Bitcoin Wallet Privacy Protection: Best Guide to Choosing and Using

In today's wave of digital currencies, Bitcoin, as the most representative cryptocurrency, has attracted more and more attention from investors and users. However, with the popularity of Bitcoin transactions, privacy issues have become more prominent. Therefore, it is particularly important to choose a suitable Bitcoin wallet and understand how to use these tools to protect our privacy. This article will explore the types of Bitcoin wallets, selection criteria, and privacy protection methods in depth, hoping to provide readers with practical guidance and inspiration.

There are several main types of Bitcoin wallets: hot wallets, cold wallets, hardware wallets, and paper wallets. Hot wallets are online wallets that are easy to use but less secure; cold wallets are offline storage that is highly secure but inconvenient to use. Hardware wallets are specialized physical devices that provide strong security protection, while paper wallets print private and public keys on paper to ensure offline storage. Based on personal needs and usage habits, users can choose the wallet type that best suits them.

When choosing a Bitcoin wallet, users need to consider multiple factors. The first is security, whether the wallet has security features such as multi-signature and dual authentication; the second is user experience, whether the interface is friendly and easy to operate; and the last is privacy protection, whether the wallet supports private transactions and whether it has the function of ensuring user anonymity. For example, some wallets support CoinJoin technology, which improves the privacy of transactions by mixing transactions of multiple users together.

In terms of privacy protection, users can take a variety of measures to enhance the anonymity of Bitcoin transactions. First, using privacy coins or mixing services is an effective option. Privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash use advanced encryption technology to make the addresses and transaction amounts of both parties of the transaction untraceable by the outside world. Mixing services increase privacy protection by mixing the user's Bitcoin with other users' Bitcoin to disrupt the transaction flow.

In addition, users can also protect their privacy by creating multiple wallet addresses. Using a different address for each transaction can effectively reduce the risk of the address being tracked. At the same time, regularly cleaning up unused addresses and keeping the wallet clean can also help improve privacy security. For those who trade frequently, consider using a one-time address to ensure that each transaction uses a new address, thereby further enhancing privacy protection.

In practice, many users do not pay enough attention to the security and privacy protection of Bitcoin wallets, resulting in property loss or privacy leakage. Take a well-known cryptocurrency exchange as an example. Its user’s account was hacked without enabling two-factor authentication, resulting in a large amount of Bitcoin being stolen. This case reminds us that security and privacy protection are the top priorities when using Bitcoin wallets.

In addition to choosing the right wallet and taking privacy protection measures, users should also pay attention to network security. Using a VPN can effectively hide the user's IP address and increase anonymity. At the same time, avoid trading in a public Wi-Fi environment and try to use a secure network connection to ensure that transaction information is not stolen. Regularly updating wallet software and promptly fixing vulnerabilities are also important aspects of protecting privacy.

For some high-net-worth users, buying a hardware wallet is undoubtedly the safest choice. Hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor are not only highly secure, but also support a variety of cryptocurrencies and are easy to operate, making them suitable for most users. Although their prices are relatively high, compared to the possible loss of property, this investment is very worthwhile.

When summarizing the selection of Bitcoin wallets and privacy protection, we can see that the user's initiative and security awareness are crucial. With the popularity of Bitcoin, more and more users have begun to notice the importance of privacy protection, and many wallet developers are also constantly innovating and launching products with better privacy protection capabilities. In the future, with the development of technology, we can expect more secure and convenient Bitcoin wallets.

The future of Bitcoin is full of uncertainty, but one thing is clear: privacy protection will become one of the most concerned issues for users. Choosing a suitable wallet and taking effective privacy protection measures are not only necessary to protect one's own property, but also an important guarantee for promoting the healthy development of the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Therefore, every Bitcoin user should continue to learn and explore on this road to improve their security awareness and privacy protection capabilities.

