Tor Integration

Not so much a new way of making Bitcoin payments, but the IP address used to buy, sell and transfer Bitcoins can be used to identify the Bitcoin owner, so obfuscating this is vital.

Tor logo

Connecting to Tor or a VPN service before making any Bitcoin transactions achieves this (and if buying VPN anonymously, it is a good idea to do so through Tor), but there is a concerted move among developers to try to enforce this by integrating Tor into Bitcoin apps and wallets. This means that Bitcoin users automatically benefit from the triple layer of encryption and obfuscation that Tor provides.

Blockchain.info’s wallet, Multibit, Hive, and Android Wallet and more now include Tor integration, and Dark Wallet plans to add it in the near future. In addition to this, Tor integration is being built into the public version of bitcoinj, the software behind some of the most popular Bitcoin apps and wallets, so this trend is likely to accelerate.