I didn’t realize we knew who owned the Satoshi cold wallets! When did they figure that out, and how?
What definition of traceable are you using? I meant, to a specific person (miner) who wrote value into the system — which could also include a specific cash register or ATM that traded currency for coin, depending on whether it’s a postpaid or a prepaid Visa/MC that we’re comparing to, I suppose. They only charge a few percent extra overhead to issue relatively anonymous prepaid cards, which people either choose to pay or not, but the coin systems have traditionally been operated without the identifiable, lower-overhead, lower-risk tier of users that could have supported a viable postpaid network competitor. To the best of my understanding — am I wrong here? — all coin systems are exclusively unconcerned with the user’s identity other than their password, so their traceability is close to zero without a criminal investigation and wrench takeovers, which makes it adoption almost wholly unviable.
(US folks trying to convert coins to currency without paying taxes may differ, but that’s a relatively new regulatory push and has no particular impact on the majority of worldwide coin users.)
Bitcoin is only pseudonymous. Inside the network everything is public and traceable, but not personally identifiable.
Where you lose anonymity is with inflows and outflows to the real world. You may only be able to buy cryptocurrency from a KYC seller. Or your payment can be traced. Or you buy something from an already identified seller. Ironically, a lot of the anonymity of Bitcoin comes from the anonymity of physical cash.
If employers started paying out salaries using Bitcoin, it would suddenly be really easy to identify wallets.
