These are all valid points. I hadn't really thought much about this point until you all just brought it up. The reason I so quickly spout off that phrase, is that I endlessly get requests from Armory users to implement more anonymity-based features. When I say there are bigger priorities, they suggest that "anonymity" is a core benefit of Bitcoin and I should be supporting it. I'm not against anonymity, and I most certainly favor privacy, but my goal was to produce a versatile client, not one focused on any one aspect -- there are plenty of people who use it for other reasons than anonymity.
On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:
Second thing, it's best to carefully separate "anonymity" from"privacy". Privacy is supposed to be a feature of the system (it says
so in Satoshis paper) because people demand it. If I loan a tenner to
my friend and he is able to find out what I earned last month, then
that trade was neither anonymous nor private. In this case I want
privacy but anonymity isn't useful. Mixing up anonymity with privacy
is not only a public relations problem, but can lead to confusion from
users when they, eg, try and buy Bitcoins from an exchange and are
asked to provide ID proofs.I would like to second this point...privacy is essential because the market demands it. If Bitcoin doesn't do it well (and I would argue that it doesn't today), then eventually a competitor to Bitcoin will do it better and that would be the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. Debates about whether it was or wasn't a core feature are pointless.