Glossary

Taint

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Taint is the concept that certain bitcoin are riskier or less acceptable because of their previous owners or possible links to criminal activity. This concept is used and advanced by chain analysis companies.

The concept of taint has harmful effects for Bitcoin, which is supposed to be fungible, meaning that every bitcoin is worth the same as every other bitcoin. Taint is based on chain analysis heuristics, and is not guaranteed to be accurate.

Related Terms
Chain Analysis
Chain analysis uses heuristics to analyse the blockchain and trace ownership of bitcoin across transactions. Chain analysis is performed by companies who contract with governments and regulated institutions to provide insight into how individuals send and receive bitcoin.
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Fungibility
Fungibility is a property of goods which are interchangeable and indistinguishable. If a good is fungible, no instance of the good is preferable over any other.
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CoinJoin
CoinJoin transactions provide increased privacy for users by breaking the heuristics used by chain analysis companies. A CoinJoin transaction combines inputs from several users and returns to each user the exact same amount, making it difficult to track users and their coins.
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