Another of the characteristics that attracted attention to the blockchain is that relating to the alleged possibility of preserving the anonymity of participants in transactions, despite the presence of a public distributed ledger. We will now see where this anonymity claim originated, often wrongly considered among the advantages of using cryptocurrencies. To ensure the ownership of funds, transactions are digitally signed with the private key of the user who transfers the funds. Both the signature and the public key are thus included in the transaction, to allow anyone to verify that the funds transferred really belong to the sender.
The counterparties of a transaction are identified by their Bitcoin addresses, which correspond to their respective public keys. Although these public keys are associated with specific transactions, however...
