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Comment by amrrs | Hacker News Reader

> Washington DC Field Office Cyber Crimes Unit analyzed the blockchain and de-anonymized bitcoin transactions allowing for the identification of two different hackers.

Anyone with Bitcoin Transaction knowledge, what's this de-anonymization of Bitcoins transaction?

>Today’s announcement proves that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived global anonymity,” said Thomas Edwards, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Secret Service, San Francisco Field Office.

This reads like an Ad copy of a company that's against perceived anonymity.

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Bitcoin transactions take place between addresses, which are hashes of public keys. It's actually better to call bitcoin "pseudonymous", since the addresses are pseudonyms that may or may not be tied to an irl identity.

So if you, a hacker, tell someone to submit Bitcoin to an address, that address is only really "anonymous" until you use your private keys to reroute the money to other addresses. As soon as the graph of transactions touches some known node (perhaps at the edges of the Bitcoin network that interact with the monetary system), you can trace back to figure out who might have controlled the original address.

It's very silly to try to cash in on ill-gotten bitcoin...

> It's very silly to try to cash in on ill-gotten bitcoin...

What's the alternative? Sit on the coins or use them for purchases?

Launder them.

Possibilities are endless. Coolest thing I heard was use the bitcoin to rent bitcoin miners. Then spend the resultant cleanly mined coins.

> Anyone with Bitcoin Transaction knowledge, what's this de-anonymization of Bitcoins transaction?

Since Bitcoin is not anonymous but pseudonymous, it can be as simple as finding one or more transactions that link a wallet to a real identity (such as one tied to purchase of physical goods with an identified recipient and shipping information) and from there tieing every other transactions from.that wallet to the same identity. I would guess in practice it often involves more steps of connection.

> This reads like an Ad copy of a company that's against perceived anonymity.

The DoJ isn't a company, but it is very much against perceived lack of accountability, which is one of the reasons people choose systems that offer perceived anonymity.

Bitcoin is anonymous until you tie it to something that requires a real identity. For most people, it's probably tied to an exchange that has their real identity, credit card info, and maybe bank account info.

What they should've done is generate a new wallet with no previous transactions and just used that to buy things.

But wouldn't the purchase transactions be able to be connected to the perpetrators?

It depends on what you buy. The best thing to buy would be a currency like Monero where you're actually anonymous.

Dump it through some mixers and it becomes a lot harder to tell who is who.

This is what bugs me the most about the bitcoin pushers (like Max Keiser)... they completely ignore the fact that bitcoin is not anonymous, and why even though I was in on bitcoin in the earliest days, I abandoned it. My conclusion was that the government loves btc because it's so easily traceable. Another reason is that, like tor, it is vulnerable to %50 attacks. If the central banks wanted to take over btc they could, and I posit they may have already positioned themselves as such. (thats my almost a bitcoin millionaire story...)

The closest to an anonymous coin afaik is monero or zcash, but in general I think wasting electricity and cpu cycles on arbitrary math is a bad path to go down. If we could tie a coin to some productive math like protein folding or seti, etc, that still has the same attributes as cash (which btc does not) then we might have a true potential dollar replacement digital coin, but I digress.

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