The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

While in theory, relatively high privacy can be achieved using Bitcoin, there is still a long way to go in terms of user convenience if everyone needs to have access to this high degree of privacy. For most users who cannot master the Linux command line, they also do not have the interest or ability to run a server, and their financial situation cannot provide them with enough Bitcoin to meet the minimum needs of transactions. Therefore, the path to privacy is not simple, especially when encountering spy companies or governments with sufficient resources. Even for those users who can afford it, it is currently impossible to access many of these features without accepting security trade-offs, which themselves may ultimately undermine the privacy they are trying to protect.
If you are concerned about the dangers of your Bitcoin activity being uncovered by corporations or authoritarian governments, then choosing the right wallet application could mean the difference between life and death. The previous article in this series aimed to answer the question: "What traces do we leave when we use the Bitcoin blockchain?" In order to give readers a better understanding of Bitcoin's privacy features, this article aims to enter the practical realm and familiarize users with the application we use to interact with the protocol to send and receive Bitcoins, that is, Bitcoin wallets.
The discussion here focuses on achieving privacy from spy companies or governments. For users who don't care about surveillance and just want to use Bitcoin at first, this article may be a bit too much. The purpose of this survey is to set fairly ambitious privacy goals for different use cases and explore the practical feasibility of achieving these goals with the tools currently available in the industry. When we talk about the topic of mastering Bitcoin privacy, the first thing you have to think about is the type of use you envision.
Examples: 1. Are you planning to move some of your wealth into Bitcoin for savings or to protect your money from illegal confiscation?
2. Are you a writer who plans to receive Bitcoin donations over the Internet and store them for later exchange into local currency? 3. Do you plan to use Bitcoin to purchase other goods and services online?
4. Do you plan to use Bitcoin to purchase goods and services in person?
These situations are important because they affect the types of operations you need to perform. A user who simply wants to store bitcoins may have immediate privacy needs limited to generating new addresses and ensuring the security of received coins. At the same time, a privacy-conscious user who wants to receive regular bitcoin donations may want a mechanism to automatically generate new addresses for each donation. Furthermore, a privacy-conscious user who uses bitcoins to make online purchases may want to obfuscate the source and origin of their funds during the transmission of the transaction.
IP address. Finally, a privacy-conscious user conducting transactions in person may wish to achieve a similar feat via a mobile device.
Keep in mind that it is challenging to make cryptocurrency protocols durable, as they are constantly improving and changing, but it is even more challenging to do so for the various external applications that interface with them. Therefore, it is best to make sure you have updated information about the wallet application you plan to use. Software products require maintenance to ensure security, and well-maintained products may improve significantly over time, while others may degrade.
Open source projects often have GitHub
There are repositories where you can check release notes and development activity, but for the average person, your best bet is probably to interact with other users of the product and ask questions. One of Bitcoin’s biggest strengths is its active community of enthusiasts, who you can interact with on platforms like Reddit and Twitter — take advantage of it!
01. Find your wallet
At the time of writing, bitcoin.org has compiled a list of the newest and most sensible bitcoin wallet applications, sorted by category. Keep in mind that while bitcoin.org wants to be a collaborative and transparent effort, all websites are themselves centrally controlled and their content can be compromised at any time. Be extremely careful when installing bitcoin software and always make sure you are downloading the right software. A compromised web page may look identical to the real thing, with the only exception being the wallet you downloaded, which scammed you out of your money. Below are two methods you can use to avoid this from happening. The "Advanced" option gives you a better guarantee of security, but the "Easy" option is better than not taking any extra steps at all.
Simple: When you download the wallet application from the website,
Always make sure you are being directed to the correct domain. For example, a Google search for "bitcoin node" will show results from well-known sites like the Bitcoin Wiki, Bitcoin Talk, and GitHub, each of which links to the same website as bitcoin.org.
Advanced: The installation files for a piece of software are often called "binaries". These binaries usually need to be PGP-ed by one or more of the developers of the project.
Key signature. Examples: Bitcoin Core download instructions, (Bitcoin Light Wallet) Electrum download instructions.
02. Privacy score
There are currently four different privacy scores for each wallet on bitcoin.org: Improved, Basic, Weak, and Variable.
Here is how the bitcoin.org privacy rating scale is defined:
privacy:
Does the wallet protect the privacy of its users? To get a good score, each transaction must use a new address to avoid the wallet's address being reused, while also avoiding disclosure of information to peer or central servers and being compatible with Tor. To get a passing score, each transaction must use a new address to avoid the wallet's address being reused.
