Is Bitcoin really untraceable?

23-07-2020, 02:43 PM

sofi102 Wrote: Bitcoin is great but not worth to pay in all.
They see your payment everywhere

But even if they 'see' your transaction, how can they trace it back to you as a person? From what I know (which can be false), they can only see where it came from via logic and numbers, but how can they trace to you?

BTC can be linked and traced easily to a person if not careful. Every transaction is stored on blockchain and a platform like chainanalysis can easily figure you out.

Bitcoin Tumblers which used to provide anonymity by mixing transactions does not work properly and are traced back. The kids who hacked twitter didn't even use basic anonymity methods of tumbling bitcoins.

Never use an exchange to buy cryptos since they have your KYC done and can easily link up. Most of them anyways give all info to Law Enforcement. Use wallets like electrum on a Tails or Whonix based system so as to not reveal actual IP. Purchase BTC from localbitcoins. Use a different address for every transaction.

And to clean it all up, you can just convert all of them to XMR and then back to BTC to clean it up. You can use decentralized exchanges like BISQ or yo may find some other relevant non kyc exchanges by a simple google search.

For very detailed info on privacy in crypto, you can actually try to google "Privacy in Cryptocurrencies on medium by yi.sun'

That's a 5 part long articles with great understanding on how privacy and anonymity works separately in crypto world.

IDK ive always been a little scared about that but my friend uses a VPN and im not sure but he seems to be fine

BTC is fully public and can be "traced". If you are looking for privacy you need to use a privacy coin. BTC has a ledger that is exposed to be viewed by anyone, and all transactions are tracked. Also even using privacy coins you'd still need to take many more steps in order to be fully anon/private. Privacy is not that easy when there are bread crumbs everywhere.

21-08-2020, 02:59 AM

nem4nem Wrote: BTC is fully public and can be "traced". If you are looking for privacy you need to use a privacy coin. BTC has a ledger that is exposed to be viewed by anyone, and all transactions are tracked. Also even using privacy coins you'd still need to take many more steps in order to be fully anon/private. Privacy is not that easy when there are bread crumbs everywhere.

So if BTC is traceable, what's the best digital currency that would be fully or mostlyprivate?

Nothing ever will be untraceable. Everything leaves a trace as it has to transferred and logged some how.

Here's a article about the FBI tracing the twitter hackers
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-fb...r-hackers/

Excerpt
Authorities, with the help of the IRS, also obtained data from Coinbase about the Bitcoin addresses involved in the hacks, and addresses used and mentioned by the three hackers in the past in Discord chats and OGUsers forum posts.

Correlating data from the three sources, the FBI was able to track hacker identities on the three sites, and link them to email and IP addresses.

For example, authorities tracked Fazili down after he linked his Discord username from his OGUsers page, an obvious operational security (OpSec) mistake.

Fazili also made multiple other mistakes in hiding his identity. For starters, he used the [email protected] address to register an account on the OGUsers forum and the [email protected] email address to hijack the @foreign Twitter account.

He also used the same two email addresses to register Coinbase accounts, which he later verified with a photo of his driver's license.

Furthermore, Fazili also used his home connection to access accounts on the three sites, leaving his home IP address in connection logs on all three services -- Discord, Coinbase, and OGUsers.

Bitcoin is a conditionally anonymous cryptocurrency, transactions with which do not disclose the names of wallet owners. At the same time, information about transactions is available to everyone, since their records are stored in the public registry. This makes it possible to track and match the owner's identity with bitcoin transactions.

Yes, bitcoin is traceable. Like you can literally just follow the addresses they sent bitcoin to and if it lands on a exchange it's a rip

21-08-2020, 03:42 AM

Quinnell Wrote: So if BTC is traceable, what's the best digital currency that would be fully or mostlyprivate?

There are a bunch, it really depends on what you prefer in features. The mainstream pick would be Monero, but it is definitely not "the best" or most feature rich as there are always new ones being released. It has however been around a long time. It has it's own pros and cons.

Keep in mind there are many more factors that come into play. Just because it's a "privacy" focused coin doesn't mean you are private.

Hope that helps.