Anonymous Currencies Might Limit Financial Access

A recent report states that Bitcoin isn’t anonymous enough, and to an extent, the report is correct. While part of Bitcoin’s reputation has been built on the notion of privacy, the truth is that the blockchain records every transaction in real time, and nothing can escape its shuttering technology. In the long run, no matter how private Bitcoin claims to be, there always seems to be an open window to one’s financial history.

But one has to wonder if this isn’t a bad thing. Two of the cryptocurrency world’s most recent additions, Zcash and Monero, tout complete anonymity for those looking to remain duly private, but there seem to be issues emerging from the backend, and many investors and crypto-enthusiasts are having a hard time deciding where they stand.

First off, let’s look at criminal activity. Anonymity is often showered with praise, but when something is completely hidden like this, it can potentially give rise to back-door dealers looking for ways to exploit any lagging visibility. Monero, for example, is often labeled as the most popular cryptocurrency amongst drug purchasers on the dark net. Many regulators arguing against the notion of completely anonymous digital currency trading feel that the situation is likely to give rise to another Silk Road, only this time, things may be a little harder to shut down.

Zcash is another financial entity that claims to offer new waves of privacy. Again, good for some, criticized by others. Zcash recently hit new heights on cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex, hitting the $2 million per coin mark, but many argue whether this was real or caused by error or platform manipulation. If that’s the case, there’s certainly cause to worry. It was this same kind of manipulation that fired bitcoin into the $1,000 range in 2013 prior to the sudden collapse of Mt. Gox.

Lastly, the likelihood that a government or legislative system would ever be willing to regulate or fully allow the trading of anonymous currencies is particularly slim. While this may sound positive at first (cryptocurrencies were designed to offer independence), access to digital currency for third world and developing nations could wind up limited in the near future. It’s precisely because Bitcoin isn’t fully anonymous that it probably has the highest chance of ever going mainstream and reaching acceptable terms on a global scale.

As consumers, we have to ask ourselves which we’d prefer – true anonymity, or higher monetary access? The independence these currencies claim to provide is what gives us such a choice in the first place.

Jordan, Kareem and true American excellence

WASHINGTON -- With the clock running out, President Obama took one last shot.

The man who spent the morning of his historic election eight years ago playing basketball spent some time on his way out of the White House to pay homage to two of the sport's all-time greats.

Tuesday was about much more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan, of course. Obama used his last presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor 21 high-achieving Americans, from the woman whose computer programming enabled the Apollo program to land on the moon to the singers who have provided the soundtrack to our lives.

But through his selections, Obama placed two basketball players on the same level as all of them. It was the final salute to the sport from an administration that has embraced it more than any other White House occupant.

And after Obama vocalized his appreciation for each and every honoree, be it actor or architect, then draped medals around their necks -- and with the teleprompter turned off -- Obama took a turn toward the personal.

"These are folks who have helped make me who I am," Obama said.

Unlike the software of Bill Gates or even the songs of Bruce Springsteen, incorporating sports stars into American life is more optional than necessary. But if you care about basketball, Kareem and MJ were practically mandatory.

If you play the game, at some point you've probably laced up a pair of Air Jordans or dreamed of supplanting Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer. Still, it wasn't just their athletic accomplishments alone that led them to that stage in the White House East Room on Tuesday. And no, it wasn't about their forays into acting, even though Obama felt compelled to shout out Jordan's movie "Space Jam" and Abdul-Jabbar's role in "Airplane" even as they sat with such distinguished actors as Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks and Robert Redford.

These medals are about impact. True American excellence.

Will Bitcoin Have Its Moment in the Trump Era?

History tells us that no international monetary system lasts forever. And as Barry Eichengreen, the leading thinker in this arena, has repeatedly reminded us, those systems tend to collapse very quickly, whether it was the dominance of Rome's coins, the British pound's status as the common unit of international trade, or the various periods in which the world aligned around the gold standard.

