Bitcoin is a ‘boon for surveillance’, says former CIA director
As far as I can tell, hundreds of millions in drugs and contraband are regularly transacted using Bitcoin. Billions in global capital controls and taxes are evaded every day with Bitcoin. The fraction of black market participants who are revealed on the basis of "chain analysis" is still a rounding error.<p>It all depends what your threat model is. Bitcoin can be traced by sophisticated nation state actors at the cost of tens of millions per intercepted target. If I was Osama bin Laden or El Chapo or a guy who personally pissed off Putin, I probably wouldn't rely on it. But if I was a local drug kingpin in Baltimore, or a corrupt mid-level CCP official, or a Cypriot corporate money launderer, then Bitcoin deanonymization is probably a small risk in the scheme of things. Certainly orders of magnitude less risk than using the traditional banking system.