Quote from: maku on August 13, 2015, 01:51:25 AM

Quote from: foxbitcoin on August 13, 2015, 01:12:44 AM

If bitcoin were really truly anonymous in 100% It would be great, but there are ways i.e blockchain to track your coins. While it does not show you directly your location or name it can be tracked. But it is still better that credit cards or other online payments method

That is why you need to differentiate 2 things: anonymity and privacy. Bitcoin is fully private on every level (no one knows who you are), similar to paper FIAT.
But bitcoin is not fully anonymous (every transaction is stored in the blockchain). It can be however when certain conditions are met (i.e. every transaction with new address).

I know this is a heavily nuanced discussion, but I'd argue the opposite is more correct (which agrees with what Adam said in his talk in Israel on privacy / fungibility in Bitcoin from last year, and by Greg in his Elements slides on CT).

Privacy is a side-effect of fungibility, and by saying that a cryptocurrency is "private" I think we should be implying that it has sufficient plausible deniability / ambiguity so as to make the chance of successful blockchain analysis cryptographically negligible.

I think that "anonymity" refers more to the link between real world identity and online persona.

Thus we can say that Tor let's you browse privately, inasmuch as your ISP, your neighbour, and even state-level actors cannot (easily) see what you're doing. But we cannot say that Tor let's you be anonymous, because within that private browsing space you can be deanonymised by your writing style or other actions.