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Re: [tor-talk] Bitcoin over Tor isnât a good idea (Alex Biryukov / Ivan Pustogarov story)



On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 7:35 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo
<mle+tools@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6079v1.pdf

> Could this situation be improved if people ran limited exit nodes that only
> alloed the bitcoin p2p protocol to exit? I for one don't have enough

There are about ten exit nodes that do only this today.
[One of which is run by Mike Hearn who has advocated building in
censorship capabilities to Tor, and blocking (historically) tainted coins
(such as you have now or might receive through otherwise completely
innocent transactions with you, or from your own trans/mixing with
others).]

Then there is question if your client will select such 'only *coin' nodes
versus those with high bandwidth and open exit policies.

There are also a fair number of hidden services in Tor/I2P/CJDNS
that act as bitcoin nodes.

As related tangent, yes, the bitcoin protocol needs to be encrypted
on the wire, at least bitcoin node to bitcoin node with TLS, obviously
and urgently so, particularly if you wish to guard your trans from
wire listeners.

You might be best to in fact run bitcoin always and entirely over Tor,
especially while transacting.
But then also routinely compare that received blockchain to one
you receive via alternate/trusted sources, such as clearnet or signed
bittorrent checkpoints.
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