Jason Weinstein is a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice in charge of cybercrime and organized crime. He is the Director of the Blockchain Alliance and a member of the advisory boards of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, Coin Center and BitFury
In this opinion piece, Weinstein discusses why he believes the misconception that bitcoin is "anonymous" has hidden the fact that the technology actually better meets the needs of law enforcement. Here’s a newsflash: Bitcoin has an image problem. If you ask the average person what words come to mind when they think of bitcoin, three of the most common responses will likely be "anonymous", "untraceable" and "a currency for criminals." But all of these common ideas about bitcoin are actually misconceptions.
In fact, every single one of them is wrong.
This may just be a problem of perception, but it can have very real consequences, as it can impact the attitudes of investors, lawmakers, regulators, enforcement agencies and the public toward this technology.
We need to deal with these perception issues head-on. New twist, old problem
Any technology worth adopting is adopted early by criminals. But, law enforcement has a long history of adapting in order to pursue criminals or terrorists who use "new school" technology to commit "old school" crimes.
They’ve done it over and over again.
From pagers to burner cellphones to email to online chat to mobile devices to PayPal, just to name a few examples, law enforcement consistently has had to evolve as new technology designed for legitimate purposes is used to facilitate criminal activity.There are many examples of this phenomenon, but perhaps none greater than the Internet itself. And perhaps the greatest challenge for law enforcement in investigating crimes involving the Internet is – […]
