Cryptocurrency in the Age of Mass Surveillance

People will go to great lengths to protect their privacy -- especially when they’re exercising their First Amendment rights. During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, protesters waited in long lines at subway stations to use cash to buy their tickets -- they didn’t want to use their metro cards because it would place them at the protests. This really underscores that a cashless society is a surveillance society. We need the privacy and anonymity affordances of cryptocurrencies to buy, sell, and trade freely in the digital economy. When we de-list cryptocurrencies or otherwise subject them to undue regulatory control and pressure, we aren’t primarily helping to take financial tools out of the hands of criminal actors. Instead, we’re depriving all internet users of the best means to protect their anonymity and privacy when making transactions online. Think about crypto transitions like you would think about a cash transaction. No one, and especially no government, has a right to know everything that you buy or every monetary gift that you give. And every individual deserves the freedom to remain anonymous when they want to be. Anonymity doesn’t have any intrinsic connection to criminality; it’s rather a matter of having the freedom to transact discreetly, privately, and freely.