<nettime> Fwd: Stephen Foley: Bitcoin needs to learn from past e-currency

[Douglas La Rocca <douglarocca@gmail.com>]

> it would not require very much ingenuity or computational
> power to analyze all transactions associated to one Bitcoin wallet and,
> from the frequencies, quantities and network of its transactions, deduce
> the identity of its owner with practical certainty.


There's a distinction between wallets and addresses. Addresses are
traceable and can be analyzed in that manner. Wallets are collections of
addresses which need not ever be publicly associated.

Far from being *worse *than tracing credit/debit cards, because a user can
constantly "shift" identities (frequently used addresses, say), Bitcoin
actually makes it possible to avoid the privacy problem.

In fact, the identification of total publicity and complete privacy is
beautifully dialectical!

-dl


On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 7:40 PM, Douglas La Rocca <douglarocca@gmail.com>wrote:

> The devil is in the subordinate clause starting with "while" that hints at
>> the collateral damage of the utopia you sketch. The question is whether
>> transparency is a value per se. (I would argue: no, it's only a tool for
>> achieving other goals such as ethical conduct and social responsibility.)
>> Taken as a value per se, with no prisoners taken, it easily amounts to a
>> totalitarian nightmare.
>
> This isn't a problem at all. There are several so-called "tumblers" that
> can provably obscure (anonymize) transactions.
 <...>

-- 
Douglas La Rocca

-- 
Douglas La Rocca


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