Yes, and the person they accused of running it went to prison for 11 years because it was easy to trace what was going on.
It is not impossible to use Bitcoin anonymously. It is just extremely difficult to use it anonymously, and it is extremely, extremely easy to fuck up and de-anonymize yourself on accident. With a foot gun,
Uhhhh no authorities investigated it for years and he got cocky and fucked up, and even then they had to ambush him in a public library before he could re-lock his laptop. It had literally nothing to do with BTC.
How do you figure that? You realize the Silk Road ran on BTC?
Yes, and the person they accused of running it went to prison for 11 years because it was easy to trace what was going on.
It is not impossible to use Bitcoin anonymously. It is just extremely difficult to use it anonymously, and it is extremely, extremely easy to fuck up and de-anonymize yourself on accident. With a foot gun,
Uhhhh no authorities investigated it for years and he got cocky and fucked up, and even then they had to ambush him in a public library before he could re-lock his laptop. It had literally nothing to do with BTC.
If you have not yet done so, go read a book called Tracers in the Dark.
It does a very good job explaining how surveillance coins are tracked.
tldr?
Don’t use surveillance coins or you will be tracked.
WTF is surveillance coins
Any coin with a public blockchain where you can see what address sent how much to what address.