Anonymous Wealth: How Digital Money Endangers Our Freedom and Democracy

Money is social power, hidden money is hidden social power that may overtake our democratic government

Imagine a society where wealth is hidden, and payment is undetectable. Theologian libertarians might applaud it, but nervous freedom lovers will be very worried. Capitalism and socialism alike agree that money is the preferred and most humane way to move society in the direction wished for by its leaders. Most of us run through the day doing what we feel we must by concerns of money — it’s how things are, however unpoetic it may sound. Now imagine a situation where vast wealth is accumulated by people, we as a society are clueless about. And those people may offer untold sums to anyone. The transfer of money will not be detected, and the holding of the passed money by the recipient will be hidden as well. If you are in the bribery business, you are in paradise mode. Read the news, to find how much financial corruption is infecting all our brunches of government — and that is now, when authorities have very good tools to catch the schemers. If by theory, math, and practice the holding of money, the transfer of money, and the use of money will be totally secure from the police finding out — there will hardly remain an honest bureaucrat, a decent politician, or a straight judge. Money is the one thing we all want, and as the saying goes: everyone has his price. Our democratic institutions will be overwhelmed. What does a politican do from sunrise to sunset? Raise money for re-election. If you can secretly pass that money to him — you own him, but nobody knows it. We will live under a tyranny protected by anonymity. We will not be able to rise up against our oppressors because we will not know who they are.

It sounds counter intuitive to most, I know. You think that it is impossible to have so much money and remain hidden from your neighbors, and that it is further impossible to pay someone millions of dollars without the payment registered somewhere, and without the recipient showing off this wealth. This intuition is based on our past experience, on money as it was, not on money as it is about to be, if we don’t do something about it.

Ransomware is a thriving business in the US — because payment is anonymous — that’s what enables it. While bitcoin anonymity is questionable, there is little doubt that virtually perfect money anonymity is possible. That is the catastrophic side effect of the otherwise so useful, so effective invention of digital currency. Digital money is a stream of bits. It needs no bulky detectable vaults to store, it flows encrypted indsitinghshable from the ocean of current and cross currents of bits in cyberspace. But — you challenge this premise — wealthy people show off; they buy a 100ft yacht that cannot be hidden. It can. The yacht will be registered to someone else, paid for it, and that someone else invites the hidden wealth onboard to sail. People who suspect something do have a price for which they will remain quiet, and if not then there will be some merchants of violence and intimidation that for a fitting sum will take care of business. If you have enough (hidden) money, you have the (hidden) means to keep this fact out of the public eye. Or you can flaunt a measure of wealth that is substantially below your net worth. With money you can buy followers, believers, and change opinions and attitudes. Everything that our leaders do to us, will be done to us by anonymous wealth holders. And digital money enables all that.

It is for that reason that a privacy hawk like myself now concludes that privacy ends at the money edge. Hidden wealth is a mortal risk for society and should be prevented. In BitMint we promote the fundamental notion of “Expiry Coins” — BitMint digital money can be traded peer-to-peer protecting behavioral anonymity, but every BitMint coin comes with an expiration date, by which date its holder must surface and exchange it with another digital coin, or a non-digital asset. And even for that reason alone we strongly believe that the payment paradigm of the future will be based on two central anchors (minting and redemption) with at-will degree of freedom in between (peer to peer).

BitMint - Freedom Bearing Money
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