I am also an engineer ;) How is it not anonymous? Easy: at the end of the day, the amount and spend history of every address is in cleartext on the blockchain.
Also, check the link I provided. Note that LEA regularly "unmixes" bitcoin, via chain analysis. So no matter how how you mix, the end-result UTXO data goes back on the chain. PUBLIC.
The link you posted is a court case. I'd love to reach some technical data on how 'unmixing' happens. Chain analysis, mixing, coinjoin, and utxo consolidation are all different things.
'Mixing' algorithms are typically not disclosed and do fail in chain analysis. CoinShuffle and UTXO conslidation are not 'mixing', and thus not vulnerable to chain analysis.
My Libertarian Tinfoil Hat theory is that the "demixed" thing is parallel construction. Easier for NSA to trace the participants' network traffic. The chain just narrows search.
If I generate a new public address, & consolidate all my coins to it, there's no way to be sure If I sent it to myself, or another party.
So which of the 5 UTXOs went to which person? You don't know that unless it gets moved back to a known address later.
> gets moved back to a known address
"spent", in the Common Tongue
This might be your logical mistake: there is no 'known address'. CashShuffle is based on HD wallets that generate billions of addresses. No reused addresses. No circles in the graph.
Spent is from the transmitter's perspective. Coins aren't destroyed, they are just moved around.
If I send all my coins to an unused address of mine, there's no way to tell if that is me or another person. If later I send them back to the address that was known to be me...
Then you know I have them, but you still don't know if I sent them back there, or some other party did.
You are thinking that, since it's easy to list all the possible chess moves in the next move, that you can tell for sure how the board got in its current state after 100 moves.
