
The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator - aurelianito
https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/
======
waterlesscloud
There's an interesting point in the bitcoin forums that someone basically had
to mine the entire first year or two, just to ensure the network even existed.
If someone downloaded a client to play around with it and there was no network
to connect to, the project would never take off.

So it's possible Satoshi ran a client or two for that purpose, which had the
side-effect of mining coins.

To me, this seems like a very likely scenario. Almost required, even.

Another interesting comment- if enough miners agreed, coins from the Satoshi
blocks could just be blacklisted from the network. Some irony there, eh?

~~~
polemic
> _"if enough miners agreed, coins from the Satoshi blocks could just be
> blacklisted from the network. Some irony there, eh?"_

Well, if enough miners agreed, anything can happen, but I doubt you'd get the
required majority. It would undermine the entire system.

~~~
waterlesscloud
There's previously been talk supporting blacklists for stolen coins.

I suspect it's the sort of thing that will increase in pressure if bitcoin
grows much further. It wouldn't surprise me if blacklisting eventually happens
in some form or another.

~~~
rmc
Sometimes listening to BitCoin proponants is hilarious. They point out all the
disadvantage of current money transfer systems and how BitCoin will solve them
("No chargebacks! No transaction fees! No-one can take your money!"). Then
when you quiz them, they'll admit people'll probably build systems like that
on top of bitcoins ("Well people'll probably use escrow services on top of
bitcoin to prevent dishonest merchants, and eventually there'll be transaction
fees from the miners"). It looks like they are even talking about removing the
"no-one can take your money" aspect!

~~~
jzwinck
This theme occurs often in software development. Someone sees a system that is
very complex, old, difficult to understand, and has some known bugs. They
implement a simpler, cleaner, new system with fewer known bugs and a handful
of missing features. If it takes off, the missing features are added, often by
people less intimately familiar and more likely to introduce a few bugs. The
cycle repeats.

~~~
mhartl
You're right, of course, but it's worth noting that the current system of
national fiat currencies with floating exchange rates isn't very old at all.
Commodity currencies (especially metallic standards), in which the money
supply is bound to a good of fixed supply, are much older and more thoroughly
debugged. Bitcoin, as a virtual fixed-supply commodity, is thus built on a
firm theoretical foundation.

~~~
rmc
What? Commodity currencies are not fool proof. If you find more of the
commodity, your currency suffers. This happened to Spain after they started
colonizing the Americas. They found lots of silver, and their economy tanked.

------
just2n
Personally, I don't find 5% ownership of a currency as a justifiable
"deserved" fortune to any one person. That's trillions on the scale of
existing currencies. That's enough to buy a world power.

Is the idea so novel that it can't be re-booted in a manner that has better
protection of anonymity and which isn't amenable to being mined for years by
just a handful of people (to the point that they own a huge % of all available
coins)?

The guy who owns all of the gold mines is more than happy to back gold as a
currency, after all.

~~~
rayiner
Welcome to the endemic problem of deflationary currencies! People get undue
credit just for being there first.

~~~
gyom
You could say the same thing about land or real estate in big cities.

~~~
rayiner
Yes you can! Consider Manhattan: young people cannot today afford the same
kind of house in the city that their parents could afford doing the exact same
job at the same age. Their standard of living is lower (either living in the
city and living in a much smaller place, or commuting in from outside the
city) than their parents, in the area of housing, simply by virtue of the fact
that their parents go there first.

Imagine extrapolating the injustices of the NYC housing market to the whole
economy...

~~~
crusso
* People get undue credit just for being there first*

 _simply by virtue of the fact that their parents go there first_

Lots of parents didn't choose to go there at all. Some parents chose to buy
residences in better parts of Manhattan, some in worse. Some chose better
buildings, some chose worse. Some parents took out big loans betting on their
future to own real estate, some preferred to spend that money on vacations.

In your mind, what investments that appreciate over time are not "undue
credit"? Do you have a certain amount of gain that we can all know is fair,
deserved, or not lucky?

~~~
rayiner
> In your mind, what investments that appreciate over time are not "undue
> credit"? Do you have a certain amount of gain that we can all know is fair,
> deserved, or not lucky?

Investments generally appreciate over time because they create increased
value. If your Apple stock goes up, it's because Apple is making more money
each year. That's due credit. Investments that appreciate simply by virtue of
fixed supply result in undue credit to older generations.

