You're partly right but I don't see any "danger" here.
In first place, nobody really promotes Bitcoin as a "private" means of payment anymore.
Are you kidding me? That's almost
entirely how it is promoted to average consumers.
Yes, hardened criminals and those living under oppressive governments whose lives are in danger know these things well, but for the average US consumer, Bitcoin is mostly seen as privacy-enhanced.
In second place, you still can transact privately with Bitcoin, if you are strict about not publishing addresses and also don't reuse them. It is for a purpose that Bitcoin clients try to enforce the "no-reuse" policy to the users. And then of course there are techniques like CoinJoins and atomic swaps which can even make already "de-anonymized" funds (e.g. because by mistake you published an address online) private again, even without the intervention of mixers and tumblers.
Yes, and I touched upon this in the OP: that
Bitcoin alone in the way most people use it is
not private and therefore needs to be used in conjunction with other tools. But most Bitcoin users don't use these tools, or even know about them.
Third, linking complete identities to addresses isn't that easy. You also need access to a database connecting different parts (e.g. full name, e-mail address, phone number) of the identity. These lists are of course sold in darknet markets, so criminals actually can have already access to some tools of some people (but not of the entire population normally). That's why everybody already warns about the "$5 wrench attack". But for companies, to purchase these lists for marketing use would be very risky as this is of course against data protection laws.
Well, take a look at what companies do
today with IP addresses. There are some laws here and there, and they certainly help, but your IP is pretty easy to triangulate to your identity, and the targeted ads you see (when you don't use a VPN) demonstrate that.
It's also a cost issue: I think a marketing tactic based on the identity of an address would only make sense if the person behind it is very wealthy. But you may have to investigate a lot to find a wealthy person which is at the same time not wary about the privacy issue.
That's how all marketing works. They put you in a database and sort by your demographic profile. You don't need to be "very wealthy" to be profitable for a marketer or a hacker...
When I first saw this thread title I baffles a little until i read through the entire discussion and I discover that ops have made alot of controversial statement about bitcoin and it privacy provision because in all his statement he failed to define what decentralised network means to him and how best to interact with centralised service without losing our identities.
I never intended to try to
solve the problem here, only to point out that there's a problem.
This is the first time I am hearing of the statement that IP contains and transfer our identities, although I know of the traceability of IP but I haven't read where IP contains users identity that he has shared online and on the Internet before.
Google it. Using the internet without a VPN is... not safe. Once a single entity connects your IP to your identity that can be (and often is) shared widely. All of this is done with data marketplaces and so forth.
