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Comment by nprz | Hacker News Reader

Other comments in this thread are claiming bitcoin makes it much easier to launder money. So which is it? Zero privacy or increased privacy and anonymity?

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Decreased privacy for everyday users. Increased privacy for those with the time, resources, and incentives to find ways to orchestrate transfers that can't be tied back to them. In other words, the worst of both worlds.

How come so few Silk Road market place vendors were arrested if it decreased privacy? Many people on the SR were just everyday users. I don't think the argument that it's a step down in privacy is valid at all.

It's completely possible to remain anonymous with btc, but a big enough pain in the ass that only people who are committing crimes will do it. Everyone else will at some point link their identity to their wallet and all of their transaction and transaction amounts are then public record.

Yes, but the option is there. How does one protect their identity with a credit card transaction? The argument that BTC is not private doesn't seem to hold up.

I guess we could go through a challenge. You set up a Stripe page or some such thing and someone else can set up a BTC wallet. I will spend a dollar with my CC on your Stripe site and I will spend a dollar equivalent to that BTC wallet.

Then I will make two other secret transactions with the CC and the BTC wallet. You can each then try to identify the targets and the sums spent in the secret transactions.

Whoever identifies gets some sum of money from the other. I'm happy to escrow for you.

Let's be real: Everyday users just resort to credit cards, which have zero privacy. Only those with the time, resources, & incentives to transact away from credit cards get increased privacy.

My CC statement is not on a public distributed ledger.

You are fooling yourself if you believe using a credit card affords you any kind of privacy.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/consumer-privac...

My CC statement is not on a public distributed ledger.

Who cares? You have the option to completely anonymize your transactions with BTC, this option does not exist with credit cards, in fact you have no idea who is doing what with your data. If privacy is your concern, BTC is the superior option.

> If privacy is your concern, BTC is the superior option

Bitcoin is a public ledger. It is AT BEST pseudonymous. At best.

You'll notice users of the silk road who were risking life in prison used BTC, not credit cards, as their form of payment. If it truly was trivial to link a wallet to your IRL identity every user of the site would have been charged with multiple felonies, and yet that never happened.

If you want to launder money, you need to shuffle your cash through a dozen shady shells at a fee. If you want to just send people money, that's not anonymous at all.

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