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Comment by kirian | Hacker News Reader

This is why I think something like Bitcoin is so vital. As physical cash is more and more being replaced by digital money the ability to have financial privacy is imperative. Think about all the data mining that would be possible if your every transaction ever was recorded in some database. The financial privacy possible with Bitcoin is one of its best qualities in my opinion.

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What is the difference between a bitcoin transaction and a theft? If you have total financial privacy then the law can't help, and a heck of a lot of people are going to want police/law intervention when they get robbed or any other injustices.

I don't really get what you are trying to say, why is a bitcoin transaction the same as a theft? A bitcoin transaction is the digital equivalent of a cash transaction, you can keep your financial privacy so that all your transactions are not stored in a database linked to your identity.

Because, if you set up sufficient privacy to disassociate yourself from your Bitcoin account, there is no way for the police to tell the difference between "I paid X" and "X stole from me" other than your say-so. It's not as if dusting your keyboard for fingerprints will help...

That is incorrect, you can prove that you are the owner of the private key that spent the bitcoins if you wish. Anyway this seems like a silly argument, with physical cash how can you prove that you paid X with that cash like in the scenario you outline?

My point is that as payments become more and more digital then we must be wary of what that means in terms of data mining and things like that.

Now you've reassociated yourself with your Bitcoin account.

When you report a cash theft, the police don't go looking for the serial numbers of the notes (usually). They look for other evidence, like your house being broken into and the burglar leaving evidence behind. Imagine you've created a situation where there is no evidence that you live in your own house!

You can prove you were the owner of the spent coins to the police if you wish but this doesn't allow the data mining company to know all of your financial history.

That is almost the same problem as having to prove one has been robbed at a solitary place. The police would have to look for a fishy-looking transaction, and see if there were indicators that the machine were bitcoins resided was hacked.

Yeah, there would be slim chances of recovering the stolen money, but that already is the case with cash, given a smart enough robber. The right way to tackle that problem is not to make the stolen goods easy to track, but to have preventive measures. In Bitcoin's case, these measures would be good security practices.

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