[tjoff]

And with the transaction history included, and most transactions, by necessity, tell something about you (at least the merchant probably needs to know where to send your item or whatever) it seems to me that it would be utterly trivial to get a hold of the real identity of the vast majority of the users after even his/hers first transactions. And this is valuable information and it will, as today, be bought and sold freely - maintaining a database of who is who seems like childs play. Not only that, but also who bought what (or at least from who), making it the least anonymous way to make a purchase imaginable (almost as bad as saying what you bought on twitter).

For anyone hoping of using bitcoins for their everyday transactions, would that be any more anonymous than a credit card is today? Or even worse, it might give you the sense that you are anonymous when you are not.

[spurgu]

You can generate a new address for every transaction and thus remain untrackable.

[tjoff]

How will you get money on your new address? Transfer them? No luck there... (Or have I missed something?) And even with a new address you will probably reveal yourself with most transactions anyway.

Sure you can probably find a way but it will be a hassle and probably quite a hassle if you don't want to trust anyone. Because of the transaction history the only real purpose I've seen with bitcoins is the fact that you could mine them quite successfully and thus get an anonymous income, and with those mined bitcoins you could buy something that isn't tied to you, such as a VPN. That was a quite cool scenario with bitcoins in my eyes.

Sure there are some VPNs that allow you to snail-mail money to them but that is quite a hassle. But aside from that you pretty much have to use your card, and by that you reveal your identity. And given that the VPN service isn't subject to the same laws as your ISP using one could actually be even less anonymous than not using one at all.

Anyway, due to the transaction history that is the only scenario I've found bitcoins beneficial (and the reason for why I haven't even bothered to read up more on bitcoin). Would love to be wrong though.

[dfc]

How are you going to fund each new address? You have to remember that money moves from A along a vertex to B. Its the vertexes that kill you...

[xyzzyz]

Isn't bitcoin transfer from old to new address trackable?