[dcosson]

True, pseudonymous is the right word. You can start mining bitcoins without disclosing any personally identifiable information (if you obscure your IP address or connect from a public wifi network or something), you could buy bitcoins from someone on craigslist, pay in cash and have them sent to this account, etc. But the minute you make a transaction that links this account to you, all the activity on the account is linked to you. At least that's how I understand it, see [1]

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity#Staying_Anonymous

[mindslight]

Actually it's much worse than this, because while your identifying information is most likely not interesting, aggregate network flows are. For example, when a node tends to aggregate transactions, we can infer that they are a 'merchant'. If their public key doesn't correspond to a known business, we can infer that they are engaged in unregulated commerce and investigate. Nevermind the very real possibility of having an out-exchange refuse a transaction because several transactions back, the value was stolen or otherwise involved in nefarious deals ("chargeback 2.0").

If a payment technology can't be used to incentivize TOR nodes, it is not anonymous. Throwing around the word 'anonymity' when one means 'psuedonymity' does a disservice to everyone interested in actual anonymous systems.

[dfc]

If a payment technology can't be used to incentivize TOR nodes, it is not anonymous.

You can incentivize me to run more nodes with AMEX, Visa, MC, Travelers Checks, cash, red lobster gift certifcates or gold dubloons. From your comment that I quoted below its obvious you care about this field but I'm not sure where you were going with the above statement?

Throwing around the word 'anonymity' when one means 'psuedonymity' does a disservice to everyone interested in actual anonymous systems.

I could not agree with you more. Picture a crowd leaping to their feet shouting bravo and huzzah!!!:)

[mindslight]

I mean an addition to TOR where a user is explicitly paying each hop for transit. To do this (without buying nHops*nNyms count of unconnected red lobster gift cards), it must be possible to split a single source of value into two unassociable parts.