The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal
Internet paranoiacs drawn to Bitcoin have long indulged fantasies of American spies subverting the booming, controversial digital currency. Increasingly popular among get-rich-quick speculators, Bitcoin started out as a high-minded project to make financial transactions public and mathematically verifiable - while also offering discretion. Governments, with a vested interest in controlling how money moves, would, some of Bitcoin's fierce advocates believed, naturally try and thwart the coming techno-libertarian financial order.
It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something.
Archived: https://archive.fo/z5zzo
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 27 2018, @04:45PM
Unless ... Recursive conspiracy:
"Hey, there's this thing worth billions, that people use to buy illegal stuff on the web, including drugs. It also can be used to transfer funds to terrorists, cartels, and bribes"
"Nah, let that one be. We need people to do illegal shit thinking it's safe, so that we can frame them all easier and keep on spying and blackmailing anyone we feel like."
"But, dude, They're dumb enough to carry a list of every transaction, and send it to anyone that asks, just because their names are replaced with unique codes. That makes our job so easy I can get my extortion bonus three weeks early"
"Orders from above, ignore Bitcoin because it doesn't have a high enough Threaten Control Puppet score yet. Hey ! Did you see Joe Bill's wife is Signalling with her new sex toy ? He ain't gonna be working on your car for the next 5 minutes"