anato wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:08 pm
What about the downside of complete traceability of every single transaction that has ever happened and will ever happen?
That sounds like the wet dream of any government.
"Complete traceability" isnt necessarily correct. You can transact more or less privately. You can mine coins anonymously for example. Or buy some coins from someone with cash, etc. Or you can use Coinbase and announce your ownership of coins to the world.
After you own the coins you can improve privacy using coinjoin or mixing techniques to obfuscate history more.
anato wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:08 pm
Is the anonymity guaranteed just by the fact that nobody knows it's me who has generated *this* private key?
Nowadays with big data this feels like a really thin protection, when used as cash.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. Meaning its addresses function like an identity.
In terms of private key/public key protections, this cryptography is decades old and battle tested. And the same math/crypto protects the modern Internet and banking which are bigger targets at the moment anyways.
anato wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:08 pm
As a store of value, I would expect at a certain point to be able to exchange it for services (food, shelter, a new car, whatever), at which point the anonymity is gone... for all the transactions I've ever made and will ever make.
See above with regard to transacting using coinjoin or other techniques that break this tracking ability. Further privacy protections are available as well.
anato wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:08 pm
As for a way to prevent appropriation from the governement, it would just make it more complicated... but they'd just knock to my door and take away the laptop/phone/USB key/... instead of the bag of coins. Thugs could do the same, and worse they could do it online by tricking my old mother who's using my laptop to check her email into clicking a bad link.
There is a difference between complete anonymity for acquisition, transacting, and holding coins and Bitcoin being "better" seizure resistance than gold.
anato wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:08 pm
So overall I really see no reason to use it, either as money or as a store of value.
Or am I missing something?
If you dont see a fixed supply, censorship
resistant, seizure
resistant, inflation resistant, instantly transactable, programmable digital money being increasingly useful into the future than I think you are missing something.
If your expectations are that Bitcoin needs to be censorship-
proof, seizure-
proof, etc, in order to be useful or accrue value, than I think you are perhaps letting perfect be the enemy of good here.