It puts you one mistake or bit of misplaced trust away from permanent de-anonymization. In our example, you have to avoid ever using that wallet for anything else, scrupulously fund it using mixers, and hope that your VPN provider never does something which makes it possible to link your activity to that wallet.
This is not realistic for the average person.
I mean sure -- but right now there's no such thing as "realistic money anonymity for the average person."
In roughly the same way there's no such thing as "very good cybersecurity for the average person."
> I mean sure -- but right now there's no such thing as "realistic money anonymity for the average person."
I know HN skews hard for electronic payments but cash is still heavily used. One nice trait is that its weaknesses are highly intuitive: there’s no retroactive de-anonymization or tracking across unrelated transactions, and people are familiar with how physical objects are stolen.