Bitcoin Privacy with Matt Odell - WBD518

Matt Odell is host of the Citadel Dispatch and venture partner at
Ten31. In this interview, we discuss why each additional positive
act of privacy protection improves Bitcoin's resilience and
value. Perfecting privacy is not the goal; making a start is, as
we don’t know what the future holds.


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Our privacy is continuously being eroded. Current best estimates
are that 2.5 million terabytes of data are produced every day. A
material amount of that information has extremely lax privacy
protection: 98% of Internet of Things data is unencrypted; 83% of
companies encrypt less than half the data they store on the
cloud; 25% of websites are visited without encryption.


Vast amounts of the data we freely shed are stored, analysed and
triangulated for commercial reasons. These tactics are so
sophisticated that it’s not uncommon for people to think
companies are listening to their conversations.


We are being squeezed for our data in almost all aspects of our
lives while cash, traditionally the only semi-private way of
transacting, is being removed from society, and CBDCs inch closer
to reality. Imagine if companies or governments could access and
track your income, store of wealth and all those with whom you
transacted. What is currently unnerving behaviour by those who
track our data could rapidly become something much more maligned
and coercive.


Bitcoin is freedom money. But using bitcoin privately isn’t an
easy task. The vast majority of Bitcoin is bought using exchanges
that have stringent KYC/AML requirements. When you pair these
onramps with surveillance firms like Chainalysis, using bitcoin
goes from being pseudonymous to almost entirely transparent. But
there are things you can do to gain good privacy with bitcoin.
Tools like coinjoin and non-KYC exchanges like Bisq are getting
better all of the time, and more and more people are using the
Lightning Network for cash like transactions, which offers
improved privacy.


Perfect privacy, whether with bitcoin or not, is a pipedream. The
goal is to continually improve in protecting a fundamental human
right, privacy.