From the first article in this series, we know that while the wallet qualities described here will improve your chances of retaining privacy, they should by no means be interpreted as sufficient to protect personal privacy.
, compared to a complex adversary. For example, if you use a wallet to receive Bitcoins, and then one day decide to send your entire balance to a new wallet,
The common-input-ownership heuristic will still allow blockchain analysis tools to connect all of the addresses you’ve ever used to each other.
If we look at two wallets in the “Improved Privacy” category, Bitcoin Core and Wasabi Wallet, both ensure that the above linking does not occur.
With Bitcoin Core, you can manually send outputs one at a time in separate transactions using careful use of the cryptographic control functions.
And continue to make sure your addresses are not mixed together in any of the subsequent steps.
In Wasabi, you have access to the same functionality, but in addition, it enables you to run your cryptocurrencies through Chaumian CoinJoin mixing transactions.
The blockchain clustering techniques mentioned therein may become inapplicable or inaccurate. Essentially, one should view the "Improved Privacy" score as a rough baseline for a class of wallets, with many variables.
Here is the full list of wallets in the “Improved Privacy” category:
1\. Armory (Desktop: Linux, Mac, Windows)
2. Wasabi Wallet (Desktop: Linux, Mac, Windows)
3\. mSIGNA (Desktop: Linux, Mac, Windows)
4. Bitcoin Core (Desktop, Linux, Mac, Windows)
5. Bitcoin Knots (Desktop: Linux, Mac, Windows)
03. Security and Privacy
In an ideal world, we could focus entirely on the privacy features of wallets and leave all security aspects out of the scope of this series. In reality, however, the challenges of security and privacy are inextricably linked. Without security, we have no privacy - while most software vulnerabilities in wallets today are designed to extract private keys in order to steal people's funds, they can also be designed to extract sensitive information about users. In an increasingly data-centric world where almost every piece of user information can be monetized, the incentive for adversaries to do so is rising.
To outside observers, software security can seem like a daunting challenge. For the few who shoulder this responsibility, the reality is often not obvious. Software is rarely a standalone package, instead, many packages depend on other packages. This means that vulnerabilities and attacks do not always enter wallet applications through the code base of these specific software projects, but indirectly through their dependencies. Example:
Copay (npm package vulnerability).
The question then becomes, how should privacy-conscious users consider these challenges when deciding which wallet to use? How do we know which projects have good security practices and which ones to avoid? In the world of open source software, we can rely on a rule of thumb: the more competent and honest our review of a piece of code, the more secure it is. Here is Bruce Schneier on the topic (1999):
First, just because you release code doesn't mean people will check it for security holes. Security researchers are fickle and busy people. They don't have the time to check every piece of source code that is released. So while open source is a good thing, it doesn't guarantee security. I can name a dozen open source security libraries that no one has ever heard of and no one has ever evaluated. On the other hand, the security code in Linux has been studied by many good security engineers. Second, you need to make sure that security issues are fixed as they are discovered. People will find security holes in open source security code, and that's a good thing. When you write open source code, there is no reason to believe that it is more secure than proprietary code. The key to making it open source is that many people will find and fix security holes in the code as soon as they look for them. So a two-year-old open source code may have fewer security holes than proprietary code simply because a lot of those holes have been found and fixed in that time. Security holes are found in proprietary code as well, but at a much slower rate. Bruce Schneier on Open Source Software Security, September 15, 1999 (source)
Since these lessons are as true now as they were twenty years ago, it brings us to a dilemma: if privacy and security are inextricably linked, does that mean choosing a wallet like Wasabi —
It has more advanced privacy features but a less vetted codebase than Bitcoin Core –
What are the extraordinary privacy risks and their advantages? Tools designed specifically to subvert surveillance organizations have historically been highly valued by surveillance organizations. For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) has worked in the past to develop "honeypot" privacy tools designed specifically to attract Bitcoin users. We spoke with Bitcoin expert Peter Todd about this.
Todd reached a consensus on this matter:
Overall, I can say that Bitcoin Core has been exceptionally thoroughly audited, and therefore, it is probably more trustworthy than most, but this is just one of many factors. As an end user – and I am one! I am more concerned with what I think the development process and standards might be, and what incentives they have. Therefore, I am less concerned with things like
Things like Wasabi, because the goals of the project seem good and the privacy features overall are probably better.
But it's not an easy decision - for pure cold storage, I tend to use Bitcoin Core directly on a separate computer, minimize dependencies, and make sure my wallet is backed up.
