Anonymity on the Bitcoin network depends heavily on our actions, so I would not recommend relying solely on the tools that can be used in the Bitcoin protocol. Before doing anything, think about what it might lead to in the future. Do not disclose that you own Bitcoin and do not link your wallets to your identity, and then the likelihood that someone will hunt for your savings will be minimal. The same applies to fiat money, but unlike extortion with fiat money, it is much easier for an attacker to hide with the obtained Bitcoin than with fiat money, including cash.
I do not understand how someone can link their wallet to their identity in real life? If someone really says in public in real life (I don't mean forum where you can be anonymous) that I own Bitcoins and this is my wallet, then this person is stupid.
people think the internet is their diary they post anything and everything with their entire personal information blasted out for the public to see
many do not understand the consequences of their actions until it is too late and they are already being harmed even if it is only being posted on the internet it can still harm them in real life
Yep. Some folks do not even realize the consequences of their putting so much personal information out there, and in some sense, they consider that they are getting benefits by "making themselves" known in personal and image-related ways. It can be tough to deal with some of these kinds of people when they are posting their own personal information and they are also posting the personal information of other people, and if the other people confront them with the problematic nature of publishing so much personal information, even of other people, they have difficulties conceptualizing how it is problematic, and they sometimes even believe that the world is better with everyone being transparent and not trying to be so private...
I have been asked "what is it that I am hiding" since I don't want my information published? Do I have some kind of a "secret life" that I am trying to keep hidden. .and so there becomes an assumption that my own motives are less than honorable because I am not wanting my personal information (such as my image and/or my name and/or my location) being disclosed. Some of these same people consider devices like Alexa and/or smart doorbells (Ring camera) are such great things to have, and they cannot conceptualize the downside of such spying devices in which is questionable how the data is being used and/or how long it might be stored..and of course, how well it is secured, too. There is a bit of a fiasco with the use of genetics-related data with the company "23 and me," and their change of ownership... In the context of their filing for
bancrupcy, too?
Anonymity on the Bitcoin network depends heavily on our actions, so I would not recommend relying solely on the tools that can be used in the Bitcoin protocol. Before doing anything, think about what it might lead to in the future. Do not disclose that you own Bitcoin and do not link your wallets to your identity, and then the likelihood that someone will hunt for your savings will be minimal. The same applies to fiat money, but unlike extortion with fiat money, it is much easier for an attacker to hide with the obtained Bitcoin than with fiat money, including cash.
I do not understand how someone can link their wallet to their identity in real life? If someone really says in public in real life (I don't mean forum where you can be anonymous) that I own Bitcoins and this is my wallet, then this person is stupid. If you just say that you own Bitcoin, then no one will know your wallet unless that person works in an exchange that you use and has access to the all the data but majority of us here use Electrum, some of us exchange coins through decentralised exchanges.
In my country, lots of people no longer use cash and the security of online banking is really high if you want it to be. Banks also have good insurance for customers. Banks here are doing really well, two of local banks here have one of the best UI/UX designs in the world.
There are likely members who are transacting with their bitcoin, and they can transact directly onchain or maybe they use a lightning wallet.
I doubt that it is a good idea for guys to be getting scared away from transacting with bitcoin in the real world, when there are opportunities to do so. A lot of the power of bitcoin comes from being able to transact directly with other people and with no one being able to stop such transaction.
So even if their main storage of bitcoin might be kept separately and private, there could be situations where guys are either transacting with large transactions or guys might be using a wallet that has a high BTC balance, and even if the amount transacted might not be large, the balance of the change can be seen.. ... so if a guy might be buying some good or service worth a few hundred dollars, yet he is using a wallet with several thousand dollars, then the person who is engaged on the other side of the transaction may well see the change address...so it seems that some of us are suggesting to use wallets (or addresses) that have lower amounts of BTC contained in them or perhaps using lightning network, it might be more difficult to see the quantity of bitcoin in the originating wallet address.
I feel that in order to continue protecting yourself from visibility and attacks, holders of heavy what balances can still split it into multiple addresses of smaller UTXOs and spend from them individually so that when the attacker sees the little balance on any sending address, he would not be very motivated, or even if he further traces the funds to the parent wallet, he wouldn't see much balance, if at all in it and may not really have a wild guess that the other transactions made by it was sent to other addresses still owned by the person.
Additionally, it would be better if all your holdings aren't in only a wallet, you can have more than one non-custodial wallet and store the seed phrases offline at different places to limit the risk of losing all your coins at once in case of eventuality.
Of course separating wallets and trying to be careful in regards to transactions can be measures to easily draw attention to higher wallet balances that a person might have, yet at the same time, people can make mistakes and not realize it and they can also be accused of having balances that they don't have, merely because some higher level balances might be included in various back-hops.. whether a couple of hops or maybe even only 1 hop back. Some criminals might have the wrong idea, and they may well not accept the explanation that is given after they had already committed themselves to attacking their target. We cannot necessarily count on kind-hearted criminals to possess empathy and/or sympathy when they are also likely motivated to not getting caught.. and once they get into personal face to face encountering space, they have bridged a higher level of risk in terms of their getting caught.