I hadn't heard about that. Is it really secure?

OP's (possible) source:

https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-nodes-go-ultra-private-thanks-to-tor-network/


Anonymity does not necessarily imply security. I don't think this has any real impact on overall network security. It makes it harder to trace individual nodes though, so good for them.


Tor can help, but do remember that the blockchain is a public ledger. It doesn't matter if you change up your IP if an observer can track your movements through your transactions. Tor can only really help you if you were already anonymous in the first place.

That being said, it's far more important to break the links between you and your addresses through mixers or CoinJoin, both of which can be made more effective by using Tor.

I am assuming this is mostly so someone can broadcast a raw transaction anonymously, however the transaction itself will still be public once the nodes and miners actually end up mining the block.

So is this really useful? Because if someone say "Satoshi" wants to broadcast his transaction, he can send it to some bitcoin node and that node will propegate to all the nodes its connected too and eventually within a few seconds it will be in the pending transactions for most pools. However how can one prove which node was the first node to broadcast that transaction? It seems this would be difficult to pinpoint unless the very first node would be some government node?

Wonder if this will actually get any use. Maybe someone with more expensive can chime in and explain why TOR nodes are needed?

Public service announcement: Tor does not make your bitcoin transactions anonymous.

Each person using bitcoin has a wallet address that is making transactions logged on the public ledger and can be viewed on blockchain.com. At best, all of your transaction origins/destinations/amounts are publicly available without anyone knowing you're the one who made them, and at worst your wallet address is traced back to an exchange (this one in particular pwns you with your KYC documents) or an online wallet.

Even if you're using an offline wallet that only connects by TOR with Tails OS and you keep changing IPs, people can still use address clustering to determine which addresses are controlled by the same person, because your wallet address does not change. And if you change it, address clustering can link it too. And as soon as you cluster the address of the other person you send bitcoins to, if they are connected to KYC documents and deanonymized, they will know who you sent money to which will make it easier for them to track you.

Once again, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If you want anonymity use an altcoin with an obfuscated ledger like Monero. Even that is not 100% anonymous, see this thread: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/2867811.0