Traceability of bitcoins & transaction fees

[cryptorakibul]

Hi all,

New user here, just set up the bitcoin software yesterday. I've been very excited about decentralised cash for some time.

Aside from some architectural issues (the GUI needs to be seperate, needs an exposed API for starting transactions for automatic webshops, make the protocol run on arbitrary ports and look like SSL to prevent filtering, etc), the solution looks good. Needs a bit more technical documentation to satisfy people's concerns though.

I have a question though regarding the traceability of the coins. Can each coin be traced back through all intermediaries? I.e., if I generate a coin now, it then passes through 100 people, can the the coin then be traced through the past 99 transactions and back to me? It seems to me that that is the way it works, but I just want to be sure. It seems that if I create many bitcoin addresses, I always see the same balance for them - if I have money on one account and wish to send to someone from a different account, will the bitcoin software then automatically pay the money from my account #1 to my account #2 and then to the recipient? This creates an easy way to leak identities that should maybe be handled differently.


I also have seen some references to transaction fees in some cases, but haven't found a clear explanation for where they apply? What specific situations will warrant a transaction fee, which mechanism decides if one should be applied and how is it ensured? What formula can we use to calculate these fees?


For the future of online money transaction! Smiley