Title: Obfuscation in Bitcoin: Techniques and Politics,
Abstract: In the cryptographic currency Bitcoin, all transactions are recorded in the
blockchain - a public, global, and immutable ledger. Because transactions are
public, Bitcoin and its users employ obfuscation to maintain a degree of
financial privacy. Critically, and in contrast to typical uses of obfuscation,
in Bitcoin obfuscation is not aimed against the system designer but is instead
enabled by design. We map sixteen proposed privacy-preserving techniques for
Bitcoin on an obfuscation-vs.-cryptography axis, and find that those that are
used in practice tend toward obfuscation. We argue that this has led to a
balance between privacy and regulatory acceptance.