Yes, here are four reasons that only took a minute of contemplation:

(1) Because not all masters are benevolent

(2) Because it removes the possibility of charge backs

(3) Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)

(4) Underground markets are only "underground" because of laws. If a society outlaws birth control and abortions, but a women wants an abortion she probably wants an alternative (I.e. something an underground market with provide). An anonymous crypocurrancy (or cash) is the easiest way to do this. If it's not a crypocurrancy or cash, they can always trade goods. So in all honesty, there's no way to stop it.

There may even be other reasons, but it seems pretty obvious it can inherently good to have.

> Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)

So the solution to that is publishing all your transactions to a public ledger?

(yes I know there are "tumblers" etc, but these come with operational and practical issues)

Keep in mind the amount of monetization that occurs around purchase data in the present system. The ease with which you can associate transactions to real identities isn't even comparable.

What monetisation ?

The bank isn't authorised to provide that information to third parties.

Are you confusing the spirit of the law with the letter of the law? Or do you really think that banks aren't selling your transaction data?

http://www.cardlytics.com/technology/

Despite the "firewall" between the bank and the marketers, information is being sold - it just requires an extra step on the part of the marketers (leaving the banks legally in the clear).

That's beside the point. The parent was simply asking what use exists for an anonymous currency.

So basically there is only mainstream benefit: removing chargebacks.

The rest are just ideological and/or about facilitating illegal activity and irrelevant to most people. This is the problem with Bitcoin and other digital currencies. There is just not enough focus on making something better and simpler than the existing system.

> So basically there is only mainstream benefit: removing chargebacks.

You mean mainstream disadvantage.

I think most people using VISA are happy that they won't lose all their assets to fraud or theft of their credit card. Mainstream retailers accept a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business, only disruptive or greymarket vendors face significant risk from chargebacks.

Removing chargebacks is a positive benefit to a tiny fraction of the participants in legitimate financial services.

Because my government does not need to know that I bought Mao's Little Red Book, Hitler's Mein Kampf and a few Marvel comics.

Because police does not need to know that I pay for and run an anonymizer.

Because my bank does not need to know that I bought a butt-plug.

Because I don't want my house raided just because I bought potting soil from a gardener that was later busted for growing weed.

Fair enough. But you use your own address and name to deliver stuff from the internet. Where is the anonymity in that? Or i am missing something?

Also... you get your cash from CC and transfer it to BTC, you pay someone else, you encourage money laundering because that seller doesn't have to pay any tax for that.

For me the most important factor is where the cash is going. IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes, and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?

Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.

Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.

> will never pay any taxes

> and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?

Well it isn't free if you have to pay for it. Here in France we pay 80% taxes and then we like to brag about having free school, free healthcare etc. It's not free if 80% of your hard earned money goes to these institutions and the bureaucracies that manage them. Worst thing is that we still need a private insurance on top of that because our welfare system is going broke and can't even pay for anything despite the 80% taxation. So yeah, it is not free after all, it is even super expensive.

Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.

>Here in France we pay 80% taxes

It's 44.2% tax burden and 56.1% government spending. Percentages are fractions of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

It's not atypical for a western country. You still pay less than the Danes.

That's an average. This is not taking into account VAT and the other gazillions insults (also known as public services) that are forced on you because state monopoly, healthcare which is mandatory and public here and is more like a tax than insurance (you don't pay according to risk but according to how much your earn, and you still need a private insurance on top), and then there are of course tariffs that helps colluding and failing industries, employment taxes that makes up already 50% of your salary pre-income tax, ridiculous gazillions regulations that make everything more expensive and so on and so forth.

> Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.

Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.

It is a tired and irrelevant complaint.

> Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.

As usual there are the deaths you see and those you don't. How many people died because a new medical equipment required years to get approved and many people who could have benefited did not and died? It is very shortsighted to only mention and count deaths caused by approved medicines and not by unapproved yet working ones.

> Fair enough. But you use your own address and name to deliver stuff from the internet. Where is the anonymity in that? Or i am missing something?

Yes you are, you're missing the addition of a trusted party. I may trust someone I'm trading with to keep me anonymous, mail my order out, etc.

But what if I do not trust my bank to destroy the transaction and keep me anonymous if someone comes looking later.

You trust the first out of necessity, but you only trust the second out of convenience.

This of course only applies to physical products as electronic products can be delivered completely anonymously.

> IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes [...]

The biggest companies do not pay much taxes already; while I get your point, I consider it invalid until everyone who is doing legal business is paying taxes. The mafia will never pay taxes on illegal business, but it is irrelevant as long as big corporations can get around paying taxes by constructing legal international constructs.

> Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.

So let's go for the easy thing and regulate BTC even though it promises the smallest of all gains for society? Can you point me to any reports about BTC being used for terrorism? If there are any, do they really warrant a regulation?

> Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.

Tell that to gay people in societies in which they face, at best, discrimination or, at worst, prison or death penalty.

Just because you don't have anything to be concerned about yourself right now, does not mean you should devalue privacy and anonymity for others: You can still be the next deviant who is hunted down. Or how Niemoeller put it:

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Socialist.

    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It's used for the same things as that much more widely exploited anonymous currency, cash. If you've ever bought gum without using a credit card you're associated with underground markets, ransoms, money laundering, etc.

The assumption that anonymity is inherently an indicator of criminality is toxic to an open society.

I'm not so much worried about criminality apart from tax evasion - I pay 50-70% taxes including payroll and VAT but I don't mind doing so, because I trust everyone else does too.

The moment I suspect there is a group of people that get paid and purchase goods outside the tax system I have lost that trust. Full transparency in my opinion is the lesser evil. Completely anonymous currency and transactions solves a problem but creates a bigger one.

It's none of the government's business what I spend my money on.

If you go to a clinic specializing in mental health, cancer, abortion, or substance abuse, your medical treatment is nobody's business but you and your doctor's.

You ate at restaurants and bought gas at gas stations along a multi-state route leading to a city where there's a big protest about race relations, or income equality, or a convention where a controversial politician is going to be nominated. The government, or particular people inside it, might care -- and not in a way that's good for you or for the democratic process.

Your aggregate purchase history reveals a great deal about your personality, relationships, political activism, physical/mental state, sexual activity and many other aspects of your life.

If you're a business that's commonly listed on 'prohibited businesses' lists[1], you might want it. That phrase sounds nefarious, but as an example porn sites are often prohibited. People might want to buy porn anonymously.

If you need to send a bunch of money to someone in the Philippines, your only easy choice is an expensive wire transfer through Western Union or similar. My bank will do it for a small fixed-fee, but only because I've had an account with them for almost a decade. You don't need a verified history and strong identity to use bitcoin.

If you don't give out your personal information when buying something, then when their site later gets hacked by the Chinese your name and address won't be sold on underground trading sites. That is, even if you trust the government and banks with your personal information, you don't necessarily trust every little ecommerce site.

[1] https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

It is very useful when a seller has to sell directly to other users. If the seller can obtain the cryptocurrency from the user, said seller knows that he/she has the funds and that they can never be taken away. Then the seller can confidently provide the user with whatever product or service was requested. In contrast, if the seller used PayPal, the user can easily chargeback and get his/her money back after the seller has provided the product or service. Services like PayPal are seriously unreliable and become an extreme burden for some sellers who deal with intangible goods especially.

TLDR: Bitcoin makes it easy for sellers to obtain payment without the fear of PayPal account freezes or chargebacks.

Or the seller can keep the funds, which can never be taken away, and not actually provide the user with any products or service. Chargebacks protect the buyer, at the expense of the seller (in case of buyer fraud). Lack of chargebacks protect the seller at the expense of the buyer (in case of seller fraud).

For most online marketplaces protecting the buyers at the expense of the sellers may be necessary. There are usually a lot of buyers, they are reluctant about buying things they cannot see or touch from people they don't know, and most are not in a position to absorb the fraud. Meanwhile the sellers are usually companies that can absorb some reasonable amount of fraud because they can spread the cost of the fraud over the much larger number of transactions.

That's not always the case, such as in situations where individuals are trying to occasionally sell items of value and they are not in a position to absorb the fraud. For those situations it may make sense to use an escrow mechanism, because non-reversible payment methods like Bitcoin may spook the buyers (and insufficient buyers may lower the overall prices, potentially beyond the cost of escrow).

None of this requires anonymous payments.

this is all accurate, but does not address the part about why its so important that it be anonymous.

The same reason why GNU Taler is anonymous https://taler.net/

The EU can still suck taxes from the transactions of Taler but at least they have no idea what you bought. Why should the payment middleman have a complete itemized dossier of your personal purchasing history just you and the merchant should share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid.

> Why should.... merchant [] share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid

Because the government has a legitimate interest in taxing different goods at different rates.

They have an interest. Whether that interest is legitimate is at the very least debatable, and not beyond questioning.

Do you agree that taxation is a legitimate lever with which to effect economic and social policy? Vice taxes, for example, are much saner than outright bans for everyone involves, and tax incentives can drive the adoption of things like solar panels.

"If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear."

