transactions are public but if no one knows that a public key is yours it's difficult to trace. and like you said, there's tools to anonymize your bitcoin transactions completely

As soon as you buy/sell something, someone will know your public key.

The laundry scheme isn't tied to Bitcoin, that's why I think it's wrong to say that one of Bitcoins advantages is anonimity.

>As soon as you buy/sell something, someone will know your public key.

So make a new key, and tumble the Bitcoins until you feel safe again.

Since all transactions are public, he can easily follow the tracks to your new public key.

Tumbling is supposed to make tracking non-trivial. Anyways you can always convent to another coin, especially one with more anonymity, and then back to Bitcoin.

EDIT https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14918545 This just started getting popular if you want to talk more about tumbling.