173 sats \ 0 replies \ @antic 2 Dec 2023 \ parent \ on: Btc privacy tradeoffs, overt and covert bitcoin
^ this. Lightning is the most effective mixer/anonymous layer on Bitcoin. When you need anonymity, it’s there, and it works pretty damn well these days. Sure, there are issues with edges knowing their points on the route, but it’s good enough to mitigate anything but a very expensive to concoct NSA surveillance node network (that would be frequently bypassed anyway).
Besides, it’s much easier for a government to just demand records from merchants and get shipping info to hunt you down in meatspace than to trace lightning. We’ve reached the point of evolution where the privacy failure exists outside the bitcoin payment ecosystem.