[prodigal_erik]

On the other hand, once you receive bitcoins at an address, you have to reuse that address in order to finally spend them, which interrelates the transactions in a way that's visible to everyone. The only way to limit traffic analysis is to use and trust some service like the bitcoin laundry, which will accept coins from one address and send distinct coins to another address.

[pppp]

Not true - you can generate a new address for each transaction without affecting your "wallet".

[prodigal_erik]

But the block chain remembers the current owning address of coins. You can't create a new address and use it to spend coins which you received at an old address, for the same reason I can't spend coins which belong to you. (You could transfer coins between your own addresses, but that's also publicly visible and wouldn't solve the traffic analysis problem.)