[snowwrestler]

There is more auditing for bitcoin than almost any other store of value, because every transaction is broadcast to the entire network. Crowd-sourced auditing is essentially all bitcoin is.

Like bitcoin itself, the anonymity of bitcoin is also a chain. Bitcoins can be mined anonymously, and therefore transacted anonymously. But any point where they are converted to other stores of value will create connections to real-world identity. For example, cash has to be picked up in a physical place, or it has to be transfered into a bank account, which creates an auditable transaction record. Purchased objects have to be delivered somewhere. Purchased services are interacted with in some way. Etc.

[nickpsecurity]

I thought crooks successfully transact services with Bitcoin like they do cash, western union, and traded CC's. Must not be as hard to obfuscate as you make it seem regardless of the ledger. Someone else mentioned mix networks to hide whose doing what as well but I'm not up-to-date on them.

Overall point of the discussion is that people finding out he has a physical/digital object worth millions might try to rob him. Some of them also use Bitcoin as payment for crime. So, anonymity seems like a good choice.