The debate around anonymity, privacy & accountability within cryptocurrency has been a heavily discussed topic ever since Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin White Paper on 31st October 2008.

The term “Cryptocurrency” gave many the impression that Bitcoin was perhaps meant to be an anonymous way of transacting between one another and that identities would remain anonymous & hidden behind cryptographic security.

This mindset was further enhanced by the author's decision to publish the Bitcoin White Paper under a pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”. However, what many failed to realise is that in order for a currency to have any credibility & fundamental value it cannot have a centralised starting point.

Being digital this leaves the creation of cryptocurrency with a paradox: How can a cryptocurrency have any credibility or fundamental value when it’s the very starting point that means it shouldn't have one? This is the paradox that Satoshi Nakamoto solved by releasing the Bitcoin White Paper in the English language to the western world & yet giving himself a Japanese pseudonym. The pseudonym was fundamental to the decentralisation of the starting point to Bitcoin. This has allowed the network to grow over a period of 10 years without any central point of control or authority & it’s this that gives Bitcoin its fundamental value over all other currencies.

To understand the paradox of the centralised starting point you can read my Medium Article linked here — https://medium.com/@sirtoshitv/bitcoin-the-paradox-of-the-centralised-starting-point-c359d164cbdb

The use of the pseudonym was not so that it’s creator could remain anonymous, indeed many people knew his identity including the Australian Tax Office where he filed his tax return in relation to Bitcoin in 2009.

Anonymity leads towards centralisation of power because of those who create or add the anonymity have the power to do so without others knowing. This will always lead to corruption because it means that no one can be held accountable for actions that are either unreasonable or not fair. Indeed it’s the accountability that keeps everybody safe. If everyone is accountable to someone there is nothing that anyone can do that no one else would know about. It’s this that keeps society fair & civil.

It’s the chain of signatures within Bitcoin that hold all the miners on the Bitcoin network to account & keep them “honest” because the signatures validate one another. This is why when Blockstream segregated the signatures and broke the Bitcoin chain by introducing Segregated Witness known as “Seg-wit”, it fundamentally changed how the network validated itself. Effectively it meant it couldn’t. From that point on BTC was no longer Bitcoin.

Privacy & anonymity are often confused intentionally to sway the extremist libertarian narrative. The narrative is confused by calling anonymous coins “privacy” coins when in fact the difference between their implications are huge. Anonymity breeds corruption & encourages illegal activity such as drug & arms dealing, human trafficking, the selling of child abuse images & human organs on the black market, animal smuggling and a whole host of abhorrent, morally reprehensible, unethical activities that criminals like to engage in.

However, privacy encourages good practice because it enables two parties within a trade to mutually benefit one another without a 3rd party potentially manipulating the situation to their own advantage.

Therefore it can be said that: Privacy provides good practice whereas anonymity does not. It is upon on the foundations of privacy & not anonymity that Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” created by Satoshi Nakamoto now has a protocol named Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, known as Bitcoinˢᵛ with a ticker symbol (BSV).

To understand why the Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin protocol is known as Bitcoinˢᵛ & has the ticker symbol BSV read my Medium article titled: “Bitcoin: A Tail of Blockchain BTC/BCH/BSV” linked here — https://medium.com/@sirtoshitv/bitcoin-a-tail-of-blockchains-x3-eebb136457c7

Satoshi Nakamoto had a vision. That vision was Bitcoin. Bitcoin is Satoshi’s Vision. Bitcoin is BSV.

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