Summary: Yes, wallets such as Wasabi present greater security vulnerabilities and privacy risks than Bitcoin Core, but ultimately the risk must be weighed against practicality. For example, running Wasabi on Tor
The wallet does not require any configuration for immediate use, whereas users wishing to use Bitcoin Core will need to manually edit configuration files and operate the Linux command line interface.
When it comes to something as important as privacy and financial sovereignty, no one would recommend that anyone choose a less secure software that theoretically works for them. However, we still need to understand exactly how complex the software is that users are willing to accept and adopt.
04. Different suggestions for different situations
We will now return to the example of Bitcoin use introduced at the beginning of this article. We will use the lessons learned from the first article in this series as a hypothetical basis for what type of tracking a spy company or government could use to capture information about our transactions.
Using this knowledge, we will construct the proposed method to avoid leaving such traces. These goals can be described as:
1\. We wish to reasonably hide our real identity and any connection between our IP address and third-party Bitcoin addresses.
2\. We want to avoid linking our addresses to each other in the eyes of third parties and blockchain analysis companies.
3\. We prefer methods that have a reasonable degree of security and where the integrity of our approach does not depend on a centralized entity.
 By utilizing tools like Tor and avoiding centralized wallet services and websites, we can make it very difficult for third parties to collect this data from us and link our IP address to our Bitcoin address. This does not include protection from adversaries who have the ability to conduct mass surveillance of the Internet.
The methodology described below is not a technical guide, but rather an assessment of the current state of privacy technology in Bitcoin.
I. Storing Private Wealth in Bitcoin
To store wealth in a Bitcoin wallet, you need to receive Bitcoins from somewhere, perhaps another Bitcoin user. In the final part of this series, we will explore platforms and methods for privately acquiring Bitcoins - a delicate task in itself - but for the purposes of this example, we will assume that a method has already been chosen. In this user example, we only need to focus on the receipt of Bitcoins, as the counterparty that transmits Bitcoins will be transferred to the Bitcoin blockchain. Your responsibility is to provide an address and ensure that your coins have arrived safely. In this discussion, we assume that security is of utmost importance and that you intend to store a meaningful amount of personal wealth.
There are many ways to do this, and choosing the right method depends on the level of security and privacy you desire. You can generate an address on bitaddress.org and wait for the transaction to be confirmed using a block explorer, but you need to trust that bitaddress.org has not been compromised (compromising your security or privacy, or both). Unless you use
Tools like Tor to anonymize IP
The source of the address, otherwise when you search for the address in a block explorer, you will still expose your IP address to that specific Bitcoin address. Then, you also need to trust that the explorer is giving you the correct information.
Ideally, if you have the ability to run a full node of Bitcoin Core on a desktop computer (instructions), this will allow you to generate an address and verify that the bitcoins have arrived safely without having to search for your address in a block explorer. Depending on the power of your computer and your bandwidth, the software may be available at
Syncing occurs within 24 hours, but may take longer. Currently, the data storage requirement is approximately 200 GB, but can be "pruned" to no more than 4
GB. We recommend that this should be done on a fresh install of Ubuntu.
In addition to this, in order to avoid the risks involved when using private keys on an online computer, we can generate addresses on a hardware device and monitor the address balance on a Bitcoin Core full node. The compatibility of the hardware device with Bitcoin Core appeared with the latest 0.18.0 version and is currently accessible through the command line interface, although the simpler method may be to use a watch address to monitor the wallet balance
(See the "importaddress" command.) In the hardware device category, Bitcoin engineer Jameson Lope made two suggestions: Trezor or Ledger Nano
S, as both devices have already received the highest level of scrutiny in their categories.
If you can't run a full node, another approach might be to use Tor
The browser looks up your address in a handful of different block explorers. Once you have confirmed that the coins have been safely received, you will need to back up your wallet so that you can later restore your bitcoins from anywhere in the world. The advantage of hardware devices is that they are usually compatible with BIP39, just remember
12 English words to restore access to your Bitcoin.
After receiving the bitcoins, you still have a potential problem: the sender still knows that you received the coins and can monitor your address on the blockchain. Ideally, we would like no one to know what happened to the coins except ourselves. One potential remedy is to perform a self-send. The idea is simple - by sending the coins to another address that you control, due to the pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin, the original sender cannot be sure whether it is you or someone else who controls the funds. In other words, you will have deniability.
When you run a full node, you download the entire blockchain, and your software does not reveal to the world which addresses you are interested in monitoring. However, transfer transactions are different. To ensure that you do not reveal your
