Since its inception there has been a fair amount of misunderstanding regarding the privacy Bitcoin users enjoy when buying and selling bitcoins. While the name of the user is not revealed, the public alphanumeric address of the user is transparent on the Bitcoin blockchain and available to everyone forever. With sufficient detective work and digging, that public address can be tied to a person's name. Bitcoin users are therefore technically "pseudonymous" and not anonymous because their address is an alias. See
Bitcoin address.