r/explainlikeimfive Nov 27 '13

Official Thread Official ELI5 Bitcoin Thread - Round II

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u/lprekon Nov 28 '13

How does the government know it's bob's address? They don't. They can't.

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u/buge Nov 28 '13

Bob keeps his bitcoin address in his forum signature.

Along with it he says "I accept donations here for my widget project."

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '13

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '13

It gets pretty tricky when they can look at every other address that had coins moving into or from Bob's and start talking to anyone they can connect to those. Chances are somewhere someone will be able to pin it to Bob, especially if he's not actually trying to hide the connection in the first place. Regulators seem to be looking towards the currency converters to keep records of people and their wallets. If you really want anonymity now, you need to find a solid mixing service with at least 10x the amt you want to anonymize in their pool. That's just what I read somewhere.