~~~
crusso
Apple stock is a limited commodity as well. If they split their stock 20
times, then the value would be much lower.

Your statement of "undue credit" is unfounded and arbitrary. Following your
logic, all appreciating investments are "undue credit".

~~~
rayiner
You're conflating two different things. Real property has intrinsic value, and
being a limited commodity means that prices for it will rise by virtue of the
fact that it is a limited commodity. Stock is limited as well, but because it
has no intrinsic value its price doesn't increase imply by virtue of its being
a limited commodity.

Forget about price for a second and look at intrinsic value. What is the
underlying asset represented by ownership of property? It's the right to
exclusively use some land and accompanying buildings. What is the underlying
asset represented by stock? Leaving aside different kinds of stock, it's
generally the right to receive a certain percentage of the profits of a
company over time. Now, look at how price changes in the two assets are
correlated with changes in the intrinsic value of the assets. A plot on the
UES might appreciate 50% between 2000 and 2013, even though the neighborhood
hasn't really changed in that time. The use and enjoyment a given person gets
from that property is the same in 2000 and 2013. Now, compare to a stock. If
the price of a stock appreciates 50% between 2000 and 2013, it's generally
because the company has increased profits. Your enjoyment of the $150 in stock
in 2013 is higher than your enjoyment of the $100 in stock in 2000 because it
represents the same percentage of the right to receive a larger amount of
profits.

~~~
crusso
_It's the right to exclusively use some land and accompanying buildings_ _even
though the neighborhood hasn't really changed in that time_

I have no idea where you get that notion. Are you suggesting that Manhattan
and the surrounding area hasn't changed? It's the very changes that have
driven the rise in value for living there.

 _it's generally the right to receive a certain percentage of the profits of a
company over time_

Not even close. Most equities these days don't distribute dividends.

As another responder said, you're not understanding how people value assets -
whether they be property or stocks.

Value is inherently fluid but ultimately only what someone will pay for it.
Your arguments for the limited nature of property vs stocks are tortured.
You're working extremely hard to call gains from property value "undue". Gains
from speculation are fundamentally the same whether they come from stocks,
currency, property, commodities, collectors items, whatever.

------
ewillbefull
Some context:

This blog post is written by Sergio Demian Lerner who has found a number of
minor security vulnerabilities in bitcoin's source code.

His method of associating blocks to Satoshi's identity has been disputed by
several developers of bitcoin.

~~~
mrb
No "developers of bitcoin" have disputed Sergio's findings.

The 2 persons who are disputing Sergio's findings (gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes)
are the minority. I personally agree with Sergio, I understand his analysis
technique, and I have read his previous supporting arguments.

gmaxwell was for example making incorrect claims, saying you would need 50+
computers to mine at ~5 Mhash/s (average hashrate throughout 2009) because CPU
and code at the time was not optimized. I proved gmaxwell wrong by
benchmarking an early version of Bitcoin and showing a 5-year old $200 4-core
Phenom was able to do 5 Mhash/s. This validates Sergio's theory that Satoshi
could have very well represented the majority of the mining hashrate with a
single computer throughout 2009.

~~~
ewillbefull
<http://bitcoin.org/en/development>

Gregory Maxwell is listed as a developer. He also has contributed a lot of
code to the project.

~~~
mrb
My bad. I forgot his status. It does not change my opinion though (that his
criticism is invalid).

------
oleganza
If Satoshi attempts to spend his coins, this might reveal his identity. Which
in turn would increase a risk of kidnapping/blackmailing/torture/etc from
anyone willing to get a share of his stash. Same applies to his heirs in the
future. My guess is that he may have deleted all the keys to early coins
traceable back to him, just to avoid temptation.

He could have mined a lot of cheap coins in 2010-2011, though, so he's
probably not without a big reward.

~~~
OGinparadise
Could he sell (I'm ignorant of BTC details) to John Doe like I could sell a
chunk of Citibank stock to someone? Presumably some known and trustworthy
investor says he's looking to buy $xx Million worth BTC and Satoshi responds.