To identify the source of your and other people's transactions, configure your Bitcoin Core node to connect through Tor.
II. Privately accept Bitcoin donations and convert them into local currency
For this discussion, we will make two important changes to the above scenario. First, we need to receive transactions continuously, so ideally we would somehow mask the total amount of transactions we receive. Second, we will periodically convert these bitcoins into local currency and send them to some entity. We will also assume that the amounts involved in the transactions are low, so we can relax some of the security goals a bit.
We analyzed three different approaches to achieve the desired goal:
1\. Use software that generates a new donation address for each visitor (example: BTCPay Server)
2\. Use BIP47 reusable payment codes to have the sender generate a new donation address on their side (e.g.: PayNym.is)
3\. Use a static donation address These methods each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
New address via BTCPay server:
While BTCPay Server is well documented, not every writer wants to run a server just to receive donations. However, if you choose this method, and you blog on a page like "Medium", then at least you don't need to change platforms. - You just attach a link to your BTCPay Server at the bottom of the post
Server web page.
One problem is that when you convert these donations to local currency, it doesn't help if you reveal that you can include all the donations in one big transaction later, so that everyone uses a new donation address (common input ownership heuristic). This way, you can choose to sell one or a few donations at a time, or mix them up.
You can configure your BTCPay server to generate addresses using a custom key derivation scheme (zpub) -
This allows you to receive donations directly into your Wasabi wallet, before selling those coins for local currency, using MixCoin. However, it currently only works for mixing at least 0.10
Bitcoin users can access coin mixing (613 at the time of writing this article)
USD). On top of that, Wasabi charges a fee for this service. A more affordable option might be JoinMarket, but it is also much more difficult to use. Traditional mixers (both custodial and non-custodial) are generally not recommended because the privacy they offer requires trusting a third party and puts your coins at risk of being stolen.
Another problem with this approach is that if you choose to cloud deploy BTCPay for convenience
The server and hosting provider will be able to learn your Bitcoin address and identity. If you choose to self-host for this reason, although the Tor
Support is being developed, but it is still difficult to ensure that you can hide your server IP address from your visitors.
BIP47
Reusable payment codes: While this may be the optimal approach in theory, the user experience is hampered by the fact that it requires an open transaction to be completed before a donation can be sent, which is currently only supported by a very small number of wallets.
BIP47
Each of the wallets are mobile wallets that leak your address to their backend servers. Samourai is developing support for using the wallet with your own full node (a solution called Dojo), but it is not yet released as open source software.
Static donation address: Even if you use Wasabi Wallet, mix the coins received in CoinJoins and send them over Tor
By transmitting your transaction, everyone who sees the address you provide will be able to tell how many coins you received to that address, regardless of what you do with them later.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
In this case, we have to consider that there may not be any perfect choice. However, the multitude of options at least gives us the opportunity to "pick our poison". Maybe your identity is already well known, but you don't want everyone to be able to identify the donations you received, then
BTCPay server is an acceptable solution.
However, if your work is controversial and unacceptable it may be subject to IP
If you don't have a known address that exposes your identity, and you can't trust the cloud provider to keep your details safe, then it's better to receive donations to a static donation address. Yes, in this case you will expose all donation transactions you receive to the public, but if no one knows who you are, maybe it's not the end of the world. You can try to limit this risk exposure by manually changing the deposit address, but this will only bring a certain level of confusion to you.
III. Private purchase of Bitcoin
Being able to conduct transactions on the internet without credit card companies or payment processors collecting our personal data is one of the reasons why Bitcoin was created. However, third-party tracking on websites is a very real thing, and even the first time a website you visit, it can learn who you are from your IP address, browser fingerprint, or cookies. The first preventative measure is to use
Use Tor Browser to make online purchases you want to keep private.
Additionally, you may want to obfuscate the source of funds for your payment. For example, if you
You then withdraw Bitcoin from your account to your wallet. Then during your trip to Thailand, you purchase a copy of "The King Never Smiles" and since you paid with Bitcoin, you thought you were buying it anonymously.
Provide the authorities with hard evidence about you, linking you to the purchase.
This leaves us with the options of mixing and self-sending, as mentioned in the previous example. Wasabi Wallet is designed to let you know what coins are being used when making transactions.
UTSO, it also allows you to see if this is a previously mixed output, which helps you achieve your privacy goals.
When you process multiple UTXOs in your wallet
