[tor-talk] Full integration with bitcoin (suggestion / feature request)

[Jeff Burdges]

On 30 Apr 2015, at 11:57, Allen <allenpmd at gmail.com> wrote:

>> If you want anonymous transactions then you want a blind-signing based
> currency like Taler  
> 
> Surely you jest...
> 
> From http://www.taler.net/governments
> 
> " Taler is an electronic payment system that was built with the goal of
> supporting taxation. With Taler, the receiver of any form of payment is
> known, and the payment information comes attached with details about what
> the payment was made for. Thus, governments can use this data to tax
> buisnesses and individuals based on their income, making tax evasion and
> black markets less viable."

In an RSA blind-singing based currency, like Taler, a mint who issues the currency can track how much money a particular account sends or receives, but cannot discover the actual transfers.   And deanonymizing one transaction does not impact a user's anonymity overall.  

In Bitcoin, et al., everyone can track everything about every account at any point in the past.  Accounts are pseudonymous and creation is distributed, but deanonymizing a single transaction destroys the anonymity of the whole account.  And advanced attacks can be brought to bear on identifying sock puppet accounts.  

Yes, RSA blind-sinigng assumes the buyer remains anonymous to the seller, like say buying server time for an anonymous website.  Anytime you deanonymize yourself to a seller, like by buying physical goods, then you’re trusting them, this goes for Bitcoin too.  In fact, deanonymizing yourself like this is much worse in Bitcoin. 

Jeff