Jonathan Levin is chief revenue officer and co-founder at blockchain analytics firm and European Cybercrime Centre partner Chainalysis .
In this opinion piece, Levin discusses the transparency the bitcoin blockchain offers and how it could shift and challenge our perception of privacy in a digital age. The year is 1766 and Sweden has just passed the world’s first law enabling the public to access government information. Since then, transparency has been instilled in Swedish culture. Today, Swedish politician and European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström is the only Commissioner that publishes her external correspondence in a publicly accessible register.
Bold acts of transparency undoubtedly help democracy and protect society. However, private companies have competitive pressures and, in general, need to be coerced through regulation.
As tech companies bring the offline and online worlds ever closer together, we are challenged to find ways of writing physical legislation to manage this new arrangement. Attempts to fit technology companies that match individuals to perform services, like Uber and AirBnB, have all but failed. Bitcoin as a case study
As the stakes behind these attempts further increase as these companies scale, we need case studies to learn how we are going to mitigate risk for society.
The bitcoin industry has been navigating the regulatory maze for almost five years. But, the complexity of financial regulation in the US has left many wondering around what sometimes feels like the Nevada desert.
While the decentralized model of bitcoin and the data that is produced through using the system have still not been fully appreciated, as always with bitcoin, perhaps it is asking bigger questions than its current incarnation may first allow us to imagine.
Is bitcoin’s transparency so clear we barely see it?
A bitcoin company’s business activities have a level of transparency by default. Companies like ours are […]
