[acdha]

That’s only true if you posit that people actually follow those best practices at scale (is there any reason to believe that’s not false?) and that an attacker doesn’t know how to use a database. Otherwise you’re just betting that they’ll NEVER link your wallet IDs.

That last part is guaranteed to be false. Beyond the obvious capabilities of a state-level attacker, think about why Equifax has that data in the first place. People will buy things on credit and that depends on not being anonymous – churning IDs would be like only paying cash for everything, which is known not to be viable for anyone who isn’t rich. Secondly, think about how many businesses want this data for marketing purposes: you can churn wallets all you want and it won’t help when the vendors are passing that information to companies like Acxiom, Equifax, or Google.

[wildsatchmo]

The best practices I'm talking about are built into the client software and a user doesn't need to know about them (new address per transaction already happens in most wallets). Again, totally not claiming linking ids isn't a problem, its just being touted as an impassable blockchain problem which is the basis of this discussion. The problem exists because governments are forcing all onramps to link IDS, not because of an inherent flaw of the system. Even with that 'flaw' other proposals/experiments already exist and work really well, and will probably be integrated directly into bitcoin in the future. An equifax-like service could exist that establishes credibility based on holdings or the public history of an address you control, not necessarily an identified individual. There are some clear benefits to that, one being your identifying information is not put at risk.