Have cryptocurrency payments ever been anonymous?....
Good question: I read that years ago there was many people calling
BTC anonymous when it really isn't. Sounds like the early users pulled off a huge scam on the world? I still love crypto for small payments, but you need to be careful going forward.
Wrong.
BTC has never been anonymous. What part of it being an open public ledger does not make that clear?
Only people who truly have no idea of what a public blockchain ledger is think that it is anonymous.
The only anonymous bit about it is that finding who owns any given wallet/address is very hard to do until it is either used to buy physical items or is converted to fiat. That said, every single Tx in & out is a fully traceable open record.