The same will be true for the dollar's unofficial status as the international reserve currency. Its hegemony will at some point disappear and, when it does, the fall will be swift as the world scrambles for a new commercial anchor.

Below I will make the case that the trigger for this decline, whether it happens in the next four years or not, could well have been put in place last Tuesday. A Trump presidency could hold the right ingredients for a dollar collapse.

I will also argue that this time, when the dollar system collapses, it won't be replaced by another outdated fiat currency like the euro, yen or Chinese yuan. Neither will we go back to a precious metals standard, however much gold bugs hanker for it.

In the interim, we may anchor world trade to a transitional, multilateral combination of these paper and commodity currencies, but soon enough it will prove to be too unwieldy and out of touch with a changing global economy.

The fact is we now operate in a digital economy in which economic activity is increasingly decentralized, with transactions happening peer-to-peer and, when the Internet of Things is in place, machine-to-machine. That online, decentralized economic architecture will require a digital, decentralized system of monetary exchange that bypasses the inefficient financial intermediaries of a broken banking system.

The solution might not be bitcoin per se, but the distributed, network-run system of value transfer that it represents will, I believe, provide the template for the future model. It's one possible explanation for why the digital currency got a bump on Tuesday evening through Wednesday.

Change is coming

Why might Trump set this chain of events in play? To be sure, we don't know what changes the next president will introduce, but he has definitely stoked uncertainty around the direction of US policy. And uncertainty, the enemy of efficient markets, can often have a self-fulfilling effect.

That's an unsatisfying answer, however. So let's also break down some of the ideas that Trump has floated and how they might change the international perception of America's commitment to the dollar-based international system:

Rights determined by ethnic background

Trump suggests we should discriminate against external foreigners (Muslim visitors to the US), domestic non-citizens (undocumented Hispanic immigrants) and domestic citizens (judges deemed unfit to serve for being of Mexican descent.) This is not just a moral issue; it goes to the heart of whether the law is impartially upheld in the US.

Stolen Bitcoin? Anti-Theft Feature Gets Second Life on Sidechains

At its core, bitcoin is about giving users better control of their money.

Often called "programmable money", bitcoin has scripts that limit how future bitcoin transactions can be spent (and that control variables like who can spend them). One such script ensures the correct person is spending the bitcoin by checking if the correct signature was used before unlocking and sending the funds.  This week, Blockstream core tech developer Russell O'Connor revealed he's been testing a couple of new scripts on an Elements Alpha sidechain (which is pegged to the bitcoin testnet) that could add new functionality.

Called "covenants", the new style of scripts potentially opens up possibilities for how bitcoin users can control, or restrict, spending of their money — possibly for their protection. (This is an idea that was previously explored by researchers Malte Möser, Ittay Eyal, and Emin Gun Sirer). One use case for these scripts is to help users rein in their coins in the case of a hack (an all too common occurrence in bitcoin).

When asked what he thinks of the new covenant work, Eyal said it was potentially a boon to bitcoin users who may be worried about losing their bitcoins or otherwise having them compromised or stolen.

Extending bitcoin's scripts

The idea is notable as a script that can limit how bitcoins can be spent hasn't been implemented in bitcoin before, a fact noted by Eyal.

In particular, there are two new covenant scripts that Blockstream explored, each of which take parameters and outputs whether the script is valid, or whether or not the transaction is currently spendable based on its restrictions.

It's worth noting that bitcoin's scripting system is currently quite simple for security's sake. There aren't limitless rules in bitcoin right now because new additions can be potentially dangerous and developers note that they take time to test.

This is where sidechains may come in handy, although they are not yet pinned to the main blockchain.

Bitcoin startup Blockstream has been working on these interoperable blockchains for experimenting with new features that could potentially be added to bitcoin since June of last year, and this is an example of how these new chains can be used to test new features.

These new proposed opcodes may work as the foundations for new functionalities, ones that could even come to help stop bitcoin exchanges and users from losing stolen funds.