Oddbean new post about | logout
 Thought so too for a long time.  I think i was delusional.

BTC without privacy onchain is the most retarded idea we ever had.

Would you store your value on a public transparent ledger with no privacy if the government would mandate it?  Hell no.

But somehow people think this fundamental flaw of BTC is a advantage. 

People just hodl and do not use BTC. As soon as they start using it, they see that it is a crappy medium of exchange.  
 Think about today VS 1000 years from now. Open forced honesty is superior over the long term and levels the playing field. The more value is held in an address the more eyes are on it, the less value is in an address the less eyes are on it. Balance is attractive to eyes, the bigger the balance the more eyes. On the other hand the more individuals who participate in small balance self custody, the better hidden in the noise we each become. This is good for society. 

The greatest natural defense we see in nature is being a part of a truly large group so any individual is unlikely to be targeted, this has been taken advantage of by humans who just catch every animal at once (such as in a school of fish). But when we combine the numbers of billions of individuals, with the inability to just capture all of them through how difficult it is to actually get access to their Bitcoin even with home invasions and court orders, we benefit from the natural security by numbers.

On the other hand, unchecked spending of massive amounts of money is bad for society. With open Blockchain everyone will be very aware of how big wallets move funds to different organizations and people. The entire world ends up auditing the whales in real time.

In the current climate where governments have unlimited resources through the theft of value via monetary debasement, sure, the lack of easy privacy is a downside for individuals. But long term it isn't a concern IMO. (My opinion may change, but this is what my view on this currently is) 
 Nobody is anonymous in the crowd when you can pick non conforming individuals out by analyzing all their transactions.

Nobody wants to expose all their financial transactions to the whole world.  People will choose the alternative which gives them privacy if the open ledger has been abused enough.