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the nature of the timechain makes it always traceable once you try to convert sats into goods/services.

it's only "untraceable" if there is no point in tracing it (amount too small) or if the cost of tracing it is too large/time-consuming.

but privacy and untraceability are not the key point of bitcoin. the entire point of bitcoin is to have an asset that is absolutely scarce and auditable to prevent fractional reserve banking, and to give people peer to peer electronic cash to transact on the internet. the pseudonymity helps give regular users a little bit of privacy, but it cannot give thieves the absolute untraceability they want.

to give people peer to peer electronic cash to transact on the internet. the pseudonymity helps give regular users a little bit of privacy, but it cannot give thieves the absolute untraceability they want.

don't you think that's at least a little contradictory? If thieves can't get untraceability, we regular users aren't getting enough privacy/security either.

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868 sats \ 1 reply \ @phaedrus 8 Sep

Yes but there is a difference between the value. 4K bitcoins is a lot of value so it’s worth spending significant money/resources on tracing it while tracking a regular user with say 0.5bitcoin is not worth doing.

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yep but tbh 0.5 btc is still a lot of money lol

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privacy and security are two very different things. you may know those coins belong to me but you can't get it from me without my permission. bitcoin may be traceable but is also unconfiscateable.

and even if i happen to be a coldcard user, you might steal it from me but also know that i will be able to track where you are moving those coins and eventually i will find you.

so i can argue that traceability is actually a security feature.

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