massive Hollywood style crackdown on the top Bitcoin users around the world.

Some day, European and US gov's will realize that their heavy fists will simply squeeze and promote the currency in Asia.

At the point where such a silly thing went to trial, I can imagine the mother of all donations to a legal defense fund that would publicize the entire event around the earth.

And as far as I know, buying placeholders in an open-source software network is no more illegal than buying copies of microsoft word documents from your friends 

[JusticeForYou]

I have seen a copy of the memo. It is real, there 438 9000 names on the current international watch list. 53 42 of those names are under a serious counter inteligence operation for money laundering activities. Warrants have been served for banking, phone records and for the isp logs. Softlayer Dallas has had open warrants on it for 6 666 months currently 176 419 board members are consider high value targets.

It is the Numerology that matters.  

[BTCurious]

I have seen a copy of the memo. It is real, there 438 9000 names on the current international watch list. 53 42 of those names are under a serious counter inteligence operation for money laundering activities. Warrants have been served for banking, phone records and for the isp logs. Softlayer Dallas has had open warrants on it for 6 666 months currently 176 419 board members are consider high value targets.

It is the Numerology that matters.  

I used to use numbers like that, but then I took 140 arrows to the knee.

[Gabi]

I have seen a copy of the memo. It is real, there 438 9001 names on the current international watch list. 53 42 of those names are under a serious counter inteligence operation for money laundering activities. Warrants have been served for banking, phone records and for the isp logs. Softlayer Dallas has had open warrants on it for 6 666 months currently 176 419 board members are consider high value targets.

It is the Numerology that matters.  

FIXED