Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: MagicMan on February 19, 2012, 01:04 am
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I was just browsing the bitcointalk.org forum as I often do and came across this topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64415.0
A group of, what I assume to be, computer savvy people want to de-anonymize bitcoin. I will be the first to admit that I do not fully comprehend the logistics of their endeavor so if anyone who is more acquainted with computer science and the bitcoin protocol specifically could shed some light on whether we should be worried about this or not it would be greatly appreciated.
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i would think there is no way that could be done or it would have already happend.. they, along with every government already want to do that and have wanted to do that for some time now, the point of it is to be annonymous..
that being said, if btc was compromised a new crypto currency would replace it, stronger than the last
i rly dont know tho thats all speculation..
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Grab your SR wallet address and punch it into google and see what happens. BTC is not half as anonymous as some people may think. A little correlation here, a little pinching one link of the chain there, and coins can easily be traced.
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Data mining on the block chain is already possible with blockexplorer. Bitcoins are easily traceable. If someone had one of your wallet addresses and you used it to send money to SR they could just follow the transactions with blockexplorer to SR. I think the tumbler makes this a little more difficult though. Could someone someone with better knowledge of bitcoin weigh in on this?
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A search revealed nothing except for the fact that the address has been used before and all associated IPs are in no way related to me. This coupled with SRs tumbling mechanism should theoretically protect me but I will admit to some healthy paranoia
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A search revealed nothing except for the fact that the address has been used before and all associated IPs are in no way related to me. This coupled with SRs tumbling mechanism should theoretically protect me but I will admit to some healthy paranoia
It's quite enough though, unless your coins were paid in cash and untraceable. I believe a vast amount of new /less savvy users don't practice good sense when it comes to "unlinking" their identity from their coins.
Of course LE will always have to find "some" link from an anonymous coin to a user, but that can easily be done by block chain correlation. Bitcoins are come into existence by being mined, and at some point, virgin innocent coins change ownership to someone doing illicit with them, all you need is the last "honest" owner, whom will more than likely happily divulge the details of whom he sold them to.
So unless your initial buy is really anonymous, as in, cash transaction with numerous wallets in between, you can indeed be traced.
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Well shit. I'm just gonna stick with hoping I'm small enough to be ignored by LE.
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Well shit. I'm just gonna stick with hoping I'm small enough to be ignored by LE.
As long as you don't send a payment for coins with your personal credit card or from a bank account to an "honest" seller you should be fine. There's a number of "best practices" threads in here. The only downside is, the safer you want to be, the longer it takes to get your coins. This is a shame of course as even the most unsafe methods are a pain in the arse and subject you to long waits. Of course with btc being as volatile as they are that sucks arse.
But what can you do? Better safe than sorry.