Then he's just another rich person, holding cash, not BTC coins that can be
taken after a serious beat down.

~~~
aray
Yes or probably thousands of other transactions for some or all of the value
of these wallet(s), but the real question is there a secure way to get
most/all of the value out without revealing enough information to leak
his/her/their identity?

~~~
OGinparadise
What if he transfers them at a huge loss, say 30%-50% cheaper with attached
conditions? Or use LLCs and offshore corps? If there's a will and lots of
money involved, there's a way

------
eric-hu
Many comments here discuss how easy it is to discover Satoshi if he moved any
money out of these known accounts. Please point out the flaw in the following
strategy:

Satoshi (the man, the woman, the government, the organization, etc)
programmatically creates many wallets at random intervals over an extended
period of time (months, years). Money is moved into and out of these accounts
to make them appear to be 'consumers'.

Bitcoins are then moved from Satoshi's wallets into these accounts as well as
some percentage "burned" by sending bitcoins to random addresses not belonging
to him. The larger the burn rate, the higher the chances he won't be
discovered.

(Essentially, this ends up being a self-implemented version of Bitlaundry that
sends the service fee to random members of the Bitcoin community).

~~~
wmf
If Satoshi only mixes his own BTC then taint tracking will easily reveal it.
He'd have to mix his BTC in with (a lot of) other people's.

------
zetazzed
This is clearly illuminating the Ponzi-like elements of Bitcoin. As in a Ponzi
scheme, early arrivals to the system earn easy money, funded by later
arrivals. Tales of bitcoin fortunes draw more and more entry to the system,
leading to large payoffs for second stage arrivals, attracting more
speculators due to the media attention and very real money that has been made
by early players. This continues until, oh, wait, bitcoins aren't so easy to
mine anymore and there's no new wave of incoming money to pay of the next
generation of miners.

The hilarious thing is that Bitcoin is quite transparent about exactly how it
works, while a real Ponzi scheme goes to great lengths to hide this dynamic.
Anyone can see this dynamic in the rising price and the increasing CPU time
needed to mine a new coin. And yet, brilliant, savvy investors like the
Winklevosses are somehow still getting involved...

~~~
smartician
By that logic, any emerging industry has this Ponzi-like characteristics.
Early players will always have a large share, almost by definition.

A more defining characteristic of a Ponzi scheme is that the early player's
dividends are actually paid from the principal of late-comers. Which only
works until you have a steady stream of new investors. As far as I understand
Bitcoin, this is not the case there. It just gets harder and harder to "mine"
new coins.

------
logn
The Well Deserved Fortune of the Federal Reserve

Seriously, as the world's currency and failures of other countries to issue a
reserve currency, one of the dollar's biggest threats would be a crypto-
currency. Either the project succeeds and you have an enormous source of
potentially hidden money in the currency to maybe overtake the dollar, or it
fails and you make sure it fails with such repercussions that no other crypto-
currency can be easily introduced again, either due to new laws or loss of
confidence.

Additionally if they have the ability to crack SHA256 (designed by the NSA),
the government could print the money. And they could probably have planned a
way to sabotage bitcoins if they decided to back out before a certain point.

The financial crisis may have helped sway the final decision to execute the
plan:

August 7, 2007: BNP Paribas terminated withdrawals from three hedge funds
citing "a complete evaporation of liquidity".

September 6, 2008: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac placed in conservatorship by the
U.S. government.

September 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection.

November 1, 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto publishes first bitcoin paper.

Sources of dates:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932012_global_finan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932012_global_finan..).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_..).
<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/>

~~~
NkVczPkybiXICG
Breaking SHA256 does not allow any party to "print bitcoin". It lets them be
more successful at mining it, but the same amount per block will be generated,
and the difficulty still adjusts to 1 block every 10 minutes.

All they'd be doing is screwing miners out of profits.

~~~
logn
Depending on how much you can exploit SHA256 you could take all chance out of
getting the longest block and earn the new coins or fees as often as you want.
I don't know the specifics of the moving average of difficulty but you might
be able to game it by backing off and letting the difficulty reset before
finding the right hashes quickly again.

