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A comment on The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anonymity. Parent comment

Re:The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anony... by dist1ll on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @11:12PM (#35550457)
"Open" is a heavily overloaded term. One of the main premises of Bitcoin is tamperproofness and permissionless participation.

That in itself does not equate to lack of anonymity. Just have a look at Zcash[0] or Monero[1].

In general, the idea that openness and anonymity are in conflict with each other has not been true for at least 40 years. There's entire field of mathematics dedicated to solving this problem known as secure multi-party computation.

[0] https://z.cash/technology/

[1] https://www.getmonero.org/resources/about/

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Re:The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anony... by senectus1 on Thursday April 13, 2023 @12:57AM (#35551131)
yeah but zcash and monero are not bitcoin. and again, your transaction and back into bitcoin are completely open and trackable by anyone.
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Re:The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anony... by dist1ll on Thursday April 13, 2023 @01:28AM (#35551352)
Sure, but that's due to Bitcoins implementation. There's nothing inherent to "open" ledgers that prevent them from providing anonymity.

My point is: dunk on Bitcoin all you want. Just don't drag the general idea of permissionless, open ledgers into this mud fight.

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Re:The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anony... by senectus1 on Thursday April 13, 2023 @01:39AM (#35551436)
I haven't dunked on bitcoin once. nor have i ever mentioned "permissionless"

Bitcoin is an open ledger. It was never designed for hiding transactions. I'm also not saying thats a bad thing. it just is what it is, and yes I hold some btc (albeit not much, just enough to experience it mostly)

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Re:The U.S. Cracked a $3.4B Crypto Heist–and Bitcoin’s Anony... by pas on Thursday April 13, 2023 @05:53AM (#35553191)
and in practice maintaining that theoretical anonymity is hard. if you use a distinct amount in a transaction, it'll be visible. if there's a low volume your transaction can be correlated with a high probability, etc.
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