DIGITAL CURRENCIES, ANONYMITY IN THE BITCOIN SYSTEM

The area of Digital Currencies has achieved an enormous increase since the emerge of Bitcoin in 2009. Bitcoin is considered to be the most successful cryptographic digital currency in history. It is the best example which introduces the idea of Digital Currencies not just as a theoretical concept, but, in addition, it promotes Digital Currency in a practice. Bitcoin is said to be an example which does not work in theory but works in practice [1]. This detail has attracted science community to further research Bitcoin system, and, therefore, Bitcoin is found to be subject of research for many scientists nowadays. In this paper we conduct a brief analysis in the Bitcoin overall system. Furthermore, we focus more on the anonymity that Bitcoin system offers to the user in terms of user traceability. At this part we present current approaches from related work papers towards user de-anonymization in Bitcoin, and we try to give suggestions how one can lower the performance of these approaches. Finally, we throw a spotlight in money mixing tools which increases anonymity in the Bitcoin system.