An answer on this page says that neither bitcoins nor satoshis have any identity. I then read that
As you see it mentions bitcoin addresses! These two statements seem to be in conflict, which is true?
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Sign up to join this communityAn answer on this page says that neither bitcoins nor satoshis have any identity. I then read that
As you see it mentions bitcoin addresses! These two statements seem to be in conflict, which is true?
The paragraph you copied from the Bitcoin wiki is imprecise.
Transactions result in transaction outputs that usually are associated with specific addresses. I.e. there is a balance of bitcoins associated with an address, that only can be spent by an order signed with the address' corresponding private key. The bitcoins itself are not identifiable, rather the path that they arrived through may be traceable.
As an example, let's assume there are two transactions:
Transaction 1: A --- 1 BTC ---> B
Transaction 2: B --- 1 BTC ---> C
A, B, and C are addresses in this case.
What the text from the wiki is trying to confer is that if somebody knew who owned address A, they might be able to force this person to tell them who owns the address B. This second Bitcoin user might then be forced to reveal the owner of address C.
However, the bitcoins itself do not have any identifiable footprint in the system, they merely exist in form of a transaction output's balance that may only be created through mining or the destruction of a previous balance.
You can see addresses and transactions. But you can't get the owner of this address unless he or someone else is publishing the identity.
For example, this happend when the coins of silk road where seized: 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX. Everyone can check where those coins went to from there on. Blockchain.info allows people to add a note to an address, to let others easily find those addresses.
Normaly people would not post their identity. So if you look into the blockchain and see someone send 1 BTC to someone else, you will never know which persons traded those coins. Therefore it's anonymous.
bitcoin address
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