Quote from: epidose on April 19, 2018, 01:35:10 PM

Hey

Did a quick search and didn't see this posted yet. Found this interesting overview of a patent that Amazon filed in 2014, a few years before they bought those domains (amazonethereum.com, amazoncryptocurrency.com, amazoncryptocurrencies.com.)

http://darkcitycrypto.com/index.php/2018/04/19/amazon-filed-a-patent-to-de-anonymize-bitcoin-transactions-and-sell-the-data-to-law-enforcement/

The article states a few use-case scenarios for why Amazon might do this, which basically summarize to being able to determine physical addresses behind crypto transactions:

Quote

The purpose here would be to combine data from different retailers and look for common points, such as a shipping address or IP logs and then start to put together a picture of the real identity of the person using Bitcoin or any other crypto currency.

Personally, I'm not sure I see a negative here (as a crypto user), other than the potential of *more* targeted ads; however, I certainly don't see how this might benefit me (or the community) in any way.

What are your thoughts? any potential red flags I'm not seeing?

Any potential positive outcomes?

This has both a positive and negative impact. To people who have nothing to hide and wanted a transparent transactions then it is an advantage to them since the transactions are traceable and if there will be complains it is easy to settle with the records being transparent online. This is also an advantage to people who hid their identity for protection purposes as they cannot buy things online without displaying their identity.