Bitcoin Anonymity and Pedophilia.

in #btc5 years ago (edited)

The Bitcoin Value

Traditional currencies, such as the dollar or the euro, have value because they are backed by governments and the assets that a nation possesses. But beyond this money that they have forced us to use (we never had the opportunity to choose) there is supply and demand, an aspect that depends exclusively on people.

This implies that, the more people are willing to buy and / or sell "something" (such as Bitcoin), that "something" has an established value based on marketing volumes. The more people are interested in buying and the more scarce it is, the more value it will have.

Thanks to the fact that Bitcoin users are always buying and selling, then prices are always in green. In addition, Bitcoin has a certain number of units (21 million) to be issued, so it also has the quality of scarcity necessary to maintain a certain value as a currency.


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Anonymous or Pseudonym?

Sometimes, Bitcoin is confused and described as anonymous, due to the fact that it is possible to send and receive bitcoins without giving personally identifiable information.
Bitcoin is a pseudonym, which implies that, instead of your name, your account is associated with a pseudonym; which, in this case, is an alphanumeric address.

Bitcoin addresses are "Nicknames"


No one will see your name in public. Those bitcoin addresses are not associated with a real name, email or physical address, but if they manage to associate your name with that particular address, then they will know your financial details. This means that, unless the user makes his identity public, the blockchain does not show who the accounts belong to.

Strictly speaking, Bitcoin is not anonymous, being possible at some point, to link a user's identity to a pseudonym.
This pseudonym is what is called your public key, that is, your Bitcoin address, an extensive chain of randomly generated numbers.

Bitcoin, currency for crime

Currently in my country Venezuela, is developing events that involve a modeling academy (Belankazar) with a supposed network of pedophilia.

Some pedophile networks sell pornography in exchange for bitcoin, using the privacy offered by this payment method against options such as Paypal. It is one of the many illegal uses that are given to cryptocurrencies and money in general.

This activity is staining the reputation of cryptocurrencies before public opinion and has served as a main argument to its detractors.


These despicable facts related to the Venezuelan modeling academy, where photos of girls on social networks have allegedly been sold in exchange for cryptocurrencies, again unleashed the controversy surrounding privacy or impunity granted by the use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Should the right to privacy be defended until the last instances or do we have to assume some responsibility for having it?


Most users find it impossible to place themselves fully on one side, since they enjoy the honeys of decentralization.

But, we must be aware of the power of pedophiles on the Internet and the harm they can do to a child.

In social networks, complaints proliferate with screenshots of Russian pages where the academy allegedly commercialized the photos. They also indicated inappropriate comments made by adult men to girls between the ages of 11 and 16 on the academy's Facebook.

Among the most controversial data, he highlighted the use of the Skrill, BTC, BCH, LTC and even ETH platform to process payments of videos and private photos.

Hope of Change

Cybersecurity startups like Chainalysis are dedicated to using blockchains like Bitcoin to prevent human trafficking or child abuse. The company, since 2016, has collaborated with foundations and government authorities to prevent criminals from covering up in Bitcoin. This is a use case that proves that the whereabouts of a content creator for pedophiles who accept payments in bitcoin can be found.

“Chainalysis Inc. became a member of the IWF on August 1, 2016. They support us in our goal of eliminating child sexual abuse online.”
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)

According to this company, by July 2019, one billion dollars had already been used on the Deep Web to buy drugs, weapons or child pornography. The United Nations Organization (UN) also noted that the introduction of cryptocurrencies to the pedophilia market complicates police work. Bitcoin continues to offer more privacy for pedophile networks than bank transfers, Paypal or credit cards.



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Dear @JuanMolina,

I'll try to be brief and enumerate my views, cause the presented topics touches some of my nerves and I don't want to be rude or anything like that, as a matter of fact, love this post and all the questions that can come from it, it's a much thought provoking and needed talk from a societal point of view..

Without further ado, let me try to enumerate:

  • Money has NO intrinsic value, it's purely psychological and a tool for control of the masses, indoctrinated into people's mind..
  • Partially agree with the interest, scarcity, value "equation", still, it is again psychological..
  • 100% with You about the pseudonymity of Bitcoin, although it has the potential of "anonymity" from another point of view..
  • Bitcoin or any other crypto currency being used by shitty people with evil intentions should not give cryptos a bad name, although it happens, but I argue the same about FIAT, it can be "untraceable" to a degree and finances much more crimes than cryptos, for a start war, that kills, children, women, men, animals, nature..
  • A difficult question, privacy, yet all are responsible for their own actions, so we do have to assume some responsibility at the same time we "fight" for privacy..
  • About the photos/videos being shared, I do believe that there could be a very different "education" and with that a lot of the problems could be avoided, but I don't have a "real" answer to that, perpetrators of any crime should be given a chance to redeem themselves but if they don't really want to, "burn them down"..
  • About the drugs, weapons and paedophilia, only 1 is actually a horrific thing, drugs should be fully legal, guns also, everyone is responsible for their own actions, so if one wants to take drugs for any reason, medicinal, recreational, total self-destruction, it's their own and personal decision, guns don't kill people, stupid people kill unarmed people, with guns..

Let me also say I'm sorry for the way I present my reply to Your post, but it was the best way I found at the moment to do it, it's just my brief opinion and has the value it has, so, thank You for this post, the more compelling one I've read today, and there were quite some very good, yet, this was the cherry on top of the cake..

Maybe because these topics touch me in a personal way, I've had to deal with a paedophile before who attempted to cause harm to my kids, and I didn't killed him because my kids were present and no actual harm was done, on other hand might be for the lack of money to fix a couple of things in my life that would definitely help to regain self-esteem, open some doors and close others, maybe.. But nothing of that matters..

