Is it possible to protect your privacy in the public world? Even cryptocurrency isn’t 100% anonymous. However, it can help in some cases. Here is simple example.

On my birthday, I received gifts from two banks were I have accounts — monthly subscriptions to an online cinema. They were for the same online cinema where I’ve paid for various films with different cards. So the banks thought that it would be a nice present.

On the one hand — yes, it is. But at the other — What??? The bank knows what would be a nice present for me? It knows my tastes?

Sure, it knows. When you use a card instead of cash, you give your bank useful information about yourself.

By the way, the present was insidious. To watch films, you need to connect your card to the online cinema. If you don’t disconnect the card after the activation of a promocode, then at the end of the month the cinema automatically charges for the next month. A nice trick, isn’t it?

- Bitcoin is new gold, — they said. Nope. The real gold is information. Confidential information. All companies want your money. Where is the line between following clients’ tastes and manipulating clients’ tastes? The banks’ information together with Facebook data and AI algorithms can create an illusion of choice. But is it actually your choice or were you led precisely to this choice by using a specific ad?

Maybe, in the future, cryptocurrency will have the same problem. But for now, only the buyer and the seller know what was purchased.

- Oh, it’s too complicated, you might say, and all bank data is depersonalized anyway.

Just remember two stories: about mr Snowden — about private information, and about the Petia virus — about the cybersecurity of data holders.

While offline, you can choose to use cash and not give information about payments to third parties, or to use a card and to receive gifts from banks. But while online, you have no choice, until cryptocurrency payments for goods and services are accepted everywhere. After all, cryptocurrency is not digital gold. It’s digital cash.