Practical Bitcoin Privacy: Limitations and Innovations

Speaker

Daniel Gould

Abstract

Although Bitcoin transfers value between pseudonymous addresses, the nature of a public ledger makes it more vulnerable to surveillance than the closed banking system. Compared to account based cryptocurrency systems, Bitcoin still has potential to have even better privacy properties that paper money thanks to digital portability. This talk covers the basic ways practical Bitcoin use leaks privacy, how to address those on your own, where best practices still have privacy limits, and how those security limitations are being addressed with layered systems akin to HTTPS on TCP/IP for private communications on the internet.