Is Bitcoin anonymous? Good question so I am researching it this morning.
Zerocoin explained here at this link claims to make Bitcoin anonymous. The link also has a neat simplified explanation of how Bitcoin works.
David Chaum did much of the initial crypto thinking that laid the groundwork. His work is fascinating. He also had application visions beyond monetary systems.
His "Dining Cryptographers Problem” proposes total anonymous communication within the communication system. True, I am sure.
However, that is a closed communication universe and by definition and design anonymous in that domain.
However, external to that communication universe is a real world full of clues for Sherlock to follow. Perhaps the motto of the NSA is: Nobody is Anonymous. Philosophically an interesting concept. The only truly anonymous person is "nobody". Or if they have a body they can be made anonymous as any point in time. No body. Like the idea of a memory hole in the prior blog entry. Truth ceases to exist. If so, truth, like a person has a life span. Not just rewritten, but written out as if it never existed.
Story about the motto of the National Reconnaissance Office related to the launching of a new spy satellite: "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach". No thing. Things connect to people. Always. Everybody has to be somewhere. Sleep somewhere. The one single time they can be normally counted on to be in one place for the longest period of time. A place from which they leave tracks. Visual or digital in real time. Sees all, knows all. Like the eye at the top of a pyramid. How stupidly arrogant to be in the spy business and put this logo on a rocket. Do these guys have a secret Tailhook association? Same boys playing games mindset bravado. We know that No Thing is anonymous when we go to google earth. Then came street view and now comes interior mapping systems using near field technology. Personal identification pin pointing a person in time and space every time they are involved in a monetary or communication transaction. "No man is an Island" might be an alternate motto.
I believe that all real things are ultimately traceable in some manner to conceptual things and vice versa. Systems can be discovered or constructed to do that.
Extending that thought: Conceptual things relating exclusively only to other conceptual things with no ultimate connection to a real thing are the only things that are truly anonymous by definition.
Anonymous will not be anonymous for long. The Bitcoin transactions always relate to a real thing. The amount was more than $100 million. A story link here. Many things in the news about this.
We might never know the real story but somebody will. A cyber D. B. Cooper?
Bitcoin itself never becomes anonymous. Never really ever written out of existence. The trail simply ends at the last known transaction account. It stays there forever to be locked in the public ledger for viewing. The person knowing the key to the account associated to the Bitcoin amount is never known? I think there is always a way to find and identify the person, they may even identify themselves like the guy that tossed his hard drive but not always (rarely) the key.
Bitcoin religion: Are we, like Bitcoin, entries in a public ledger with a transaction date having a change in account association from past to current owner? Never really going out of existence except in time but not eternity?
What does the new owner of what was once "our" Bitcoin ownership of life in and time space receive? The first thing I would say is our inspiration because that is what I received to ultimately pass on. Legacy. If not passed on in an unbroken chain it still exists but has no value. That is what happens when a Bitcoin is lost.
Hey! First Church of the Bitcoin. A virtual church at reddit. It is all about the money.
Mark of the Beast?
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