Bitcoin and Crypto Privacy
Its has a been a strange end to 2019 and a decade of Bitcoin. John McAfee the man who told the world he would “eat his dick” if Bitcoin did not hit one million dollars in 2020 now appears to be not only keeping his penis but also cock blockchaining Bitcoin. He took to twitter today to announce to his one million followers that Bitcoin is an ancient technology. I asked him what blockchain he liked best and Monero was the answer. Of course it was all a bit of fun with the whole dick eating statement as he says ” was designed to bring new people into the space”. In developed nations the way that happens is clearly to tell people Bitcoin will increase in price and I think McAfee on-boarded many people to Bitcoin. I do find it a bit odd that Mc Afee and others seem to be turning their backs on Bitcoin now, often with Monero being stated as the new favorite. Monero was up 10% at one point today, was this McAfee’s clout on Crypto Twitter?
Is Monero the new Bitcoin?
Jeff Berwick, known as the Dollar Vigilante, is someone that I followed in 2017. His content was very entertaining and I learnt a few things about Bitcoin from him . Jeff and his team recently flipped on Bitcoin and endorsed Monero. Their rational is that Monero is actually what people thought they were getting with Bitcoin. here is a link to that video which I do recommend watching. Privacy is a human right and privacy coins and initiatives to offer privacy options with Bitcoin will be things to watch in 2020.
I interviewed the lead dev from a privacy coin called Masari last month and was surprised by much of what he had to say. Many people misunderstand much of the work on privacy coins. The perception is that these are coins designed to enable crime. In reality much of the work has been around making the tech compliant for traditional finance. Bitcoin for example would not be usable as a blockchain by much of the traditional financial world as transactions are visible. Bitcoin is like having a bank account where everyone can see all the transactions. Things like coin join will help make Bitcoin usage more private.
It is estimated that 5% of Bitcoins use is for criminal activity. The perception of Bitcoin as a dark web tool I think is over. Monero and Bitcoin are two different things in my opinion and it will be interesting to see the development on both of these projects in 2020. There will be projects within Crypto that have no intention of being within the law but they face huge challenges.
I spoke with Craig Wright from Bitcoin SV on the topic of Bitcoin and its use cases and have also learnt much from following his content. Love him or hate him he is an extremely knowledge person with many seeing him as the most knowledgeable on Bitcoin. I like his position that Bitcoin SV will eliminate what he calls fraud cycles and will keep governments honest and accountable.
Bitcoin BTC has solid use cases and its unconfiscatable nature is appealing to me. Is it an ancient technology as McAfee has suggested? Let see what the Bitcoin core team pull off with layer two technologies this year and what the Bitcoin SV team achieve, especially with the next hardfork in February. Where the Bitcoin cash community is taking it project is also of great interest to me, especially around the privacy and anonymity spectrum. I’ve reached out to Roger Ver today and we hope to host him on a video shortly.
The privacy and anonymity aspects of Bitcoin and Blockchains will be defining aspects as we start a new decade. I do not doubt that the adoption of Blockchain tech will be invasive on peoples privacy in countries like China. How it develops in general is going to be fascinating to follow.
