GETTY Bitcoin was made by US intelligence services to fund international spying operations, it is claimed

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The shocking claim from a cybersecurity expert was made public after slides from her presentation in Russia were photographed and shared on social media. One of Natalya Kaspersky’s slides said: "Bitcoin is a project of American intelligence agencies, which was designed to provide quick funding for US, British and Canadian intelligence activities in different countries. “The technology is 'privatised,' just like the Internet, GPS and TOR. In fact, it is dollar 2.0. Its rate is controlled by the owners of exchanges.”

The slides were photographed during Ms Kaspersky’s talk at ITMP University in St Petersburg. In the talk she also claimed that Satoshi Nakamoto, who is credited with creating the currency, was in fact the codename for a collective of US cryptographers. During the presentation she also shared her theory that your smartphone is not a personal device and is instead used to spy on its owner. The theory comes after it was claimed that the recent cryptocurrney crash was good for bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a project of American intelligence agencies Cybersecurity Natalya Kaspersky

Bitcoin is not going away but it is facing major competition from other cryptocurrencies like Ripple and Monero, Spencer Bogart from Blockchain Capital said. Speaking to CNBC, he said: “I think now in 2018 we have a lot of people that recognise that bitcoin is not going away. “But we have to go back and if we rewind to 2014 when bitcoin came off its highs of $1000 and started declining back to 300, we had the bust of the Silk Road and Mt. Gox.

Cryptocurrency price: A year in charts Mon, March 12, 2018 Compare crypto currencies (Ripple, Bitcoin, Ethereum, LiteCoin) on value, market cap and supply for the past year Play slideshow coindesk.com 1 of 10 LiteCoin is going down with the market dip

“People felt like this was the end of bitcoin. That was the sentiment even for a lot of hardcore believers.” “I would say today when I talk to a lot of people out in the marketplace, everyone recognises that bitcoin is not going away. “So there’s a legion of people out there, an increasingly growing segment of people, that see this as a great buying opportunity and I definitely think that’s the case with bitcoin.”

TWITTER The theory was revealed after slides from a talk in Russia were leaked

Bogart said that though Ripple in competition for bitcoin, it is other coins like Zcash and Monero that are the real risk to bitcoin. He said: “I think the Zcash’s and the Monero’s of the world have a real place in this. “We’re getting a little bit deep in the tech here but privacy is the other side of the coin to fungibility so when I use my $20 bill at the local grocery store, they don’t differentiate one $20 bill from another $20 bill right?

GETTY It was also claimed that smartphones are used to spy on their owners