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Comment by drussell | Hacker News Reader

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drussell·

Anonymity is quite the growing market segment. And the NSA is as unpopular as ever.

It's fascinating how the public responds to the government.

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Is that true? I hear bitcoin is gaining market share, and it is the antithesis of anonymity.

I think you are confusing anonymity with something else. Bitcoin is entirely anonymous, but all transactions are public. You can create as many wallets and keys as you want, and you don't have to tell anyone you own them.

This only allows you to stay anonymous if you can get your money out of bitcoin anonymously. Whether by buying dollars/yen/whatever on an exchange or purchasing goods and services.

And it's damn hard to buy a yacht anonymously regardless of the unit of account the transaction is done with.

The most important aspects of bitcoin is that it's decentralized (cannot be controlled by governments and banks) and inflation-proof.

It's not anonymous, but certainly more private than using a debit or credit card!

You can get bitcoin anonymously by mining. The weakness is in trading, even then, there are anonymous goods such as digital goods, and probably ways to perform anonymous escrow when trading real goods.

In practice, people don't care, because they aren't doing anything illegal.

You identify yourself as the owner of a Bitcoin address every time you transfer funds into or out of a currency with which you can pay food and rent.

Obviously, but you can buy digital goods anonymously.

Bitcoin is NOT anonymous, it is pseudonymous [1], unless you use complicated things like Bitcoin mixers.

[1] http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/11/26/2121214/bitcoin-is-no...

A pseudonym that can be changed after every use is anonymous.

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