"Hackers have broken into a high-end European bank and are blackmailing its customers. Customers of Valartis, a Chinese-owned Liechenstein bank, are being told by unknown blackmailers they must pay 10% of their life savings [paid in Bitcoin] or face having account details sent to finance authorities and the media..." http://www.businessinsider.com/r-bl...ed-liechtenstein-bank-paper-2016-11?r=UK&IR=T http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/29/liechtenstein_bank_breaches/
They could have hidden their money in the blockchain using BTC. While this is terrible it once again shows the peril of allowing someone else to "conceal" your stuff.
Hmm - " Hidden " That was always a debatable point , even more so in the light of some recent US judicial rulings on Bitcoin Bitcoin ( and it's blockchain implementation ) has an inherent " taint" problem , and falls far short of the original concept as proposed by David Chaum. BTC transactions would be better described as quasi-anonymous ( if this were not true there would be no need for mixing services ) . But it doesn't have to be this way , there are already better implementations of the ecash concept.
Use of BTC and Blockchain Technology is much the same as coming to this site as an example. If an adversary were to "grab" this Wilder's database containing all its users information they would ascertain the following facts: Many members would be "known" almost instantly because they make no attempt to conceal who they actually are, and they have no reason to for the most part. A three letter agency can get the ID of any major ISP client in minutes. Who cares if you just want some privacy from the masses, as most do here AND with Bitcoin. Believe it or not, BTC has great uses its not just a dark net drug transacting mechanism. There are several other members here at Wilders where a snatch of the database would NOT led the adversary back to the member. They would have a moniker internal identity but not the real name behind it. That is OK too, and if someone wants that extra privacy I am good with that. Let me complete my presentation just to establish my point, because I am rambling some. The reason for mixers in part is because I don't know WHO (character or real name) had the coins I just bought that might link me to them. If I were to give my real name friends the moniker Palancar and they started emailing me from their email accounts, would it even matter how careful I was about remaining a moniker instead of my real name. The adversary can determine who I am by the real name contacts that are communicating with me. When someone communicates via email, text, or Bitcoin it establishes a trace. Mixers can break the trace. I have studied the crypto currency methods. Just plainly, when someone buys a crypto coin the seller has some ability to establish the start of a trace. Monitors at a bank, IP's from exchanges, Pictures in the distance from a cash sale, etc.... There is no way to avoid that initial possibility of a trace beginning. So once acquired I use mechanisms to break the trace if I want to store coins long term and yes "hidden" in plain site.
Transaction origin , amount , destination , time and date .... that is too much data , and it is not all essential to maintain the integrity of the transaction . Leaving aside the general requirement for trust and confidence , the fundamental accounting need is for intrinsic protection against double-spend ( or multiple-spend ) of the same coin. I think the blockchain concept is here to stay , but it can still work with zero-knowledge proof , and BTC does not have that attribute . References : “Achieving Electronic Privacy,” D. Chaum, (invited) Scientific American, August 1992, pp. 96-101. http://www.chaum.com/publications/Chaum-blind-signatures.PDF http://zerocash-project.org/how_zerocash_works -
