HN user
Since it's so trivial for authorities to fabricate evidence, using a system with a public ledger is actually preferred if you're afraid you might become a victim of evidence tampering. It's so much harder to plant unquestionable evidence in a public ledger.
Thank you for your feedback but it is my understanding that the nearest nodes will generally be the ones with the least latency
The latency you mention is actually [my latency to relay node] + [relay node latency to blockchain.info]. I have 20 ms to node A and it has 100 ms to blockchain.info for a total latency of 120 ms. I have 100 ms to node B and it has 10 ms to blockchain.info for a total latency of 110 ms. Node B will most likely relay my transaction to blockchain.info before node A, even if it's five times “farther” from me (100 ms) than node A (20 ms). The combination of latencies makes the relaying IP reported by blockchain.info semi-random.
I don't mean to bring you down or criticize. This is a really cool visualization! It simply visualizes different thing that most people think it does.
This is a P2P network. “Nearest” relay has nothing to do with geographic neighborhood.
I made IP whois stats of nodes I am currently connected to and they are: 8x USA (3x NY, 2x Texas, 1x California, 1x Virginia, 1x Georgia), 2x France, 2x China, 2x Russia, 2x Poland, 2x Switzerland, 1x Czech Republic, 1x Germany, 1x Portugal, 1x Sweden, 1x New Zealand, 1x Netherlands.
My transaction will be relayed to these nodes and then one of them will be first to relay it further to blockchain.info - and it's the IP of this lucky relay node what you'll show. Which one will be the first depends most likely on [temporary speed of connection between me and relay nodes + processing speed of relay nodes + temporary speed of connection between relay nodes and blockchain.info nodes] and such combination will make it semi-random. You will detect my transaction as being located in NYC or in Beijing or in Paris or wherever, but it has totally nothing to do with my actual location and calling it approximation is a misunderstanding.
Or I'll use online wallet in which case it will be even less related to my geographic location (it will be semi-random based of nodes connected to my online wallet's server).
What you show is a nice visualization, but it's rather a map of the best-connected nodes and it has nothing to do with geographic location of senders of bitcoin transactions.
There's no way to geolocate bitcoin transactions. Blockchain itself doesn't store IP addressees. Well-connected nodes like blockchain.info can only detect the IP address of a node that was first to relay a transaction to their (blockchain.info's) node. That might be IP of the original sender, but most likely it's not. Most of the time it's either another well-connected node or some online wallet.
Explaination: http://millybitcoin.com/is-ip-address-associated-with-transa...