Anonymous vs Public Bitcoiners \ stacker news ~bitcoin

5680 sats \ 33 comments \ @TresDMan 24 Apr bitcoin_beginners

I still need to wrap my brain around the concept of anonymous vs public bitcoiners, and this may not even be the correct framing. Perhaps there is a wider picture here that I'm missing, or maybe some nuance that is getting lost.

There is a lot of talk on here about privacy and anonymity, and I do understand the importance of privacy. It's never perfect, but I have built a more secure online presence throughout the years. What I'm still trying to comprehend is the concept of anonymity, which seems to be a deeper level of privacy.

I see and follow many prominent bitcoiners that operate/transact/communicate as themselves (or so I think) online. I also see even more (including myself) operating under anonymity. I chose anonymity to begin my journey just to err on the side of caution. Is one approach better the other? What are the downsides of each? What if you had both an anonymous and a public persona?

I want to have a clear stance on this early on because it will influence how I choose to communicate moving forward. You see, I'm an audio engineer and a music publisher, my business is client-facing. From my current limited viewpoint, anonymity hinders the services that I provide.

The clients I currently have, arrived as a result of my previous credits / accomplishments in the same field. For example, they see I mixed or mastered a specific album or single, then they reach out to me for a similar service. The same will apply to future clients. If I'm anonymous, this connection is broken. I'll have to start from zero to build up credits under my pseudonym. As frustrating as that would be, this area of services is still possible because the communications could still all be done anonymously. Client reaches out for service > we agree on a price for services > I do the work and send back to client > any revisions can be requested and completed anonymously.

I don't know that my music publishing services could be rendered satisfactorily under anonymity. A central part of the work is the communication and connection that you have with the clients you represent. Whereas I can mix an album for a client and never communicate with them again until the next project, the same doesn't hold true for my music publishing clients. The relationship has to be established over time, and it is through this process that the opportunities begin to arise.

I would absolutely love community feedback on this. It's been "the thing" tugging at me since I began posting on here. In fact, I disappeared for a few weeks because, in part, I still don't have a good understanding of this.

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1297 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 24 Apr

What are the downsides of each?

An anon has no identity. A nym has an identity that is distinct from one's government name.

Having a consistent nym and profile picture across many platforms is good for building reputation.

However, it makes your moves easier to track/corelate.

Using your government name as your nym is risky. Its pretty easy to become a victim of SWATTING, spam, targeted phishing attacks, or identity theft if you haven't taken extreme precautions to setup your assets in such a way that they aren't linked to your government name in the public record.

However, using your government name is basically mandatory if you are trying to be "the face" of an goverenment-recognized organization or company.

Maybe you can get away with a nym that "sounds like" it could be your government name: "John Smith", etc.

What if you had both an anonymous and a public persona?

Many do this. However, you must be extra careful never to link the two identities. It can be difficult if both identities are interacting with the same social circles.

I don't know that my music publishing services could be rendered satisfactorily under anonymity

Use the corporate veil. I interact with businesses all the time without knowing the government names of anyone who works there.

Instead of clients dealing with John Smith, they deal with Music Publisher, LLC and John just works there (they don't need to know that John is also the founder and CEO). You can even register your business in a state like Nevada or Wyoming that allows you to omit your government name from the public record of beneficial owners of the LLC.

It's been "the thing" tugging at me since I began posting on here.

Embrace your inner Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde! It helps if you have bipolar or multiple personality disorder lmao.

But for real, you aren't just your government name. We all choose how to present ourselves depending on the situation. Your co-workers know you as someone different than your drinking buddies, and your church group knows you as someone else too!

Why not craft an identity for every situation instead of trying to make one identity fit all situations?

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

All great points, and you brought many solutions to the table to consider also.

138 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 24 Apr

Question for you: TresDMan is a real living man? No. There is your privacy. Learn how to use private and public face. Online is not your private "face", is only a public face. Nobody could link what are you doing in public with your real private identity.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

Yeah, all of this makes sense, and the more I interact with the concept I realize that I'd prefer an easier path to link what I do for business in my "real life", to this anonymous/pseudonymous path I'm taking on here. Unfortunately, that easier path comes at the expense of many important things. It's just gonna take some more serious consideration of how to build, I'm OK with that.

