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I know an important feature for digital cash (in contrast to credit cards transaction) is anonymity of the users: when I spend a digital coin in exchange of goods or services, I would like not to disclose any identity information to the provider of such goods or services, just like when I go to a common shop and pay cash.

Now my questions are:

  1. Does Bitcoin achieve this kind of property (anonymity of the Spender)?
  2. If yes, how?
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Actually there are "addresses" in bitcoin. You have an address and associated transactions (equivalent to the amount of satoshis you have). When you want to spend these bitcoins, you create a transaction where it says : "the destination address" to which you pay. To have a bitcoin address, you do not need to give personal data, you only have one address (a hash) and the public and private key that make you owners of that address. It is this procedure that offers you anonymity, but all these transactions are stored in plain text on all nodes in the network.

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  • So when you first open your bitcoin wallet, you don't need to give any personal data, right? Ok, maybe a username, but you could always choose a fake nickname, right?
    – richard
    Commented Jun 26, 2017 at 23:49
  • Effectively!. And if you access Bitcoin through a TOR network that hides your IP address, you can use Bitcoin without ever revealing anything more than your public key. And to avoid someone linking your transactions together (remember, they’re all publicly stored on every computer!), you can generate a new public key for every incoming transaction.
    – Ignacio Martin Gallardo Urbini
    Commented Jun 27, 2017 at 14:48

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