It's no secret that Bitcoin isn't anonymous, notwithstanding what different external observers of cryptocurrency might allege. Its pseudonymous nature makes it easy for determined governments and intelligence agencies or people with expertise to trace transactions to specific individuals.
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Anonymity is an important feature that attracted many early adopters of the first cryptocurrency. In a world under continuous surveillance, transaction anonymity is seen as an essentially privacy-related issue.
“It doesn’t matter if you have nothing to hide, because privacy isn’t about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect”- Snowden.
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However, due to the lack of total anonymity of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, there has been the emergence of coin-mixing services and add-ons providing an increasing number of users with anonymity. To prevent third parties from tracing transactions, mixing service provides the ability to exchange bitcoins for different coins which cannot be associated with an original owner.
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Some may question why an anonymous transaction is important:
There are various reasons users prefer anonymous Bitcoin transactions, especially when dealing with large amounts. Transaction anonymity is equally important to the reason why people do not want their bank account balance to be in the public domain, hide who they vote for, their salary, pin codes, cryptocurrency portfolio and more.
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BTC Ultimatum (BTCU) is a fork that prioritizes users anonymity, with the introduction of a unique feature that gives users the ability to conduct private transactions within the network. It offers the power to switch between public and private ledger on the BTCU blockchain.