The Need for Currency Privacy. An Hard Truth About Bitcoin and Its Siblings

History , (financial) scams and criminal trials teach us a lesson: public institutions, companies and private citizen need cash to enter into “private” transactions.

Be the unofficial payment of a political ransom, the black fund to hide management wrongdoing or an attempt at run from the tax authorities, the assumption remains the same: currency privacy is an asset.

Cash ? as well as “institutional” electronic money aren’t good enough because use it in an anonymous way is fairly hard and costly.

Cryptocurrencies’ function as a quid-pro-quo has been made possible by the end of the Bretton-Woods Agreements, thus turning the value of a currency from a (more or less) objective parameter (the gold reserve of each country) mainly into a psychological trick: a currency worth something because we are available in accepting it as such.

So, why Bitcoins shouldn’t be held as a “good” to be exchanged with other goods? And who cares if, technically and legally speaking, Bitcoin is a currency, a check or a money order?

What matters is the economical function that Bitcoin is able to perform: provide everybody (not only the “big fishes”) with a certain amount of currency privacy.

Whether this is good or bad is not relevant: Bitcoin and its sibling are here to stay

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