Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: fruity on February 03, 2012, 12:27 pm
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Its been said many times that when transferring coins between SR and an exchange that funneling through your own personal wallet is better than doing it directly.
I really dont understand this, if anything its is less secure unless you create a new address for each transaction and then break it up into a number of smaller transactions, mix it up with other transactions (requiring a slush fund) and send to your destination. Even this destination should be regularly changed.
I say less secure because if you only send it to a few different addresses in your wallet (as i suspect most people do), all someone must do is examine these few addresses and get a complete listing of your transactions, there is no obfuscation. In fact it would be possible write a script that would flag as suspicious, the transactions matching these patterns to an exchange.
Also, ive seen it claimed that the exchanges know what addresses belong to sr so could report users sending/receiving coins from these addresses. Really? I am under the impression that if a bitcoin daemon has multiple recipient addresses, without actually examining its configuration/log files there is no remote way of tying these addresses to the same daemon. I assume that sr runs its bitcoin daemons through tor, so without access to the servers (that are most likely virtual machines running off virtual encrypted volumes) and examining its addresses i fail to understand this.
And yes, i did not mention anything about tumbling; tho it seems the best choice.
Does anyone disagree with this assessment? It is just my interpretation of the current situation and could be a load of bs.
fruity.
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I'm probably not the best person to answer these interesting questions as I know very little about the security side of bitcoins.. one thing I would like to add though to this thread is concerning the question of funding bitcoin purchases and the benefit of using cash-only.
I've seen some super cautious buyers say its better if you want your bitcoins purchase to be completely untraceable to deposit funds in cash rather than bank to bank transfer which leaves a paper trail. However if bitcoins are truly anonymous and untraceable, what does it matter?
I guess it only matters if you get CAUGHT with drugs and then LE can go through your bank statements and link a bank transfer to bitcoins purchase which shows you most likely used to pay for the drugs. OK its circumstantial evidence but nevertheless it can be used against you.
I guess if you can use cash deposit its probably just a bit safer, if you don't mind the hassle of going into a bank.
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I'm probably not the best person to answer these interesting questions as I know very little about the security side of bitcoins.. one thing I would like to add though to this thread is concerning the question of funding bitcoin purchases and the benefit of using cash-only.
I've seen some super cautious buyers say its better if you want your bitcoins purchase to be completely untraceable to deposit funds in cash rather than bank to bank transfer which leaves a paper trail. However if bitcoins are truly anonymous and untraceable, what does it matter?
I guess it only matters if you get CAUGHT with drugs and then LE can go through your bank statements and link a bank transfer to bitcoins purchase which shows you most likely used to pay for the drugs. OK its circumstantial evidence but nevertheless it can be used against you.
I guess if you can use cash deposit its probably just a bit safer, if you don't mind the hassle of going into a bank.
Which is why I speculate with bitcoins on several international trades, funded sometimes by cash, sometimes by bank transfer and some times by paypal (through Virwox, which is a bit of a hassle but is also a very quick market). "What are you doing with all those bitcoins, citizen?" "Why, officer, I"m making more money than you are, while sitting behind a desk doing my other job. =)" Truth be told, I'm lucky when I manage to break out even with bitcoins. LE don't need to know that, though, do they?
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"Truth be told, I'm lucky when I manage to break out even with bitcoins. "
Well yes, because currency speculation is a zero sum game over time (minus the expenses of doing it).
Short term investors in RL always are panicking about the direction of the Yen and other such nonsense, while the long term investors simply kick back and relax since they know full well that over a couple of years it doesn't make any odds whatsoever.
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"Truth be told, I'm lucky when I manage to break out even with bitcoins. "
Well yes, because currency speculation is a zero sum game over time (minus the expenses of doing it).
Short term investors in RL always are panicking about the direction of the Yen and other such nonsense, while the long term investors simply kick back and relax since they know full well that over a couple of years it doesn't make any odds whatsoever.
Exactly. But since I do it as an extra precaution against suspicion, I don't really care. When I put money into this cover operation, I think of it as lost already. If I get a part of it back, I consider it profit.