Quote from: DannyHamilton on July 01, 2014, 11:18:41 PM

That's just silly.

The people who have always wanted bitcoins to be anonymous have no interest in knowing who owns these specific coins, and don't care about the financial info of those private citizens.

There may be some interest in the exchange rate that was paid for these bitcoins, but that has more to do with price discovery than violating someone's privacy.

The government exchanged bitcoins that all citizens collectively own (since the government represents the citizens) for some quantity of U.S. currency. In the interest of transparency in government as well as identifying the current market price of bitcoins, this seems like reasonable information to reveal. If the buyer doesn't want the public to know how much U.S. currency was exchanged for the bitcoins, then they shouldn't be exchanging with a public entity such as a national government.

the government own all birth certificates and social security numbers. so lets let anyone have that info.. yea? government owns the tax office. so lets make all that info public yea?
if you know someone in the military doing special ops. lets reveal his location and missions publicly, lets even put a live feed of his location on googlemaps, yea?

or do you prefer a private life and have bitcoin as a financial system where you can put funds into and it not be publicly linked to you. do you really want the government to set precedent by making it standard practice to link bitcoin addresses to peoples public info.. and then simply shout it out publicly.

or do you prefer atleast some privacy?

what other people pay for their bitcoins is there business.