today we're gonna be telling you something that people believe about
Bitcoin that's absolutely not true this is the biggest myth that people believe
about Bitcoin. stay tuned
welcome to Bitboy crypto your one-stop-shop for Bitcoin and crypto
news we got all kinds of contest details going up above me here in a few seconds
make sure you guys check all that stuff out so here's the thing guys today we
are gonna be looking at what is the biggest myth about Bitcoin and it's
pretty simple guys I recently did an interview with eight different people
where I went to our local MLB team the Atlanta Braves Central Park
interviewed people and asked them whether they would rather take cash
Bitcoin or gift cards it was five dollars in cash ten dollar gift card or
fifteen dollars in Bitcoin I'll put the link to that video above so you can
check it out it's a really cool video but something else came out of that
video that I realized is that yes that was a fun little social experiment and
we're gonna be doing a lot more of those on the channel so I hope you guys
enjoyed that content seem to be well-received however I really saw that
people believe something about Bitcoin is not true almost every single one of
the people that we interviewed either on camera or off camera they said the same
thing what is Bitcoin what is cryptocurrency and they all said it is a
digital currency which it is it is a digital currency but they almost always
said the next thing they said and it's untraceable there's this idea that
bitcoin is not traceable however that's a myth and some of you guys may have
heard this maybe you've heard bitcoin is traceable but you don't really know what
that means and maybe others of you thought that your transactions were
completely private and safe and I'm gonna explain to you why they are not
and how we've seen that occur across the world in different ways and then what
could possibly be done about it so here we go guys is Bitcoin traceable
so one of the most commonly held beliefs is that people believe bitcoin is
traceable so at one time it was it was untraceable because there was not enough
personal information known about people that owned Bitcoin if there were
exchanges they did not do kyc wallets had really nothing attached to them
however that has really changed dramatically now in the early days of
course you probably have heard about ross ulbrich and Silk Road it was a
website on the dark web where you could buy and sell illicit things illicit
substances weapons all kinds of stuff activities services yada yada yada
and of course Ross ultimately went to prison is serving longer sentence than
El Chapo which is really crazy but it is true and you know that was a lot of the
Bitcoin transactions during that time I'm quick to tell people I got into
Bitcoin in 2012 however I did not come through Silk Road like a lot of people
during that time did I did through another purchase of some software so you
know the thing is is at that time 44% of Bitcoin transactions have been estimated
to have been for illicit activities so yes in the early days of Bitcoin that
was a thriving business model for Bitcoin however over the last couple of
years that number has dropped to as low as 1% some people say the answer is why
well because Bitcoin is traceable that's exactly why this cash is safer to use
it's much more you know safe for those kinds of transactions because cash
really is untraceable in a lot of ways but bitcoin is now what has happened a
Bitcoin that's made it traceable well absolutely nothing there's nothing
that's actually happened to the Bitcoin code there have been some things that
have happened to the code but nothing that is made Bitcoin more traceable or
less private now in the future something that could be done about this if we did
want to you know make Bitcoin traceable or untraceable again would be to add a
new kind of protocol a privacy protocol that can make transactions private I'm
gonna explain to you in a little bit why I don't think that will happen but right
now that's not the case there are even
companies like channel says in cipher Trace that specialize in finding these
you know bad actors in the world they're using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
addresses for negative things so there's actually companies out there actively
trying to track hackers addresses drug smugglers addresses you know human
trafficker addresses all of those things so it's not a very you know fruitful
system for people like that to take advantage of anymore
so why is this what has happened we've got these companies that doesn't ask a
question or answer the question how has this happened well kyc regulations have
changed everything so is adoption rises the scrutiny rises
the regulations that are expected rise and that has led to know your customer
procedures known as kyc in which customers had to fill out forms show
documents hold up passports and pictures of their
face and things like that that's me with my face I don't know why did that that
made no sense however it is true people have to do that they have to send that
stuff in to a lot of these companies so right now there are possibly or they're
estimated be 27 million Bitcoin addresses that actually hold Bitcoin now
out of that 27 million several million of those are at coin base and coinbase