One problem with the self-send option is that you have to weigh the advantage of deniability you gain against the disadvantage of merging outputs and thus losing privacy due to the common-input ownership heuristic. Also, keep in mind that while the deniability of self-sending may provide you with an "out" in an efficient legal system, as long as there is no other evidence linking you to the transaction, suspicious people may still assume you are the sender of subsequent payments and act accordingly.
In the coming years, more and more stores may start accepting Lightning payments. As mentioned in the first article, Lightning Bitcoin transactions have many advantages in terms of privacy. For desktop applications, you can use the Lightning App. It is built on the Lightning Network Daemon (lnd), which you can configure to run on Tor.
Although Lightning payments are not broadcast publicly, and Lightning payment recipients cannot tell which initial channel a payment came from in a multi-hop route, it is considered good privacy protection on the blockchain to obscure your traces on the blockchain by mixing or self-sending before funding any Lightning channels.
Another technology worth noting is sidechain technology, which allows the use of semi-trusted Bitcoin consumption channels with higher privacy than on-chain transactions (example). For example,
Liquid already supports confidential transactions, which hide the amounts paid in a transaction.
IV. Using Bitcoin to Make Private, Face-to-Face Purchases
For personal payments, regular cash remains a good personal option. But not everyone can hold their money in physical form for a number of reasons. A person in a hyperinflationary economy might want to be able to afford next month’s groceries, or a person in an abusive relationship might need to secretly hide money from a partner.
If we assume for practical reasons that we limit ourselves to smartphones in this use case, we run into a small problem. As we can see from bitcoin.org, there are currently no mobile wallet applications in the "Improving Privacy" category. This is because smartphones often rely on services provided by third parties that can know the user's
IP addresses and Bitcoin addresses.
There are a few potential ways to solve this problem, and more solutions are likely to emerge in the coming years. The best solution right now is to use a smartphone wallet app that is able to connect to your own full node. We have identified several companies that have this capability:
1. Bitcoin wallet for Android (also known as "Schildbach's wallet")
2\. BRD for iOS
3. Blockstream Green for iOS and Android
In the category of mobile wallet apps, Jameson Lope recommends Blockstream Green for iOS and Samourai for Android.
Electronic wallet. Currently, Blockstream Green
It is not listed on bitcoin.org because it does not provide users with full access to their own coins. Instead, it uses a 2-out-of-2 multi-signature solution, where Blockstream
Hold one of the keys and co-sign transactions if the user provides 2FA. A model is currently being enabled where users have full custody of their own funds.
Samourai does not currently work with your own full node (despite the "Set up a trusted node" option, which has been accused of being misleading
[1]2=3), although they argue that the information they can collect about users is limited because it is currently the only existing mobile wallet with native Tor support. Samourai is also the only mobile wallet that implements coin mixing for mixing purposes (see Whirlpool), and is currently undergoing experimental testing for advanced users. Samourai
One potential issue with mixing coins is that many users may still be using Samourai without a full node, which may inhibit the effectiveness of mixing, but may be better than not mixing at all.
It’s good to think of mobile wallets as what we did in the Lightning channels discussion above; it’s always prudent to try to obscure the origin of our coins (mixing, self-sending) before we invest in a new mobile wallet.
Android users can use Orbit to let their smartphones communicate over the Tor network. This allows applications such as Bitcoin wallets to connect to a personal full node running over Tor. For lightning wallets, Spark is an example of a wallet that can run over Tor.
05. Conclusion
Although in theory, using Bitcoin can achieve relatively high privacy, there is still a long way to go in terms of user convenience if everyone needs to have this high degree of privacy. For most users who cannot master the Linux command line, they also have no interest or ability to run a server, and their financial situation cannot provide them with enough Bitcoin to meet the minimum requirements for transactions.
The path to privacy is therefore not an easy one, especially when faced with spy companies or governments with ample resources, and even for users who can afford it, many of these features are currently inaccessible without accepting security tradeoffs that themselves may ultimately undermine the privacy they are trying to protect.
On the positive side, Bitcoin privacy is actively being developed, and several of the projects mentioned in this article have released software versions that, during the time of writing, make incremental progress in terms of what Bitcoin privacy can actually achieve. The latest Bitcoin Protocol Improvement Proposal, announced on the Bitcoin mailing list a few days ago, specifically targets Bitcoin’s fundamental privacy features.
Moreover, forgetting for a moment the lofty privacy goals of this article—for example, the fact that third parties are sometimes able to map a Bitcoin address to an IP address when a user operates a Bitcoin wallet—does not necessarily mean that someone will spend the time and money needed to pin that information to a specific individual. Bitcoin can still be seen as a significant improvement over traditional electronic payment systems, even if used in naive ways.