I usually don't use WeChat to pay, I don't have Alipay at all, I don't swipe my card when I can, I like to use cash! Because it's anonymous ( I don't have that big of a payout, so won't use the armed forces to link me to the digital code on the banknote ).
appeal
Do you think I'm dirty? No, I'm in the newest Internet industry, I buy the latest and most unused electronic equipment, I like to imagine things ten years from now, of course, I'm really dirty, like I haven't bought clothes for two years, and I haven't had a haircut for a few years , I have always wandered between bald head and long hair. I haven’t had a physical examination for many years. A serious illness is a small probability event. It can’t be cured, but a minor illness does not need to be treated. Any of my own information is handed over to banks, shops, hospitals, companies, even my wife, and my mother! So, I choose to be anonymous, so I try to avoid any documents as much as possible, I almost never attend any kind of party, unless it is absolutely necessary, I try to minimize the intersection with other irrelevant people. I'm good at choosing not to talk to people. When my daughter cries and complains, I'm afraid of falling into her social engineering trap and incurring unnecessary costs, so I choose to shut up and ignore her until she's quiet! Of course, I also have my own circle...
OK, let's get to the point.
You know Bitcoin well, and since that’s the case, you definitely know that on the blockchain, every sale and purchase you make is recorded, right?
But it doesn't matter, because before Bitcoin, when you used fiat, every transaction you made was also recorded, but that information was only stored in one place, the bank! The difference between Bitcoin is that it exists on the blockchain, and the blockchain is shared by everyone in the world. So, in principle, everyone can know who pays to whom, when and where (just follow the IP ). How much did it cost... If the recipient's address is bound to a store that sells inflatable dolls, how would you explain it to your wife? !
So, Bitcoin must be anonymous!
Well, Bitcoin claims that it is anonymous from the very beginning, so there is a so-called Bitcoin wallet. This thing is a string of numbers, which has nothing to do with individuals. You can generate it anytime, anywhere. But people can still use some less technical means to link bitcoin wallets and individuals . What I said here may not be intuitive, but it is indeed a fact. If you find that one wallet is transferring money to another wallet, and it is raining heavily that day, then the probability that the recipient is a rain gear seller will increase. This is bypass guessing... Don't detectives do this every day?
So, in order to be anonymous, we need to learn a little about the art of money laundering ! Money laundering is for anonymity, and anti-money laundering is for tracking!
How to launder money? Take 10 yuan as an example. Simply put, you throw this 10 yuan bill into a money pile, and then you take another 10 yuan bill and leave. This is money laundering. According to the probability, anyone There is no way to know who took the 10 yuan you put in, and no one knows who put the 10 yuan you took away. Well, at this time, your accomplices put in 350 million in batches, and then you take out 350 million in batches, the money can't be traced, it's laundered...
How does Bitcoin achieve all this?
Zerocoin
The following content is how to use technical means to achieve the above ideas.
Bitcoin mining is actually doing a certification . The mining behavior does not require the form of the transaction order, as long as the transaction order can prove itself in some way. In the standard Bitcoin system, the way the transaction ticket proves itself is to unlock the script , because only one's own public key can verify one's own signature.
Now that we understand that mining has nothing to do with Bitcoin, let's look at how to launder money . I assume that user A wants to wash his 1 bitcoin. He needs to do the following:
1. Put this bitcoin into a heap;
2. Take an equivalent bitcoin from this heap at will.
In order to accomplish this , A needs to create two transactions :
1. Put 1 bitcoin of his own into the heap and receive a withdrawal certificate;
2. At some point in the future, use this withdrawal certificate to exchange 1 bitcoin.
Among them, the input of the first transaction is your own 1 bitcoin, and the output is a certificate that only you know the details of . It can be a summary information , which is generated by two parts: a serial number S and a random number R. The summary information is recorded as:
ok, now It's called a certificate. because Produced by S and R known only by A, so no one can produce , which is guaranteed by modern cryptography, without question.
What the miners have to do is just put this Incorporated into the blockchain, note that only That's it, no input.
Next, when someone uses the voucher to redeem a bitcoin, because the person has his own random number R and serial number S, he can calculate ,Should It is indeed in the blockchain, so this person can redeem a bitcoin that has nothing to do with the previous one!
In order to make this system work, it must be a unit exchange, and only one bitcoin can be exchanged in the system, so that the exchange behavior of all bitcoin holders will be exactly the same!
The above approach has been used by a currency called Zerocoin , the core of which is the zero-knowledge proof mechanism. The so-called zero-knowledge proof refers to a method that does not reveal any information about oneself, but can prove that one has a certain property . In modern cryptography, information digest is one of its typical application scenarios.
Centralized/Decentralized
Centralization is a world where real names are at least pseudonyms, and only decentralization is an anonymous world.