BTW. I've received that link a few times, and although I appreciate the content, it's not the easiest to digest for someone just starting to understand this concept. I prefer more layman speak for stuff like this. I'm sure it'll prove to be more useful as I gain more context around the subject.

76 sats \ 5 replies \ @nym 24 Apr

I’ll just leave this here.

https://protos.com/kidnapped-businessman-kept-in-cage-by-bitcoin-ransom-gang/

7 sats \ 3 replies \ @SaloonCat 24 Apr

I'm looking at buying a property in the UK at some point. I expected to be forced through the usual KYC/AML routine by a solicitor of my choice, and already had concerns about that. My plan was to use one based in another city, big enough that they wouldn't look twice at my affairs or go home and tell their friends about them.

However, I learned that not only do I need to go through my entire financial situation with a solicitor, but also the seller's estate agent. That's because the unelected FATF and the communistic UK decided agents could be a brick in the wall of their totalitarian surveillance society:

Estate Agency businesses do not commonly handle the funds used to buy a property. However, they are a key facilitator in a property sale and come into contact with both parties to the transaction at an early stage and are in an ideal position to identify suspicious activity.

I don't want to live in a big city. This leaves me forced to reveal my hodling to a small-town estate agent with no experience in professional confidentiality and a penchant for gossip.

It's a direct threat to my personal security, counter-productive and highly dangerous legislation, and forcing me to re-consider the whole plan.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @nym 24 Apr

Do yall have something like an LLC you could put your house in?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SaloonCat 24 Apr

Good question. In fact, that would be considered suspicious:

the way the client comes to the business affects the risk for:

is the client a company, partnership, or trust; are there complex or opaque business ownership structures in place? That is, any client which is a legal person, owned by another legal person. For example, a limited company owned by a beneficial owner indirectly, through another legal entity

The guidance then instructs agents as follows:

identifying all beneficial owners of the customer and taking reasonable measures to verify their identity to satisfy yourself that you know who they are

And then you're back to square one, except with a bigger workload. There seems to be no way to mitigate the threat, although I haven't taken legal advice yet.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaloonCat 24 Apr

I'll just add this to show how direct the threat can be.

Fortunately, I'm not looking in Northern Ireland. If I were, I'd be looking in a place where the government is led by the political wing of the still-intact IRA.

On 20 December 2004, a total of £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the headquarters of Northern Bank on Donegall Square West in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal used and unused pound sterling banknotes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery

Nobody was brought to justice, but it's widely acknowledged to be the work of the IRA. Extortion and racketeering continue to be part of the fabric of life there. They are active in the property industry as in all others. And you're forced, by law, to reveal to them your entire financial situation.

6 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

and then there's this...

54 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Apr

I'm curious what you see as the main risks of letting your identity be known. Would you lose clients?

I agree that not being able to promote your own work under your pseudonym is potentially a big limitation.

67 sats \ 3 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

I'm not entirely sure. To start out, I chose an anonymous nym because the individual who got me into Bitcoin, Stacker, and so on, would always speak about online privacy in general. Prior to this, my few encounters with the Bitcoin community would always bring the subject of privacy and anonymity to the forefront.

So, when I started writing on Stacker, my first serious attempt at connecting and transacting with the Bitcoin community, I decided to take cautious steps into the water first.

When it comes to my business clients, I don't really have any concerns with letting my identity be known. The questions (and possible concern) comes from the importance that the Bitcoin community seems to place on this topic. I'm exploring and trying to understand the concept. Judging from the responses, there's not one approach to this.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Apr

I'll be interested to see how you decide to navigate this. I've felt similar pressures, as there have been a few times where something I've worked on professionally was relevant to a discussion, but I can't direct people to it.

For now, on balance, pseudonimity is definitely better for me and my family, but at some point I may want to connect these identities.

