this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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"This is the story of the revelation in late 2013 that Bitcoin was, in fact, the opposite of untraceable—that its blockchain would actually allow researchers, tech companies, and law enforcement to trace and identify users with even more transparency than the existing financial system."

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[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 103 points 10 months ago (5 children)

You're not wrong, but the first words are literally "Just over a decade ago". It's not a news article, it's the story of the research in 2013 which revealed bitcoin isn't anonymous.

[–] 520@kbin.social 50 points 10 months ago (4 children)

It wasn't a revelation in 2013 either. The ledger data has always been public information.

[–] massive_bereavement@kbin.social 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But neither the addresses nor the people who had them where. It would be like saying that you can identify someone from an arp table because you can see the mac addresses.

Unless you know specifically who own said address (even to the point that those can be spoofed) you just have a big pile of wet paper.

[–] 520@kbin.social 14 points 10 months ago

Plenty of ways to identify people from their spending habits.

There are also plenty of ways to connect the address to the person. You can subpoena a legit vendor they've paid with that address, for example.

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