Here's the cited paper from UCSD on bitcoin address analysis:
Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
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Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#22I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining. Edit: got curious and found an answer: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-wou... If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute-forced keys on all addresses in the network.
So much easier to crack the box holding the key.
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tracking. (coinjoin/zerocoin) A lot of us are investing with the expectation true anonymous transactions eventually happen, because when they do Bitcoin will become even more valuable.
> A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising Call it what it is, money laundering.
It isn't.
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#24This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
Bitcoin is public by default
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#25This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
This is why I take bitcoin seriously, the privacy implications are BRILLIANT :P
In all seriousness, this is going to come across as a conspiracy theory, but why else would major government organisations be thinking that bitcoin is actually a good thing? Surveillance by design neatly negates all the current NSA privacy issues! It is also a figurative goldmine for economics researchers, who get to study every transaction in an economy for once, with full information on how the funds are following.
There's quite a few of us who have been concerned for a while about the issue of who controls the bitchain, as the only real thing stopping a single entity from doing this is cost. Yet the advantages are so very high. There's also the very real possibility that you don't actually need 51% of miners to do this for specific purposes, either. Just look at some of the TOR monitoring research.
EDIT: I should also add that we need to be talking about these issues, rather than dismissing them. If the cryptocurrency movement is to survive, then these are the challenges ahead.
And one has to ask, if this is not the sole means of accepted currency, are these issues actually a concern? What would count as appropriate mitigation? Can multiple forms of cryptocurrency co-exist and serve different purposes?
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#26I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining. Edit: got curious and found an answer: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-wou... If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute-forced keys on all addresses in the network.
So much easier to crack the box holding the key.
Which is why the key hopefully isn't stored on any system that is remotely accessible.
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#27This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
And this is why I can take Bitcoin seriously. Can you imagine if it were really completely anonymous, and someone could be spending a hundred million dollars on, say, a nuclear bomb, without any record, association, or so much as someonel leaving the house and delivering a suitcase full of cash? Imagine if Russia become a failed state or bribeable - you really want to be able to pay off a hundred million dollars to some general there with no more record - to us, to the rest of Russia, or to anyone else, including at any future point that the general would spend any of that money, than if you typed md5 'haha now i'm nuclear' at a bash shell on some disconnected PC? I think this aspect of btc is great. To see what you're talking about, go ahead and type echo -n Haha I\'m nuclear! | md5sum at the prompt and see if you think that a financial transaction of any amount should be as totally untraceable as the cryptographic operation you just performed locally. Really, come on.
Also we already had a case of ransomware. How about ransomware that attacks a nuclear facility, flight control tower, hydroelectric plant or whatever else, and threatens to immediately cause damage if a ransom isn't paid. You really want that to be totally 100% off of any ledger anywhere - and not even include a delivery of a briefcase full of cash? Nor any way to follow any of that money at any point whatsoever?
I think btc pseudonymity is a fine compromise.
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#28This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
Traditional currency isn't really anonymous. Sure it is theoretically possible to do an anonymous 150 million dollar cash transaction in USD but in practical terms it's basically impossible without a great deal of money laundering. I believe by law in North America banks have to report any cash transactions >= 10k per 24 hour period to the government. Additionally every bill has a traceable serial number on it.
There is no history of every transaction in which a given serial number appears however. So in that sense it's easier to hide origins... even if the Fed knows which bank got that note originally, it's very likely that there's no trace of it after that unless it was involved in a specific tracked transaction (uncover police drug buy, etc.)
Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#29Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction
#30This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
This is why I take bitcoin seriously, the privacy implications are BRILLIANT :P In all seriousness, this is going to come across as a conspiracy theory, but why else would major government organisations be thinking that bitcoin is actually a good thing? Surveillance by design neatly negates all the current NSA privacy issues! It is also a figurative goldmine for economics researchers, who get to study every transacti…
> but why else would major government organisations be thinking that bitcoin is actually a good thing?
Because they realized it would be impossible to fight it and, more importantly, because they probably invested in it themselves. Bitcoin being non-anonymous is a problem that can be solved and is being currently solved.