17 sats \ 1 reply \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

There's comfort in knowing I'm not alone in my way of thinking.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Apr

My situation doesn't feel quite as discrete as yours, but there are similarities.

I really don't ever have to explicitly acknowledge my real identity. I can just be less guarded about what information I reveal. For instance, I could direct people to something I worked on without stating it was my work or I could be less vague about where I work and live.

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @southside263 24 Apr

providing a public service under a nym seems like a lot of work ..

eg. very hard to build a bitcoin community with trusting relationships IRL , without giving up some level of privacy.

probably need to mask up like RockstarDev, Gigi and Shinobi at some point..?

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

Totally agree. Thanks for the examples, I'll look into them to see how they're doing things. Imagine that... the masked audio engineer twiddling away at your mix. Hah!

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @southside263 26 Apr

Customer: who dat?

TresDMan: IM MIX MAN.

💀😂

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 26 Apr

:))) I still don't know how to do emojis in Markdown

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 24 Apr

Yes, you're right that if you opt for pseudonym, you have to start from scratch.

If you already have substantial amont of engagement with your clients in public, I would suggest you to continue this in part and also start with anonymous service provider. When you reach at a level where your service as anonymous become popular slowly shard your public image and be private forever.

This is the best way to opt in for annonymity.

There are also other ways to bring in your public image or money to annonymity. Consider making regular p2p transactions and bring your money to Bitcoin. Try creating an annonymous circle with clients you know publicly. Give them those offers which they won't get publicly. I mean market your annonymous services first, and when you're popular enough under a pseudonym, leave that public image.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

The anonymous circle idea is an interesting one.

Your overall idea seems feasible, and this is also coming at a time when I'm shifting gears on what sort of services I provide. This seems like the perfect time to start fresh with some of these new ideas.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xIlmari 27 Apr

Do you see what the governments are doing? Jailing developers that practice free speech by creating software.

I predict that at some point the governments will straight out brand bitcoiners as "financial terrorists" or some other bullshit like that.

Now, remember the islamophobia that was created by 9/11 attacks? Add 2 and 2 together and realize that at that point, not only the gov't will be after you but anyone who knows you're a bitcoiner.

Anyone who has read the Sovereign Individual understands that the transition period during which nation states will fail will likely be marked with "return to violence".

Hopefully that explains why some of us prefer to have our internet identities disconnected from real life.

Now, you can absolutely build a network of trust based on a purely fabricated internet persona, have clients, suppliers etc. (As long as you don't need any legal paperwork.) But it's "weaker" than "real life" relations because over the internet you can't punch someone in the face for being a dick.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 24 Apr

Why not do both? Start a nym and try and build it up over a few years. Keep your fiat service going until you've developed a reputation for the nym.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

Yeah, a few others have echoed the same suggestion. It's a feasible solution.

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @Satosora 24 Apr

I am just curious... What makes you so important that you need to seperate the two? It might be that your opinion of yourself might be very high? For the average person, does it really matter?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

To get to the crux of the matter (maybe?) I'd ask you the same thing. I assume your government name is not Satosora. Why choose that nym, as opposed to something tied to your government name?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Satosora 24 Apr

No, it is not my christian name, but l am not the one trying to build a face to face business, am l?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

I figured you'd answer as such.

To be clear, I'm not trying to sound snarky, I'm genuinely curious in the answer to the question, but you didn't actually answer the question.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 24 Apr

I don't think the OP was looking at this as an ego thing. I think his point is that his business is dependent on HIS abilities, which must be advertised. Musicians want him, not any random guy, for this type of work.

114 sats \ 3 replies \ @Satosora 24 Apr

He is asking how to build his face without actually building his face. You have to pick one or the other. If you dont want to meet clients face to face, then you will have less business. Its just the fact of the matter.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 24 Apr

I think he's exploring the idea of the use of two identities, to preserve some privacy.

54 sats \ 1 reply \ @TresDMan OP 24 Apr

You're correct on both points, but @Satosora may also be right.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 24 Apr

Yeah. No simple solution.