talk abounds about a pile of seriously old BTC suddenly appearing on market this year. old BTC mined in certain blocks that are easily traced as they resurface...
BTC is increasingly traded in increments, not whole coins. I'm piecing together my first BTC. it'll be seven installments all up. it sits in my ledger looking like 1 BTC, but it's made up of sats of various vintages.
does each fraction retain some of it's original digital dna? or if I hold for say 2 years does it all just become part of the new BTC i have cobbled together, with no trace of it's origins when resold?
Not generally. For transactions with multiple inputs and multiple outputs (which are nearly all transactions), it's not possible to say which exact input sats became which output sats.
However bitcoins or sats don't really exist on the blockchain anyway, all that exists is transactions and their spent or unspent outputs.
Luke Gray
cheers mang. that simple answer explains several things. godspeed, user.
Evan Turner
>does each fraction retain some of it's original digital dna? yes, it's called UTXO (unspent output), and you better clean it up when fees are cheap during a regular sunday and merge it into one single UTXO or else you are going to pay a much higher fee in case you want to spend all these pieces when fees are high
Henry Sullivan
oh ffs seriously. are you a) shitting me? or b) talking about exchanges in which you pay your own gas and tie all the ends together yourself?
because my BTC are from all over, but they've passed through an exchange that charges like a wounded bull but does all the nitty gritty for you. they look like a unit in my ledger, but I dunno?
Jeremiah Nguyen
let's say you bought: -0.2BTC -0.3BTC -0.5BTC And you have it all in one address (total 1BTC). case 1) let's say you want to spend 0.1 BTC, with Bitcoin Core (using advanced settings) you can chose which UTXO to use (one of the three). Let's say you pick the 0.5BTC UTXO, you will spend 0.1BTC, now you have 1 input (0.5BTC) and two output (0.1BTC + 0.4BTC rest for you) and now you have two options where to send the remaining 0.4BTC: -either you send it to the same address (to a new UTXO) -either (with default settings) the 0.4BTC are sent to a new address (for privacy reasons) case 2) let's say you need to spend 0.9 BTC, you need all 3 inputs (0.2+0.3+0.5) and you will have two outputs (0.9BTC spent + 0.1BTC rest) of course you will pay a bigger fee in this second case, because you have 3 inputs and this occupy more transaction space. It's more clear how it works now? If you want to clean it up, pick a random sunday, send 1BTC to a new address and that's it, you will have 3 inputs and 1 output
Parker Hill
then of course, you can always trace every single UTXO back to its origins, that's the entire point of using a blockchain, you can just do it using a BTC explorer if you want to anonymize it, there is CoinJoin (en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), but they might get refused by some exchanges in some shitty jurisdictions (e.g. Singapoor)
Gavin Barnes
there are also other ways (e.g. exchange them in Bisq under VPN+Tor)
Evan Fisher
long story short: I can clean things up, but it is all ultimately traceable on blockchain down to the satoshi?
yes, but you can always sell and buy them again in a non-KYC exchange like bisq in that case you will own BTC from someone else with a different history
Aaron Gonzalez
bump for a rare technically useful btc thread.
Caleb Sanchez
but still ultimately traceable, because blockchain, or there are exchanges that scramble history altogether?
Blake Garcia
here's a big fat (You) for your efforts mate these little details literally keep me up at night even when you get kids and family and comfort autismo no go nowhere
conclusion: you can split up your sats how you want if you're working an arcane exchange, but fuck knows if they can be traced to their original block?
>exchanges that scramble history altogether only the ones without KYC (registration with documents, because they cannot link identities anymore) you are selling for example for another currency so you break the "link" if you are completely paranoid, you could use Bisq to sell BTC for XMR, do few XMR transactions, sell XMR for BTC
it's like tracing a fucking USD note with a serial number, knowing every time where it as been exchanged but you can avoid being traced in two ways: - you can use coinjoin to mix USD notes, because people throw them in a pool of notes, and then you pick the same amount with a different serial number - you can sell the fucking USD for CAD from a homie with no docs, then sell back CAD for USD to another homie with no docs so yeah, you can avoid being traced, just use your brain
Brandon Johnson
fellows blessed with excess melanin!
William Gomez
yes. crypto forensics can trace any btc that has ever been transferred to its original wallet the entire history of every single sat is traceable, it is 100% transparent if you can identify the wallet owner, you can identify who owned it at any point this makes "dirty btc" that has passed through drug trafficking or other criminal enterprise wallets basically illegal to hold
Austin Butler
>this makes "dirty btc" that has passed through drug trafficking or other criminal enterprise wallets basically illegal to hold but you can always use coinjoin then sell them for XMR on bisq or some panama exchange without KYC, after a few rounds nobody will care, they will get slowly fragmented and mixed with other clean btc addresses, nobody can "make them illegal" 1 dirty BTC after 1000 rounds is spread all over 1000 clean addresses with history totally unrelated you can't stop it
Levi Morgan
this is like tracing USD from serial number after a bank heist if the criminals went to wallmart and bought a 120 inches CURVED OLED TV, you cannot just go to the poor wallmart cashier and blame it to have a "dirty" dollar, it's not his fault, and this whole thing became a pointless forensic exercise
