this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
250 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
71558 readers
3376 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What reason are you referring to?
I imagine the part in the article where OPP destroyed the vps and cancelled the domain because he realized he paid for the vps with his credit card?
Crypto is not anonymous, the entire concept of how it works is to be the worlds most public and distributed transaction ledger. It is more difficult to track than credit card transactions, but that's a very big difference from being impossible to track. There have been multiple papers published at this point on how you can de-anonymize any crypto purchase.
People really need to get over this idea that using crypto to buy things makes you anonymous.
Some crypto, like Monero, is anonymous. Bitcoin/Ethereum is not.
In any case, if you use anonymous crypto, make sure to first sent it to a wallet (preferably with a subaddress in case of Monero), and then send it elsewhere.
Crypto can be anonymous, if you use the right cryptocurrency and do things correctly. "Crypto" is a very broad term. Different cryptocurrencies have different functions and purposes.
And people should also know that there are privacy coins and mixers
Exactly. That's why you had to fill out all the KYC paperwork when you create your Bitcoin wallet.
Oh, you didn't?
Crypto is not hidden, but it can be anonymous. You can't hide that you got money from X account and spent it at Y account. But there's no name tied to the transaction.
that's pseudonymous, but if you remove all links with your original identity, you can even use non-privacy coins and not be known
Where did the coin come from? Unless you mined it yourself, you've left a trail that may eventually lead to you. Even using crypto ATMs, you're still on surveillance and hoping the tapes/drives roll over before someone comes knocking (which is a very likely bet to win), and even then, you still have a real world location to tie the wallet to because of where the transaction originated.
Anything that interacts with the real world can anchor your identity to your wallet. Travelling out of state can help obfuscate that to an extent, but a high level adversary will be able to correlate travel with that transaction as well.
Ever heard of BTC/any-> XMR -> BTC/any?
If you know your thing, you can churn, buy the initial crypto with gift cards, use VPNs or Tor... yea GL for finding me
You can hide it using coinjoin transactions. It's like a mixer but native. It's not perfect but it's nice to have
It's not anonymous, it in fact exchanges everything else from real currencies' good properties to be hard to control.
Anonymous / private payments
The whole point of the blockchain is it for it to be traceable, though. There's only the illusion of anonymity with crypto
That's complete misinformation.
The point of blockchain is not to be traceable but not alterable or tamperable with unauthorized or false data. A distributed database that can't easily be faked.
Some cryptocurrencies, like Monero, achieve high anonymity. While not perfect, good opsec will fix its flaws. Just like anything. That's not the case with the majority of cryptocurrencies though, but saying anonymity is but an illusion is just false.