I think this is approaching the anonymity aspect of Bitcoin a little bit differently from what we see everywhere else. A lot of the praise of Bitcoin is the anonymity. Why is this? Yes it's true that Bitcoin can be used anonymously and not have any identity or name associated with the Bitcoin address however all transactions are readily available to be seen by everyone using Bitcoin because of the public ledger technology the Blockchain.
Let's be honest anonymity at a first glance seems to be a great option for people who would like to send and receive money online. Although I think this is one of the downfalls of Bitcoin. It's this very same anonymity which is usually praised by the mass is what causes a lot of problems with Bitcoin and businesses trading in Bitcoin.
If you ask someone about Bitcoin and what they have heard about it then they will surely bring up one hack or one instance of an anonymous businesses owner upping ship and leaving with all of it's customers money. This isn't usually possible with businesses using fiat because of how traceable credit cards and the like are in the modern world. (unless they are stolen which is an entirely different matter)
If you think of the way that you shop online with your USD/GBP etc then you almost certainly use either a credit card, debit card or Paypal. All of which have to have a Name, address and identity tied to it with Bitcoin this is different the only ties that a Bitcoin address has is the ones that it creates by sending and storing Bitcoin.
This opens up a gateway for malicious intent. As we all know Bitcoin has suffered from exactly this over the years. Businesses starting to trade in Bitcoin that are not normally tied to an identity and aren't registered and just leave with the customers money eventually without a trace. Quite a few exchanges and cloud mining services have done this recently. You would think that this would be easily traceable by watching the addresses which have the runaway Bitcoin in them and waiting until they use either a known address or an exchange address especially the latter as you could potentially ask the exchange to release information of the seller to the public (probably requiring a subpoena) but in most cases these people will mix their coins and making it almost impossible to find out who actually owns the addresses.
This will continue to be a problem as long as anonymity exists in the Bitcoin network. Let me also say that I'm not interested in removing the anonymity as I'm a big fan of privacy and how Bitcoin works. But possibly there's a few solutions that could prevent this event in the future.
I'm not a big fan of Bill Gates but he recently said this:
The main feature of crypto currencies is their anonymity. I don't think this is a good thing. The [government’s] ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing. Right now crypto currencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way. I think the speculative wave around ICOs and crypto currencies is super risky for those who go long.
I'm not a fan of what he's implying here. But he probably has some point hidden within this statement. Let's not get into the debate that cash can also be used for much of the above. What I think he does have a point in is that some anonymity is likely bad and perhaps some aspects should not be anonymous while keeping some anonymous. I'm not really concerned too much about what he said about tax evasion etc as that's rife in fiat currencies too but more concerned about the people who use Bitcoin to trade. They probably haven't got the same protection that someone using another currency might have and these owners of companies that just up and leave are a big issue with the security and practicality of using Bitcoin on a daily basis.