Is Bitcoin entirely anonymous? It’s common for people to say that in reality bitcoin is absolutely anonymous but are not knowledgeable enough to know that is pseudonymous . Bitcoin being pseudonymous rather than the assumed anonymous gives us an understanding that each user has a established public address. So that further tells us theoretically bitcoin address can be traced back using an IP address or an exchange account.
We should be more concerned about to what level or extent is bitcoin anonymous ?
What you said is right, bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than being anonymous. People isn't too knowledgeable what are this difference at all that's why we have some reported cases of bitcoin stolen from the owner who failed to secure their wallets.
We are just using a pseudonym after all and are using public addressing just like what you said op that looks like anonymous or unknown, but these addresses are just a scrambled letters and number but idea is the same, yes it can be traced by the IP you're using even if it's a VPN because these records are being written in the public ledger called blockchain.