knows or coin base requires know your customer procedures kyc so we know
there's several million addresses right there that already have names associated
with them the government is coming to these exchanges and asking for the
information because the government knows this is like a big brain teaser if they
can just kind of solve what this address is and who this address belongs to over
time they can eventually figure out I'm not gonna say the majority of the
Bitcoin addresses but a huge amount of them and if they target an address and
want to know exactly who this is they will probably be able to figure it out
by tracking back the incoming transact transactions and those addresses and the
outgoing transactions in those addresses you can kind of think of it like a
sweater it just has a small thread it just needs a small run in it then if you
just pulled and keep pulling and keep pulling if you
have a sweater you know it will totally wreck it it will destroy the entire
sweater and that is what the government is trying to do with these addresses not
necessarily destroy the Bitcoin network but by pulling it threads here there
they're able to unravel entire webs of crime syndicates and hacker groups
they've done this frequently we just had it it just happened
three Chinese nationals have their bitcoin and litecoin addresses basically
revealed and blacklisted so any any address that is sent to one of those
addresses will receive from one of those addresses is now a target so is that a
bad thing they're drug smugglers they're you know money launderers no obviously
that's not a bad thing there's also another you know or in unto itself it's
not a bad thing there's another situation that happened called the Sam
Sam attack which was ransomware that was dumped on cities across America
including my hometown of Atlanta and that they basically in exchange for
Bitcoin would release the computer systems and they were docks by the
Department of Justice they gave their Bitcoin addresses and their names
so there are Iranians and and gave as much information about them as possible
and warned people do not do anything with these addresses so the fact is guys
bitcoin is traceable there is nothing about it at this point
that makes it untraceable now will we see it in the future
will we see Bitcoin once again be private I don't believe so while there
are talks of adding privacy protocols such as nimble Wimble to Bitcoin I don't
think we'll see that because that will provide much or that will bring much
more scrutiny on Bitcoin and while we know right the Bitcoin you can't ban it
you can't stop it it's open source there's just computer code we know all
that however the people who own it can be targeted and I think that the Bitcoin
community might be willing willing to take that trade-off at this point where
we're at in the political world and the globe you know global uncertainty will
take that trade off in order to keep the scrutiny off of individuals because if
people own bit and they know the government is gonna
come after them for owning it if it's basically a privacy coin which is what a
privacy function would you know kind of put it in that basket even if it's
optional then I don't think that's what people want people don't want to see
that added scrutiny where basically the government is coming after people to own
Bitcoin that is going to definitely prevent adoption that's definitely gonna
prevent people from wanting to get involved in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
and that would also once again make it much more you know much more easily used
in illicit activities so we're always fighting this battle of wanting freedom
wanting decentralization and also wanting to be free or one it worked
between wanting to be free in adoption right between decentralization and
adoption that's what it boils down to we probably at this point in history are
not going to be able to have both we're not gonna be able to have full privacy
and decentralization where none of our transactions are ever tracked and nobody
knows what we're doing and adoption unfortunately those two things are not
gonna go hand-in-hand at this moment however I do think that we do have the
responsibility in the crypto community to educate people that are outside of
the community and let them know like when someone says oh yeah that's that
untraceable money correct them say no actually it is traceable there are
privacy coins there's a lot of you know scrutiny and regulation on or probably
coming regulation on those but Bitcoin itself it actually is traceable now you
may not want to go into the fine details and explain it all to him but the fact
is we have to educate people on what exactly is true and is not true with
Bitcoin so Bitcoin being untraceable is the biggest myth I have seen people
believe about Bitcoin so you let me know what do you guys think do you guys think
that one day we will see Bitcoin being private again that we will see you know
some kind of protocol added to the to the code to make that happen or do you
think we're just good with where we're at it's okay if it's traceable it does
prevent crime syndicates and things like that and you're willing to take that
trade off let me know drop that down in the comments below
BitBoy out.