"Open" is a heavily overloaded term. One of the main premises of Bitcoin is tamperproofness and permissionless participation.
That in itself does not equate to lack of anonymity. Just have a look at Zcash[0] or Monero[1].
In general, the idea that openness and anonymity are in conflict with each other has not been true for at least 40 years. There's entire field of mathematics dedicated to solving this problem known as secure multi-party computation.
I haven't dunked on bitcoin once. nor have i ever mentioned "permissionless"
Bitcoin is an open ledger. It was never designed for hiding transactions. I'm also not saying thats a bad thing. it just is what it is, and yes I hold some btc (albeit not much, just enough to experience it mostly)
and in practice maintaining that theoretical anonymity is hard. if you use a distinct amount in a transaction, it'll be visible. if there's a low volume your transaction can be correlated with a high probability, etc.
I put it back to the inherent conflict of interest in such a weak fiat currency: the people who hold it must convince you to buy in to see any value from otherwise valueless tokens. Over the years you could watch the Bitcoin sales crew trying tons of marketing pitches trying to find which sold the best – accuracy didn’t matter as long as prospective buyers found it appealing.
it was the early use the in the DNMs. After all why would they be using it if if could be traced? Of course there was ignorance at some of the opsec and other methods those sellers were using.
The WHOLE PREMISE of it was that it is an OPEN LEDGER...!
I'm not sure how this persistent myth of it being a way to secretly make payments got around and stuck so well... maybe the "crypto" in the name?