Quote from: flicky42 on May 11, 2012, 05:38 amOk I have a tough time understanding this shit so I'll just ask questions.The encrypted messages through a bank really sounds interesting however for the bank to survive wouldn't they need some sort of commission on transactions or percentage of deposits and withdrawals? Now wouldn't that percentage be an easy way to deduce how much money was transferred?Asking questions is fine, I think many people are afraid of going out on a limb or problem complexity, but that's how we all learn is it not? Imperfect pine is imperfect too, people shouldn't assume because I make a detailed statement that this implies it's gospel.In any case I guess traffic analysis would be possible under any schema even if you couldn't prove Alice transferred X coins to Bob or that Alice swopped X coins with Bob. I think it's conceptually easy to avoid though.For example if you take a fixed fee per transaction, or if you take a relative percentage from the entire pool of coins being mixed i.e. everybody throws in their money, and you take x% off the top, then the only information available to garner from the bitcoin 'checking account' the bank is using to store their fee income is the number of transactions or the volume over time. I think Bitcoin Fog for example, uses different randomly chosen fees between 1% and 3% to avoid traffic analysis. You could make it very complex indeed, but I don't think it's necessary if you address the second problem I'm bringing up:A different problem, is the limited scope of the mixer's domain/territory. Sure it mixes up stuff within its power to do so. However, seems to me that traffic analysis could differentiate between different kinds of bitcoin network activity because the mixer doesn't mix coins from across the entire network. Different types of activity should show up like shoals of fish. If you see frenetic activity in one part of the network, but not in another part, then there is a reason for it. A reason I say, but it's a helluva stretch to claim you know the reason for it. I mean, I am certain that you can't even do that with regular credit which is perfectly identifiable and traceable. Still, it's a concern. Sure you could simulate the normal pattern and level of activity within your B$ mixer, but I'm not sure you've solved the problem. Ideas? Where are you bitcoin geeks? :P