There seems to be this impression that crypto transactions are all anonymous and so nobody can know my business, not nosy people and not the ‘government’ tax people. But, all transactions are recorded in a blockchain (a spreadsheet, really) that is located on servers around the world and which are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. For example, Blockscan.com and Solscan.com allow access and there are many more.
A ‘public’ address is all that’s required to find all the transactions for that wallet address. The ownership of that address may not be obvious, but with some digging it is just a matter of time until a specific person can be associated with that wallet address. There a some attempts at coin-mixing approaches to try to make it less possible to associate transactions with a specific person, but increasingly sophisticated methods will get through this.
Lots of Central Exchanges (eg. Coinbase.com and Crypto.com) around the world require some identification to set up accounts (aka Know Your Customer – KYC protocols) and government regulations require them in certain countries. I think that it is smart to assume that I will be associated with my wallet addresses and transactions and, so, I will not be anonymous to government regulation and taxation as it evolves.
Some of the big issues for regulation relate to money laundering and tax fraud, and I think we can expect to see more regulation around these issues in the future, with even less chance of anonymity being the result.
Thanks, Jim.
(Note: Sorry, but this isn’t to be construed as advice or recommendations, just my experiences)