My goal is not to share my personal opinion here, but to help make things clearer after seeing a lot of confusion in recent reddit comments discussing this subject.

First of all, we often use the word anonymous when we should use pseudonymous . Satoshi wasn't anonymous, he used a pseudonym and thus was pseudonymous.

As for cash, fungibility is what allows privacy. Cash cannot be "totally anonymous" because you are right here doing the transaction and can be totally identified by your trading partner. This is the same problem with "totally anonymous" cryptocurrencies. You still need an address to send the product to, or at least you need to interact with the buyer or seller.

If you think about it, Identity is actually proof of work. That's why a "totally anonymous" transaction doesn't make sense because as soon as you start sharing anything you are revealing a part of your identity. Even just talking to someone reveals a lot about your identity: that you can speak this language, which words you use more often, what punctuation you use, etc. An entire field of forensics is dedicated to this: forensic language (or text) analysis. Experts are able to accurately pinpoint the region you come from just from a record of you talking, but also deduce your sex, approximate age, and much more. All of this is made incredibly easier with the emergence of machine learning and AI.

Cash can however be private (no other third party has to take part in the transaction), fungible (the paper bills cannot be tied back to you specifically) and can be pseudonymous (you can "disguise" yourself if you want and choose how much you reveal about yourself, but you cannot be totally anonymous).

What would Satoshi do ?

Satoshi is not a god that made everything perfect from day one but as the creator of this new financial system, he was clearly a visionary whose ideas are worth knowing.

I searched Satoshi's writings for the word "anonymity" or "anonymous" and to be fair I wasn't able to find much. It looks like it wasn't a word he used often at all. However he often used the word "privacy" instead. Here is what I found:

July 5, 2010: We don’t want to lead with “anonymous (currency)”… (or) “currency outside the reach of any government.” I am definitely not making an such taunt or assertion.

This really surprised me because I often advertise Bitcoin(Cash) to my friends as a currency outside the reach of government. At least I do think that the fact that bitcoin is not issued by governments is a very important feature. Satoshi's words here may require very careful analysis: "outside the reach of" is indeed not the same as "not issued by" . The difference may be subtle but important for him (or them).

The possibility to be anonymous or pseudonymous relies on you not revealing any identifying information about yourself in connection with the bitcoin addresses you use. If you post your bitcoin address on the web, then you’re associating that address and any transactions with it with the name you posted under. If you posted under a handle that you haven’t associated with your real identity, then you’re still pseudonymous . For greater privacy , It’s best to use bitcoin addresses only once.

Once again he avoids the word "anonymous" and uses "pseudonymous" and "privacy" instead.

A clear pattern.



