Comment by basilikum
1 day ago
Bitcoin is traceable by design. That's how a public ledger works. It is merely pseudonymous. But it leaves complete public money trail. If your Bitcoin ever associate with your real identity, which they tend to do when you actually use them, your anonymity is gone.
There is a reason why Monero exists.
The ledger is traceable, the coin is not. Not all transactions have to happen on the blockchain. In fact very few do.
If I put $80m worth of BTC in my hardware wallet and physically hand it to you in exchange for a truck full of black market rockets, who is going to trace it?
Transferring private keys defeats the point of Bitcoin. The whole reason for the whole ledger and PoW thing is to prevent double spend.
Lightning is an attempt to do that in a more efficient and potentially private way. But why would I ever accept your private keys as payment without transferring the coins out to my wallet on chain?
Why would anyone accept a private key as payment? It's not very private if you gave it to me.