In the comments to The 15 Most Valuable Bitcoin Addresses, The Underdog notes:
This is a shallow, empty, meaningless article, that basically screams to anyone paying attention that: all your transactions are public.
The thing to pay attention to here is this is a one-way trap: the moment the wallet address ID gets associated to your name (think ‘mark of the beast’ or so-called “biometric security”), all of your transaction history becomes retroactively public.
Lets say I’m evil FBI agent #320, and I run #AlQaedaSockAccountProxy. All I have to do to incriminate you is either:
A) Send you a “donation” from my US gov financed sock account of a terrorist org, or
B) Convince (trick) you into donating, such as pretending to be a poor, poor orphan dying from AIDs in Africa, or something (you know, usual charity scams all the gullible NPCs fall for)
Once that’s done, ‘evidence, mi’lord, that the person has financial ties to a terrorist organisation’ become public knowledge, and suddenly you can be convicted. Why?
One of the biggest hurdles to the secretive surveillance state prosecuting dissenters is practically all of their illegal acquired “evidence” is inadmissible under various warrant protections, and also when the NSA, FBI etc don’t want to reveal their insidious means of collection publicly, they often withdraw their so-called “evidence”.
By making transaction data public, they bypass the warrants required. Bitcoin is a “privacy trap”, it pretends to be pro-privacy, but then airs all your monetary laundry publicly for everybody to see.
If the gov then wants to work out who your associates are… it’s a really small step.
They want a Digital ID.
What better than one unique wallet ID per person tracking everything they buy and sell?
They could tax you 100% of your earnings.
Unmask your associates.
All they have to do is bridge the gap between Wallet ID and personal ID. And guess what? US gov wants digital online ID to become mandatory because “muh child safety”. Digital wallets have never been so obvious.
Confiscating physical assets is hard work. Paperwork, lawyers, bailiffs, disgruntled employess and tenants, appeal courts. Showing up at your door to order you to give up your Bitcoin wallet keys is easy, whether for crooks or the government. There’s never been a less secure way to store one’s wealth.