If you're already starting at 5% of the coins, and you're steadily gaining
more, and the currency is tending to deflate, that sounds pretty close to
printing money. Sure you're constrained but so is the Fed today in its
abilities to print money effectively. Additionally, having so many BTCs pretty
much ensures you can find a way to continue bettering your financial
situation, generating interest or something more creative.

------
klrr
Sorry if this is a obvious question but I haven't read much about Bitcoin
actually. This Satoshi Nakomoto, is he/them a company, person, community or
even a government?

~~~
AlexDanger
Thats the million dollar question.

Satoshi invented Bitcoin and worked on it for 3 years. Sometime in 2010, just
as Bitcoin was gaining traction, he* withdrew from the project and no one has
been heard from him since.

There have been many attempts to discover the real identity of this
person/group/company/government but to no avail.

I believe the focus of this new analysis technique, whilst interesting in its
own right, was done for the primary purpose of trying to identify Satoshi. The
analysis technique purports to show that certain bitcoins were generated by
the same person/computer. This information may assist the tracing of
historical bitcoin transactions to their original sources. At the top of the
tree is the 'genesis' block - the source of the very first bitcoins. Its
reasonable to think that Satoshi mined this block considering he invented the
system.

There is a thread in the Bitcoin forums[1] discussing whether the initial
blocks (up to around 50) were mined by an individual or a group. There is
heated debate about what, if any, facts can be concluded by analysing the
early blockchain events to discover how many (and what type) of CPUs were
involved in this early stage.

Satoshi appears to have political motivations (he references distain for
bailouts and fiat currency): <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto>

The Bitcoin story would make a good movie script.

*he/she/they/...I

[1]
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.msg1843782#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.msg1843782#msg1843782)

~~~
aray
Do we have enough writing from Satoshi to try to correlate language/linguistic
patterns against known actors in the field of cryptography?

~~~
gwern
Yes; we have a number of emails from the p2presearch ML, the cryptography ML,
the Bitcoin ML, his Bitcoin forum posts, his whitepaper, and source code
revisions & comments. This amounts to easily 80k of text, which should be more
than enough to run stylometric techniques on him.

The real trouble would actually be getting enough text from all the 'known
actors' you might want to compare him against (for example, one Redditor
thinks Satoshi is Mike Reiter, but almost all of Reiter's papers are co-
authored and he doesn't seem to have any other online presence, so what would
you use as your Reiter corpus?).

~~~
AlexDanger
Regardless of the comparison with other actors, is it possible to run an
analysis over Satoshi's corpus to determine if its internally consistent or
likely written by multiple individuals?

~~~
gwern
I haven't actually seen any mentions of stylometric techniques or analyses
which look into that question, although I'm sure it's been done. (The only
example I can think of, the Federalist papers, was known to have been done by
two people with large pre-existing corpuses to go on, and so the question was
simply assigning responsibility.)

~~~
tripzilch
I actually have read a paper once on stylometric authorship attribution, part
of which was oriented at detecting whether it was a single or multiple
authors. I think "authorship attribution" were keywords in the title, but
that's all I remember. So I don't have anything more to go on :)

------
kamkazemoose
If this one person/entity really owns 63% of the market and their currently
hoarding it, I imagine that anything they do with their coins could have a
huge impact. It might be worth ~100M USD but if they tried to cash out it
would likely collapse the market. Even if they start circulating those coins,
if not done properly could cause huge inflation.

~~~
lwat
You misread, it's not 63% of the market. Its about 10% of the market - 1148800
BTC

~~~
kamkazemoose
I was looking at this part: >Note that from the 1814400 BTC awarded, 1148800
BTC has never been spent (63%). I suppose (but have not checked it yet) that
these are exactly the segments that belong to the mystery entity

So I guess I'm confused the market bigger than the 1,814,400 that have been
awarded somehow? I'm not that familiar with bitcoins so that's very possible,
but the author seems to imply that Nakamoto has 63%.

~~~
lwat
The chart stops at 2010, many more bitcoins have been mined since.

~~~
kamkazemoose
Ah that makes sense, thanks. In that case I wonder how many more BTC Nakamoto
may have mined since then.

