Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: How many Bitcoins do the active bitcointalk forum members typically have?
by
Solosanz
on 26/07/2025, 16:52:04 UTC
That's why I provided a poll which is anonymous. And it's just a total guess of what they think their fellow members here own...

They're not anonymous.

There are many cryptographic techniques for doing anonymous voting. This is a well-studied topic.

I don't really recommend forum voting for sensitive topics, but if you really want to, you can do something like this:

Quote
Poll: What is your favorite color?
Answer 1: Red
Answer 2: Green
Answer 3: Blue
Answer 4: Yellow

Click here. If 1, give your honest vote. If 2, click here and give the answer indicated regardless of what your true response would be.

As the number of respondents increases, the random noise evens out, and at infinity the actual percentages will be exactly the same as if this randomization stuff didn't exist. (Assuming that everyone actually follows the instructions.) You can use statistical techniques to exactly quantify this stuff. But yet each person has plausible deniability. Note that this scheme assumes that everything associated with random.org is perfectly secure, which may not actually be a safe assumption -- it'd be better to use dice or a local CSPRNG, but that's more difficult to get people to do.