Is Bitcoin anonymous?

Beginner Questions
1

Is Bitcoin anonymous?
Bitcoin transaction’s anonymity depends on public-private keys. The digital tie between a public and a private key is stronger than the tie between a person and his DNA.
If you committed a crime but the police had your DNA you would hardly consider yourself safe.
Furthermore there is a necessarily public list of transactions involving your public key and therefore connecting you to others by their public key.
To call this anonymous seems a stretch!

2

This is the reason why privacy coins like Monero and PVIX exist. And also the biggest reason Satoshi Nakamoto will never spend his/her/their bitcoin. Welcome to the forums btw! Glad we’re getting more crypto folks coming in here.

3

I don’t think Babypips is claiming they are anonymous. Also, if people with a criminal record are considering to buy some, I guess they’ll think about this issue.

4

There is no issue. It’s a ledger where you can see transactions BUT you can`t trace cross currency transactions and one person can have more than one wallet address.
I’ve explained it in another thread but let my try to sum it up here as well.
You’ve got 1 BTC in your wallet. Send it to an exchange. Turn it to any other type of CC(CryptoCurrency) - like @purtle said, Monero is a good bet.
Withdraw it into the other cc’s wallets. Send them to another exchange -> turn them back to BTC.
Withdraw them into other BTC wallets (and different amounts) unrelated to the first one. Done.
Once, the initial 1 BTC has been exchanged into other cryptos the transaction chain is now going after the one you’ve sold them to.
Simple as that.
In addition, using Proxies,VPNs and on top of that the Tor network - good luck to anyone trying to trace that 10btc and you.
You will lose some of the value due to the exchange rates and withdrawal fees but if it’s the type of money you do not want traceable back to you - that’s an acceptable loss, IMHO. Call it anonymity payment/fee, if you will.

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5

I never have great interest on crypto currency exchanges since I somehow feel that there is more security issue related with crypto currency investment. As far as the Bit-coin investment, many traders are extensively giving good interest on this specific crypto currencies so far.

6

@bradley79 Not sure if I’ve ever asked you - do you trade crypto short-term? Or are you hodling?

7

Currently hodling a small amount. Got into bad trades and since the price has fallen quite a bit. Since I don’t want to invest any money into CC i’ll be holding for a while :wink: (the CC i have I made from faucets and then grew it into an exchange)

8

I think BTC is completely anonymous as long as no one know your wallet address.

9

If not for taxes, I’d be interested in trading short-term. I got into bad trades also but thankfully I was in some of them early enough to not have lost so much money.

What are you actively trading nowadays?

10

Dipping my toes into FX and CFDs on a demo.
Got to say I like that I can trade both ways. But really dislike the swap.

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11

Same but not CFDs though. Very interesting how crypto brought people to other instruments. I did lose a bit (I haven’t looked yet lol) of money with some of my not-so-smart buys (ahem TRX) but I’m happy it’s led me here.

12

Isn’t the Tor network dangerous? I’ve heard it’s part of the “dark web”…

13

Yeah, no.
The Tor network is essentially scaled up version of a proxy service. It bounces your signal (IP address) through other users and servers encrypting parts of the packets sent when you try to access a website but only the final location (i.e the webpage that you’re trying to access) has the full decryption key.
Think of it as a string of code or sentence.

  • The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

You’re trying to send this sentence to me secretly. You then encrypt it and send it through 5 other computers in the Tor network which all encrypt a part of it.
And they cannot read it, just take it, encrypt it and send it forward to me with the key to decrypt their encryption.
So, when it arrives to me it arrives with 6 decryption keys - the 5 from the computers it went through and the final key from you. I take them all and decrypt the message.

The dark (AKA deep) web is hosted on the Onion network and the Tor browser is just used to access the Onion network, so that noone can track you or your orders while you’re in the Onion network.
Think of the Tor browser as a trading terminal. You just use it to access the market. It’s not the market… and it’s not illegal or dangerous.