Dark Markets and Bitcoin Adoption with Cedric Dahl - WBD166

Location: Los Angeles Date: Friday, 18th October Project: 1000x Role: CEO

Bitcoin is a public ledger, which allows anyone to view any transaction and address thus offer pseudonymity rather than anonymity. What this means is that Bitcoin can provide a certain level of privacy if your Bitcoin address is not attached to personal information, for example, exchange KYC data.

Bitcoiners wanting to protect their privacy must take careful steps, a lapse in concentration can identify you as the owner of a particular address. By accessing a block explorer without using Tor or a VPN, posting your public key online, utilizing a KYC compliant exchange are all examples of how chain analysts can identify you. 

Because of this, Bitcoin may not seem like the perfect tool to facilitate transactions on dark markets, yet it currently accounts for the vast majority of them. So why is this? 

Bitcoin, by design, as a censorship-resistant currency enables dark markets. If you want to purchase something that your government deems illegal, and If you are willing to take the necessary precautions (using a VPN or Tor, CoinJoin and not reusing addresses) you can maintain your privacy. 

Since the Silk Road, Bitcoin has been the most used cryptocurrency used to buy drugs, firearms, identity documents and anything else from dark markets. By tracking the data in this space are we able to judge whether Bitcoin adoption is growing? And, is censorship resistance the only use-case that matters?

In this interview, I talk to Cedric Dahl from 1000x. 1000x is a private think tank focused on researching Bitcoin usage data. We discuss dark markets, sanctioned states using Bitcoin and censorship resistance.