This marks the initial installment in a 10-part video series centered on Bitcoin confidentiality, recorded at bitcoin++ Privacy Edition in Riga and other locations. Each segment will address a facet of Bitcoin privacy, a tool for utilizing Bitcoin discreetly, or methods of surveillance.
Confidentiality is heads, while censorship resistance is tails. Both represent different aspects of the same currency.
All collective human activities are inherently interactive. When these engagements cannot occur confidentially, becoming widely recognized public information, the involved individuals may experience outside pressures. They could face ostracism, humiliation, incarceration, or various penalties.
In the absence of privacy, there is no censorship resistance. Without privacy, the majority will self-censor.
In this inaugural episode, I converse with Yuval Kogman from Spiral to explore privacy in today’s digital landscape. Bitcoin serves as digital currency, which, like everything else in our lives influenced by computing advancements and the internet, leaves traces all over due to its very essence.
These traceable paths, coupled with the computing technologies that generated them, have profoundly transformed the sphere in which individuals relate to one another, especially where a certain imbalance of power is present (i.e. the rulers versus the ruled).
Those capable of detecting and scrutinizing these traces can leverage technology to impose disproportionate dominance over others.
Click the image below to view the discussion:
