Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
I will add that for a currency to be practical it needs two things, a use, which generally means a country it is accepted as legal tender, and stability, a currency that swings wildly in value is essentially useless for trade. In these two areas I cannot see bitcoin being of any use to anyone except a person who accepts potentially losing large amounts of money in order to safely clean their source of income
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Cryptocurriences actually have
a major problem for people who want to clean their source of income: they "meticulously records which addresses send and receive transactions, including the exact time and amount -- great data to use as evidence".
Which is why criminals are dropping Bitcoins.
If you use Bitcoins, a government can perfectly legally (if not trivially, but that might change as technology improves) track all your transactions, going as far back as they like. With all their other means of surveillance, connecting Bitcoin wallets to users isn't likely to be a major hurdle.
Bitcoin is a privacy nightmare in the making. And really, all cryptocurrencies have more or less the same issue; they're in no way legally protected information. Anybody can take a crack at tracking your transactions if they feel like it.
If I was a shady sort of person, I'd offer a cryptocurrency wallet service just to easily gather information I could then blackmail people with.