------
eridius
Since everyone's saying Satoshi can't spend any of these bitcoins without
revealing him/her/itself, my question is why can't Satoshi convert the bitcoin
to USD in a numbered swiss bank account? Is there no way to make a sale like
that today? And if not, then what's stopping there from being a way to do that
in the next few years?

~~~
rmc
_Is there no way to make a sale like that today?_

Correct.

There are not enough people who want to buy bitcoins. If those 1M bitcoin were
put on the market, the price would plummet.

~~~
darkarmani
Allowing him to buy more of them for a very cheap price.

~~~
gwern
Err... Suppose that works. Take it to the logical conclusion: Satoshi drives
out every buyer and buys up all outstanding bitcoins. Now what? Bitcoin has
become worthless. What does he do with 10m worthless bitcoins to cash out?
This is the classic question in attempts to corner a market: how do you bury
the body?

When you hold as many bitcoins as does Satoshi, you will profit far more from
not selling and trying to help out the entire Bitcoin economy and make it
grow.

~~~
darkarmani
I'm thinking it is more of a DeBeers situation. Keep tight control over the
supply.

~~~
rmc
BitCoin already has a hard limit hard-coded into the design. You don't need to
hoard 5→10% to achieve scarcity.

------
Charlesmigli
I highlighted the conclusion of Lerner's analysis here
[https://tldr.io/tldrs/516f951cc8cb5249260002c5/the-well-
dese...](https://tldr.io/tldrs/516f951cc8cb5249260002c5/the-well-deserved-
fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-creator-visionary-andgenius). This looks
pretty convincing even tough one might think that Satoshi would own multiple
wallets.

------
jbackus
Satoshi is a smart. I would assume that if he/they wanted to remain anonymous
and still get some money out of bitcoin later on then he/they are probably
mining to multiple wallets.

Not sure what the motive is to continuously mine with the wallet linked to
block 0, but assuming there are multiple Satoshi wallets in the picture it may
be to divert attention away from the wallet he/they are actually spending
money with.

------
qoo
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Keyser Söze.

------
joewee
I believe its not difficult to find Satoshi Nakamoto. However admitting that
you found this person/entity would likely put you in danger. So there is no
motivation for the people who might know to speak up.

I believe that most large governments do know the identity.

~~~
XorNot
Why would finding _him_ put _you_ in danger?

~~~
gknoy
Because anyone motivated sufficiently to find him now knows that you know
who/where he is, and can likely be coerced in unsavory ways to divulge that
information.

------
neilk
Wouldn't Satoshi have spent at least some Bitcoins? Testing the system, or
encouraging early economic activity?

Although maybe this entity represents just one of the mining machines
controlled by Satoshi.

~~~
oleganza
The first transaction was to Hal Finney, as a test. But if he tries to buy
something pointing to his physical address, it would help a lot revealing his
identity. Even buying drugs on Silk Road, since they are delivered by mail to
your door.

~~~
gwern
Satoshi seems to have been offering bitcoins to play with to a lot of people
early on; a hacker of my acquaintance mentioned sending Satoshi 'hate mail'
(he was annoyed by Satoshi contributing to the babel of half-baked P2P
networks at the time) and Satoshi replied with some links explaining Bitcoin
and an offer of some coins to try out. So false alarms are perfectly possible
in tracking early bitcoins' movements.

------
brianbreslin
Let's assume Satoshi (the entity) is insanely patient, decides to wait until
say 2015, by then BTC is trading around $1000/BTC (theoretical). He is then
sitting on BILLIONS of dollars in value. If he feels the market can bear it,
he starts liquidating and reveals himself. Assuming the market doesn't
collapse and he isn't kidnapped, he would quickly become one of the wealthiest
people on the planet (top 20).

------
salman89
Is there enough liquidity (I'm not even sure if this is the right word) in the
standard exchanges to move $100M USD of BTC?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Sort of.

Selling 1,000,000 coins on MtGox right now would take the price down to $0.10,
with an average price of $19.64, so you'd net $19 million.

Of course, what would really happen is that everyone would see it happening
and cancel their bids before the wave reached them, so you'd likely not be
able to actually sell them all at once.

Leaking them out a few thousand a day, though, would be completely possible.
And if done correctly need not move the market at all.