Keep up the awesome work friend!! All the best to You and Yours,
Cy

Thank You, it was just my opinion on the various topics, compressed to a "small" list ^^)

Wish You a good day friend ;)

Thank you for your appreciations, I see that we share the same criteria in this regard.
I felt that your comments sounded quite raw at first, but after reading the last paragraph I understood many things.
I am sorry that your children have lived this terrible experience.

Let me also say I'm sorry for the way I present my reply to Your post, but it was the best way I found at the moment to do it, it's just my brief opinion and has the value it has, so, thank You for this post, the more compelling one I've read today, and there were quite some very good, yet, this was the cherry on top of the cake ..

I feel extremely honored for your words.

You're welcome, and I do believe we share somewhat similar points of view indeed ;)

Yeah, I'm sorry about that but I was a bit triggered at the moment I've commented, thank You and no worries, nothing really bad happened cause I was close and intervene but it was still a shitty situation, quite some people and police involved, its in the past and no harm done..

I'm glad You appreciate my words, was only being honest and sharing my views ^^)

All the best, have a great day my friend ;)
Cy

It is good to know that you controlled the situation on time, but it must also have been something very unpleasant, especially for children.
We better leave that in oblivion.

We will keep in touch my brother.
Thanks for being so attentive to me.

Yeah, it was a bit unpleasant, fortunately they were back then old enough for me to sit with them and explain the situation, and more important, for them to understand, they managed the situation very well =), yes please, lets leave that in oblivion.

As long as I'm around we'll definitely keep in touch, there is no need to thank for anything ^^) if I like the content or even just think/feel that it has worth I'll definitely support/pay attention to it.. ;)

It's a shame we do those things in our country. I suppose it's just another thing we do here to seek money at the expense of others without measuring the consequences 😕

Hi Juan, very interesting article.

These despicable facts related to the Venezuelan modeling academy, where photos of girls on social networks have allegedly been sold in exchange for cryptocurrencies, again unleashed the controversy surrounding privacy or impunity granted by the use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

It's unfortunate all this that you describe in your article, but, like thinking about how to stop something like this, I don't know.

As you say, this is something that is done with any exchange system, whether crypto or fiat, the image of a relatively new payment system is logically blurred and cryptocurrency detractors will party with this.

Thank you @juanmolina, blessings.
@fucho80

This is in fact a problem yes. And I recognize the fact that allowing deregulated technologies to allow free circulation of values, has indeed made this more complicated. Although the problem is not in fact Bitcoin, or for that matter, crypto.

The problem is the governance of data around blockchain. In this case, bitcoin blockchain does not store anything about the private data, and that is what some fail to understand when chasing these networks.

To improve the situation, we need that all blockchains that allow indexing of metadata and data (like when we point to IPFS or other storage filesystems), to enforce some governability of that data. I might biased, but lets see EOS for example. If an account is created a big problem to the ecosystem and a group of people in the community wide enough, decides to shutdown this activity, that can be voted and executed, in a matter of hours if needed.

STEEM is getting close to this, but not yet there. With the launch of the proposals system, this gets a bit closer to what I am trying to state. Although we still need the SMT's so that more can be customized to create that "easy" process of "governmentality" of accounts and their activity.

With this, privacy can still be maintained at 99%. Although, like the old man said, if you don't want to public, don't speak, don't show yourself, don't participate. There is no such thing as fully anonymous private things. In scientific terms, if you communicate, you are not being private anymore. Although the term goes further beyond communication, and in generalist terms, it depends on a collection of agreements within a group or society (anything getting outside of those terms, becomes non private). Anonymity works somehow the same way, but because the term depends more on time and the if we are talking about a single individual or a group (yes we can also consider anonymity at group level), it's hard to establish a common ground.

With this, I kind of forked the conversation elsewhere 😅... but in resume, to fight these pedophilia problems, Countries and in general Nations, need to have better ways to audit and decide (in a decentralized way) about "almost" or close to unanimous decisions. I believe in decentralization, but not as the "only" solution to humanity.

Seriously one of the best comments I've read today @forykw

Dear @juanmolina

I must admit, that your topic isn't really making me feel comfortable. But perhaps that's the point. To point out this problem that hardly anyone is talking about.

The more people are interested in buying and the more scarce it is, the more value it will have.

Pretty much that's the way it works. It's also important to get on board long term investors, people who would buy and hold those assets, instead of trading them left and right.

Anyway, back to main topic ....

Bitcoin and other crypto are surely giving some feeling of anonymousity. However I wouldn't relay on this. Using exchanges require usually KYC and linking your data with your bitcoin address won't be very difficult.

Again, great read. A bit disturbing, but surely worth the time.
Strong upvote on the way.
Yours, Piotr

Bitcoin and other crypto are surely giving some feeling of anonymousity.

Certainly. But large criminal organizations have already been dismantled. Intelligence and tracking jobs now have a higher level.
Unfortunately, new really anonymous cryptocurrencies are emerging, this would facilitate illegal activities.

Hi my friend,

I believe that you point out one important fact about cryptocurrencies that the general public tend to point by the finger to show how bad it is. I think that you can't give the fault of bad human behaviour to the means of payment that they use. If you use banknotes for a transaction, this is also not traceable.

I trust that it's too easy to just blame the means of paiment for certain actions. As long as people are willing to pay for such things, there will be a way to transfer the funds. I don't believe that we should sacrifice this freedom for more control and to give this control to a state or government. In a state like Venezuela who trusts the autorities?

Certainly, if we poll opinions, support for economic freedom will surely prevail over any other aspect.

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