Go look at OpenBazaar. [1]

Bitcoin is the primary source of payment.

It's starting to grow, there are listings of physical goods, electronic goods and now even rental listings, they are calling it OBNB lol.

I'm sure as time goes on, more and more types of listings will emerge.

People are finally coming around to the idea that middlemen don't have to tell you what you can and can't do.

I cannot wait until things like TOR and Integrated wallets are included.

Version 2 of OB is soon and there is a hangout on the 7th [2].

One last thing. Sure there may eventually be "bad" listings and also customers may not be fully protected. But with everything in life. Caveat Emptor.

[1] - http://openbazaar.org

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/4qmsan/openbaza...

This is pretty cool in theory. Especially if the fees charged to sellers are much lower I could see it getting some adoption.

The legitimate reason is not having a big brother control everything you do. They should access this information only when there is a valid reason, not by default.

To preserve your possessions against confiscation when power abuses the people.

One of my family members lived and worked in Cuba before Fidel Castro got into power. He had a house and a three people company. He actually supported Fidel because he talked a lot about democracy and himself(Castro) not being communist.

Once Fidel got into power, he established himself as a dictator, killing anybody on their own side that was against a new dictatorship, like Cienfuegos.

Fidel nationalized everything. My family member and his family leaved the country with money from my family overseas. All his possessions were stolen by Castro.

The people in power should not have the power to easily confiscate your wealth.

Today with negative interest rates, those in power are stealing from the people, but only a little. Central banks want to ban cash so they can steal 20 to 30 per cent of every single deposit as the system is totally bankrupted.

With physical cash, gold confiscation, they have a harder time. Some people will not be happy to give the police their hard earned money.

For the same reason you don't want pervasive surveillance on the streets.

Some people DO want that. Or, at least, the consent is manufactured.

You know - for your safety.

And some people are against anonymous crypto-currencies, you know, for safety.

What does that even mean?

Replace anonymous crypto-currencies with cash, and realize how ridiculous you sound.

I don't know, I have a feeling that there is a definite push towards banning cash. In Germany for example they plan to ban paying in cash for things over 5000€.

And you think this will make people safer?

No, I think it's completely ridiculous.

I think that AdrianN was mocking the people spreading bitcoin FUD while pushing their own agendas.

Because being able to call someone a terrorist (or a hacker, in 5-10 years time) as a reason to turn off their credit card when it's the only method of payment left will be a dystopian nightmare.

But this is a contrived and frankly ridiculous premise.

Situations like this are why we have an independent judicial system. And even if we didn't who is thinking that credit cards are the only way to buy things ?

>But this is a contrived and frankly ridiculous premise.

Tell this to the legal porn producers (or legal marijuana sellers/producers) who get their accounts frozen and shut out of the banking system.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a24813/porn-star-b...

Yeah, tell that to the guy who wrote "ISIS beer fund" on his PayPal transfer to his mate that we have an "independent judicial system".

No - we have an outsourced judicial system, where Facebook and Google will spy on you more than the USGov, the bank will control your money more than the Government, and the insurance company will have you in an autonomous car faster than a mandate will. That's modern neoliberalism.

Some governments are more restrictive than others in term of censorship and what people are allowed to see or say on Internet. I see the value of allowing anonymous bitcoin in that it allows people to get access to VPN or other methods of going around censorship in a way that cannot easily be traced back by their government.

But this is the eternal debate about free speech, what's illegal in a certain country might not be illegal in other countries and is not necessarily unethical.

My reason is that I'm quite tired of paperwork and suspicion from payment processors when doing totally mundane things (like buying a PDA manufacturered by a small European company). The more of these laws that exist the more shit I have to do as a law abiding citizen. I use bitcoin because I like just not caring.

Every time you conduct a transaction with a normal card you're taking the risk that sometime in the future whoever you did business with may have their transaction history on pastebin. I'm sure you can think of plenty of situations where that wouldn't be a good thing.

Replace "anonymous pay" with cash, then you'll find your reasons.

If you can't think of anything legal but not wanting that thing to be associated with you, you are probably trolling.

Being able to host web pages for a causes you believe in, but getting fired for them if your names pops up (lets call it the Internet Mob Protection).

that's a good question. I guess essentially anything that you'd do for privacy reasons with cash, but online. There are a lot of things a person might want private, but aren't illegal. E.g., an affair, weird fetish. Who knows.

If you define legitimacy so that it perfectly coincides with the law, there is little legitimate reason to use Bitcoin. But do you really think the law has always been just?

Privacy?

As an example. Information you want to be available to ex. researchers but not possible to identify.