cheez is hardly scaremongering. As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. (I'm not a Bitcoin user so feel free to correct me.) I would say that you are the one who is doing whatever the opposite of scaremongering would be called (hope-mongering?).
> As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible.
Not true. There are many, many schemes that can be built into the protocol or on top of it to make transactions anonymous. Rather than hastily choosing one, it's probably better to wait for a really good scheme to surface.
If we have to wait for a scheme to surface, that does maen that as it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are currently impossible, right?
Right now, you and I and our friends could sign our transactions so that nobody can tell which outputs correspond to which inputs. What's missing is that it's not widely distributed in a major client where everyone will partake by default.
Until then, it's opt-in, a hassle, with a small pool of anonymity. But "impossible" isn't the word I'd use to describe the scenario.
>There are many, many schemes that can be built into the protocol or on top of it to make transactions anonymous.
So as it stands truly anonymous transactions are impossible. The possibility to make that not true doesn't negate the fact that today bitcoin is in no way a private way of transferring money.
In theory yes, but as the linked blog-post shows, Bitcoin---in its current state anyway---likely isn't truly anonymous either (ostensibly due to its transactional records being public).
If you create a new wallet.. coins sent to that wallet, a person may know where the coins came from (because of other transactions to their wallet), they don't know for certain that the new wallet is you..
In the case of the article, the reason it's suspected, not even confirmed, is simply because the number of wallets coins were coming from were identified as the same source.
It's definitely more anonymous than wire transfers, or credit card transactions. The way to avoid detection would be to keep many, relatively small wallets... and disperse money from different sources fairly evently.
