Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
That's the nice thing about the blockchain. It's a public ledger of every transaction. So his wallet would have an ID, and you can see in the blockchain that a transaction was made for that wallet ID in the past few days or whatever. So the idea that it is anonymous isn't really the case, if someone knows what ID is tied to who.
So you don't see the person's account and balance, but you can see the transaction, if I understand it correctly.
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Correct. In fact there's no such thing as an actual account full of currency. Imagine a pre-technology physical world where there is no cash, just a huge group of people carrying around ledger books.
The ledger books list every possible account address ever. Not just used addresses, every possible address containing 26-35 alphanumeric characters. Every time there's a transaction the nearest ledger book guy updates the sending address and updates the receiving address. Also listed under each address in the book is a history of the transaction. He then tells every other ledger book guy in the world to update their ledgers to match.
So I go to Joe's to buy his garage sale junk. I process him 0.00023 bitcoin. Magic ledger guy arrives out of nowhere with his massive ledger book. Finds my address on page 354013 and sees if the ledger says I actually have 0.00023 bitcoin or more. He can also see under my address how I acquired my bitcoin in the first place. History of all transactions will be listed from the first receipt transaction to that address.