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40 sats \ 13 replies \ @Undisciplined 5 Jul \ on: Privacy and Fungibility: The Forgotten Virtues of Sound Money econ
That's kind of silly. Just because you can see which addresses were involved in a transaction doesn't mean you can see who controls those wallets. Also, the lightning network is not nearly so transparent.
Aren’t the exchanges, credit companies and bank requiring Know Your Customer rules to do business? You don’t think that they are cross-referencing all of this information with the blockchain in their databases? I think that they know exactly who owns all the BTC but may not give a hot damn for the small accounts, until tax time.
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Different issues. No one on a bitcoin standard needs to interact with a bank or exchange. There are non-KYC ways to acquire bitcoin, but they're not as approachable. Also, you could just immediately use your on-chain bitcoin to make lightning channels.
I don't think anyone's keeping track of all this stuff at all. I think most of the people who have any clue how to keep track of it are on our side.
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I don't think anyone's keeping track of all this stuff at all. I think most of the people who have any clue how to keep track of it are on our side.
Let me supply some evidence that they may be able to track BTC due to the blockchain. Didn’t they track down all of Ross Ulbricht‘s BTC and confiscate it all in one fell swope? They also got a lot of other Silk Road BTC, as I understand it. They managed to do that years ago, too.
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That was before lightning and who knows how many other advances in opsec.
The blockchain is visible only in that it shows which addresses were involved in on-chain transactions. Addresses with unknown owners provide relatively little information and people now generate new addresses frequently. Plus, transactions on lightning are very difficult to trace, enough so that @supertestnet has offered bounties for anyone who could trace lightning transactions created by him.
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Yes, but have there been coinciding advances in unraveling all of the opsec in the same period? Keeping privacy is getting more and more difficult every passing moment.
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Advances, yes, but not equivalent. Like I said, the people who understand this stuff best are on our team. At least that's my sense.