Use different addresses for every transaction?

Use different address for each transaction. This is trivial and should be done anyhow, makes processes & tracking easier.

When spending bitcoins, they can be mixed using external service.

Assuming you don't want to use an EWallet or third party service (e.g., Bit-Pay.com or Mt. Gox merchant services) which breaks the link between the address used and the merchant the payment was sent, then the manual coin selection from pull #1017 might be what you are looking for:

Related:
 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/1017

I'm not talking about smallhome/ business, i'm talking about big business, like amazon.com or other big boys. I agree that even for them bitcoin will only get them a few transactions. But if it becomes more mainstream, so will their finances. Ofcourse normal customers won't go thru the trouble of figuring out the blockchain, but spying on competition is a big business on it's own.

I don't understand why a business needs to hide their finances. Can someone explain this to me?

<- business noob.

I'm sorry if I don't take your word for it but could you please back this statement up with some evidence. How can I be hurt by my competitors if I make my finances public?

There are so many options for this.

Example, simply forwarding each incoming payment individually (using pull #1017) to an EWallet or other payment intermediary (e.g.,) Mt. Gox

To force there to be no connection between the spending party and the recipient, a redeemable voucher can be use to move BTC funds from one exchange to another (e.g., Bitconiica).   Then bitcoins can be withdrawn to a local wallet.

Problem solved.  The funds in the local wallet will have no trace of the coins where funds were originally received.

None of these transactions incurred fees (other than the regular trivial bitcoin transaction fees), the only drawback was a little administrative overhead.

By not disclosing your thousands of Bitcoin addresses you would be trading virtually anonymously.

It is well known that big corporations usually hide profits in tax heavens. So transparency in revenues can also be a great marketing strategy for any company. On the other hand, transparency should be mandatory for governments and city halls. Bitcoin is also ideal for that purpose.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao892S4MOoDZdGZSbjJVd1ZTbFVLZE5aRE95bE91NVE&output=html

There are pros and cons. You want investors & buyers to feel safe with you, which is difficult to do without opening books. Just look at what a total clusterfuck the BBB (Better Bring Bucks if you want them to overturn bad reviews) has become. Outside of that, people pay for Amazon reviews, now -- they pay bloggers, too. There's a large host of tricks to boost your credit score, and I've seen it advertised on this board where you can effectively buy new credit scores. On the forum, we all know about the sockpuppets people create to "fix" their bad reputation. OTOH, maybe you don't want buyers to know the markup you're charging because you don't think you'll be able to convince them your cut is justified, or perhaps you don't want people to know who you're doing business with, maybe you have a cheap supplier you think others will try to jump on, or maybe you're trying to hide income from a gov't - or maybe you want to protect the identity of people you do business with.


It's a business decision, but I don't see why both options can't be considered, or why people wanting to know what a company's doing with their money should be looked at like they're proposing something utterly absurd, and I don't think anyone's asking for people to list every individual or company they've done business with. With BTC lending, we're all in a group and we work together. We all have our own niches, we collaborate, and we all have a good idea of what everyone else holds. We generally do "splitsies" on larger loans if we don't have enough to cover it or if we just want less exposure to the risks associated with the loan - and I can't complain about how it works out for us.

While I don't share the OP's concerns I could imagine a bitcoin-world where the tax authorities demand business to report any receiving address to them immediately. If test-buys don't result in a reporting message, the company gets trouble for not paying taxes. Today's anonymity is all nice but bitcoin has the potential for total control and we should definitely put some thoughts on how to avoid such a future.