Breaking Bitcoin Privacy
summary
Blockchain deanonymization relies on wallet clustering via heuristics such as 30–40% address reuse and the common-input-ownership heuristic, which together create massive identifiable clusters; equal-output coinjoins (JoinMarket/Wasabi) and merchant payjoin schemes can break those links and, if roughly 5% payjoin merging spreads, could collapse clusters into one big anonymity set. Change-detection heuristics still leak data; Lightning has routing leaks and a probing attack that costs about $47 attack cost to map channel states. Practical fixes favor removing on‑chain data (change avoidance, AMP, scriptless scripts) over adding decoys.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (9)
- 0:00Start
- 1:53Why Privacy?
- 4:19On-chain wallet clustering
- 6:01Address reuse
- 8:29Common-input-ownership heuristic
- 14:51Change Address Detection 2
- 19:16Identifying the clusters
- 21:54Example: QuadrigaCX exchange
- 28:22The security/privacy tradeoff trap
related talks
15mTowards Better Privacy Reasoning
15mThis Researcher Has a Plan to Put Privacy in Every Bitcoin Wallet
34mState of Lightning Privacy
15mExploring Monero's Privacy Innovations and Uncompromising Security
08mLIVE w/ Rodolfo Novak
13mPrivacy & Anonymity: Securing the Digital Economy's Most Valuable Assets
20mInterview
17mLIVE w/ Peter Todd & Claudia Diaz