~~~
mckoss
I disagree that 1M coins could not be sold very quickly on MtGox. Yes, the
price would go way down, but there are plenty of interested buyers who would
be happy to "cash Satoshi out" to take some profits; he would certainly get
serveral millions of dollars for his coins.

The bigger problem is that selling on MtGox requires identifying himself to
create an account (not to mention the current $1,000 per day withdrawal limit
for USD).

------
bertomartin
What's stopping someone with a really fast computer from corner the bitcoin
market? I'm probably being naive here as I don't know the details of bitcoin,
just that it's a digital currency that can only be mined to come into being.
Anyways, a good explanation from the HN community would be really helpful.
thnx.

~~~
baudehlo
(Opportunity) cost. Right now bitcoin mining is starting to require custom
ASICs/FPGAs to be worthwhile (although the increasing price offsets that,
obviously), because mining bitcoins becomes harder the more bitcoins there are
found, so the costs of hardware and electricity start to get very large.

If you had a supercomputer with tens of thousands of CPUs it's probably being
put to more scientific use than trying to corner the bitcoin market, which is
basically still a gamble at this stage.

~~~
bertomartin
good answer and thank you. I was thinking of it more as an accepted currency.
Because if it's seen as being such, then it would be worth it to mine as much
as possible. And what happens when they run out? It's pretty confusing to
me...

------
dobbsbob
I dont think Satoshi owns a single bitcoin. Never did he write anywhere that
Bitcoins should be hoarded as a shady get rich scheme and all his writings
clearly are for Bitcoin to be used for pseudo anon payments.

He also gave thousands of them away to Hal and other people on the
cryptography mailing list.

------
aray
Is there any particular reason Satoshi Nakamoto would want their identity
hidden, other than personal preference? If I had $100M USD then I probably
would care a lot less about who knew it.

~~~
mcherm
Perhaps the person (or persons) is concerned that bitcoin will become even
more successful and will threaten powerful institutions like major world
governments. I wouldn't want to be Julian Assange right now, and that is a
perfectly sensible reason for the inventor of bitcoin to wish to remain
anonymous.

A different reason might be a fear that if a single inventor were known that
bitcoin would become vulnerable to "change it this way because the founder
says so" attacks, weakening the decentralized, P2P nature of the currency.
(This is a less plausible reason, but still valid.)

~~~
dcaranda
it's to avoid bias in the system

------
jgoodwin
Someone should verify the 'large entity' discovered by Shamir is distinct:
<http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584>

------
flux_w42
Maybe Satoshi Nakamoto died before bitcoins got popular ...

------
advaitraut
When it comes to Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto, the first character comes to my
mind: Kira from 'Death Note'

------
goggles99
Someone wanted to get rich so they invented their own money and suckered a
bunch of people into a "cult" with a bunch of hippie ideas.

Nothing new here. Do you know how many cults have done this throughout
history?

~~~
chii
except this hippie idea is based on sound mathematical proofs and concepts,
and not some flying spaghetti monster god.

~~~
illuminate
The technical operation is not the ideology behind Bitcoin, and it certainly
isn't the whole of how Bitcoin is used.

There's plenty of utopian fantasy surrounding it and a fascinating social
dynamic that has absolutely nothing to do with "sound mathematical proofs and
concepts" but more intangible qualities assigned to it by its proponents.

------
L0j1k
Why is everyone here completely forgetting about the recent Zerocoin
development? It's a system that could one day piggyback on the Bitcoin
blockchain, and it pretty effectively wipes BTC of any prints that might be on
them through a system not unlike an anonymous exchange (based heavily on zero
knowledge proof of work concepts). Once Zerocoin becomes a "thing" in the BTC
community, the Satoshis can spend as many of their coins as they want with
zero fear of being tracked down through transactions.

~~~
mikegioia
I found this on bitcointalk re: zerocoin:

 _"Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could
add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track
money laundering. A back door."_

From
[http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/03/bitcoin...](http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/03/bitcoin-
zerocoin.html)

