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What are the anonymity characteristics of bitcoin?

Can't I simply traverse the blockchain (which is essentially a linked list) to see which address transacted with which?

You can ‘tumble’ bitcoins to obfuscate the true source and destination walets

But Tumbling isn't an inherent characteristic of Bitcoin and requires trusting a third party.

The only thing that tumbling does is prevent a direct link between 2 possibly illicit transactions.

Unless the tumblers are use for mostly legitimate transactions they are useless and being linked to to one will raise a flag if you are under investigation.

Yeah but the example the author used had nothing to do with Bitcoin.

And you could also argue that if you took precautions you could setup an anonymous wallet that isn't directly linked to you.

You need to cash out at some point which is effectively impossible to do these days without going through paper work.

Bitcoin that can never be converted to fiat or used in a transaction that cannot be anonymous such as land or property purchas is worthless.

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