Showing posts with label pseduonymity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pseduonymity. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2016

Anonymity vs Pseudonymity In Cryptocurrencies

I wrote earlier this week about some of this misconceptions around Bitcoin.  Probably the biggest is that if you transact using Bitcoin you can do so with total anonymity.  In the case of Bitcoin Users are confusing anonymity  with pseudonymity.

Part of the design of the blockchain that Bitcoin uses is that every transaction is visible.  The blockchain is highly visible.  The table below shows the very latest blocks that have been accepted into the Bitcoin blockcahin:
This data is drawn from a site called http://blockr.io/ but there are several. If you visit https://blockchain.info/ you can even see the latest transactions that have been submitted but not yet accepted into the blockchain. In most of these online systems you can drill down into each transaction, including the as yet unconfirmed ones.  Here's one chosen at random: