It just all seems like cosplay. Time, expense and inconvience in order to gain anonimity from casual twitter followers?<p>Will this protect him against a slightly funded and half motivated actor? Probably not.<p>“Announcing Jameson Lopp as a speaker at Baltic Honeybadger 2019 Bitcoin conference #bh2019, (link: <a href="https://bh2019.hodlhodl.com" rel="nofollow">https://bh2019.hodlhodl.com</a>) bh2019.hodlhodl.com”<p><a href="https://twitter.com/hodlhodl/status/1099286199783481350" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/hodlhodl/status/1099286199783481350</a><p>Unless he is making a virtual appearance, just follow him or grab him there.<p>EDIT: I should make it clear I’m not just referencing the article but also the twitter conversations I’ve seen from th author (swatting is a good reason to take some of these steps obviously). For example,
<a href="https://twitter.com/lopp/status/920669889064570880" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lopp/status/920669889064570880</a>. He even comments himself in that thread “Local PD isn't going to send out the SWAT team again without calling me first”
> To register his car, the D.M.V. insisted on a real name — not an L.L.C. — and a street address.<p>I don't understand: whose name appears on all the corporate vehicles driving around? A security van for Google, and Amazon delivery truck, a Brinks van: I'm supposed to think there's some employee's name on the title? What if that employee leaves?
> To make sure his phone wasn’t keeping a record of everywhere he’d been — and potentially transmitting it to apps he was using — he turned off all its geolocation services.<p>... Of course, IMEI tracking (from tower registration) can get you pretty much all of this data anyway. This article is more about how to partially obfuscate your identity to private actors.<p>It would be interesting to know how fast a professional could unravel all of this. Minutes? Hours?
Bitcoin is the very opposite of anonymous. Permanently recorded for posterity would be a better description. The best you can get is pseudonymous, and that's if you never actually spend any of the coin.
Also quite a good checklist for money laundering. I think buying a house in the UK now requires ID for this reason, and there's an ongoing campaign to close the loopholes for companies.<p>I do remember when I was briefly the director of a tiny UK non-profit that the company identity information was mandatory .. except for a very small list of those who were exempt because of intimidation, after a nasty terrorist campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-the-disclosure-of-your-psc-information/restricting-the-disclosure-of-your-information" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-the-d...</a>
This article has so little to do with Bitcoin that I think a more descriptive title would have been:<p>"How a Very Wealthy Person Conceals His Name and Address From The Public"
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the DMV links him to his LLC which is linked to everything else. A quick records search on myself pulled up the requisite registration information, so I'm left to question how anonymous he actually is.
It's weird to see someone publishing info about how he's concealing. I'm hiding, here's how I did it. Perhaps, he sees an opportunity in concealing identity business.
A lot of the comments here are about how this wouldn't hold up to state actors. I don't see anywhere that indicates that this is the goal (except for maybe the title?)
Sounds good, but I suspect many of those steps won't actually work. That is, he hasn't truly vanished, maybe to online trolls who are into SWATTING.
I might be missing something here, but he's buying a bunch of stuff in the name of the LLC but they aren't actually LLC expenses. Isn't that a violation of tax law at minimum? Possibly something more serious like fraud, no? I have a side business and it's an LLC. I know I can't just start buying cars, houses, cell phones, etc. and claim them as business expenses.<p>How is he doing that legitimately?
Final step, post it all on NYTimes!<p>Seriously though, the toughest part about seeking anonymity is working against human nature and one's need for social validation.
One of my fav Wired articles was about this...
<a href="https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take-to-really-disappear/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take...</a>
The New York Times somewhat ironically won't let me read this article in private mode. "You're in private mode. Log in or create a free account to continue reading."
"Bitcoin evangelist": <i>The most anonymous way to buy things, of course, is to simply use cash</i>....<p>Buys a house, in cash. Buys another "throwaway" house for his car, in cash. Buys car, in cash. And then claims: "<i>Mr. Lopp estimates that his efforts to disappear have cost him about $30,000.</i>"<p>Yeah, right.