Quote from: Omega Rushmore on September 04, 2012, 04:31 pmHey Elivance, great post!!! Now, I have a question, and I don't want it to turn into a hijacked thread, but I think its relevant to our current discussion:You mention blockchain.info's wallet service...great stuff. Within the wallet is a tool which will track the "taint" of a transaction.Oh, that's *very* relevant.Quote from: Omega Rushmore on September 04, 2012, 04:31 pmDo you know exactly what TAINT is? Does it have to do with the bitcoin public key itself, or is it somehow tracking the sending IP address associated with that particular public key during the sending process? Unfortunately the Blockchain site does not explain what the taint beyond the statement on the taint analysis page:QuoteThis pages shows the addresses which have sent bitcoins to <BTC address>. The data can be used to evaluate the anonymity provided by a mixing service. For example Send Coins from Address A to a Mixing service then withdraw to address B. If you can find Address B on the taint list of Address A then the mixing service has not sufficiently severed the link between your addresses. The more "taint" the stronger the link that remains.I could be wrong, but I believe that it is determined according to the history of the coins and their origin. So coins that may have been part of the Mt. Gox attack last year will be tainted as a result of being stolen and then returned to the Bitcoin economy. While coins that have just been mined will be completely free of taint because they are new.I'm not certain how Blockchain can guarantee 100% untainted coins with their mixing service.This thread on the Bitcoin Talk forum indicates that taint is correlated to stolen coins:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86225.0Quote from: Omega Rushmore on September 04, 2012, 04:31 pmI had sent a few coins from SR to the TOR-accessed blockchain.info wallet, and looked at the TAINT, and WOW, it shows every single IP address which had ever transferred coins ending in the transaction I made! I strongly suspect that most Bitcoin users have or have had tainted coins, even if they have never done anything illegal.Quote from: Omega Rushmore on September 04, 2012, 04:31 pmIs this where we should be focusing our security concerns, regarding btc transfers, namely, if the coins are associated with our IRL IP address, and we start moving them around, there is one of the links you've been talking about.Maybe, I think we'd need to know more about how this taint is judged and who or what does the judging. It would also depend on whether other organisations, such as exchanges, set a policy to not accept coins above a certain threshold of taint.The thread I linked to above indicates that at least some organisations may not accept transactions using tainted coins.