Opinion by: Carter Feldman, CEO of Psy
For 1000’s of years, money modified hands privately. A bronze coin was passed from dealer to customer, leaving no record of the transaction. No government official knew what you obtain or from whom. No bank has tracked your spending habits. This wasn't a flaw within the system, but moderately the best way money worked.
Even as banking systems evolved, privacy remained the default. If you paid for a beer with a banknote issued by an establishment corresponding to the Bank of England, there was no obligation for the tavern to perform real identity verification or know your customer (KYC).
When paper money appeared in medieval China and later early modern Europe, it functioned as an anonymous, transferable bearer instrument. The change of ownership occurred through physical exchange, not personal identification. For centuries, governments didn't know what was being spent or where, and the state relied on audits, witnesses, and confessions.
All this modified relatively recently and inside living memory. Credit cards began aggregating expenses into neat, searchable records within the mid-Twentieth century. Since the Nineteen Seventies, banks have been required to confirm the identity of their customers and report suspicious transactions. International networks standardize cross-border transactional messages. Each step appeared to make sense by itself: fraud prevention, anti-money laundering and law enforcement. But together they built the infrastructure for completely unprecedented financial surveillance.
The 70-year experiment
The Internet has accelerated every part. Online bank accounts, digital cards and mobile payments track not only what you purchase, but additionally when, where and from what device. Payment platforms integrate identity verification and behavioral analytics from the beginning. You evaluate your risk profile in real time. Convenience was the secret, and surveillance was firmly established.
Now central banks are moving closer to the source. Central bank digital currencies under development in China, Europe and America would allow governments to issue money on to users in digital form. Unlike money, these systems are designed to be traceable from day one. While privacy protection is promised (as within the case of the EU), the potential for visibility and control is usually structurally embedded within the design.
Today, governments have access to your spending history and who you transact with. You also can block accounts at your convenience. Canada did this to Freedom Convoy protesters in 2022. Georgia froze the bank accounts of 5 non-governmental organizations that provided legal and financial assistance to arrested protesters last March, prompting Amnesty International to sentence the move as “a blatant attack on human rights.” In Syria, the interim government ordered banks to freeze accounts linked to former regime officials.
There are morally defensible and intellectually coherent arguments for a few of these cases. However, today's national security laws world wide often leave little legal flexibility for defendants to make their case. The suspension of their accounts could also be lifted in some unspecified time in the future, but the unique penalty can’t be reversed.
Since bank accounts are a lifeline for most individuals, freezing these accounts amounts to coercion. You can't expect anyone to fight back after they're cut off from the fundamentals they should live. This isn't really a good fight.
The case for personal digital money
If governments can freeze accounts related to political protests, the importance of alternatives becomes much more apparent. Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero (XMR) or Zcash (ZEC) offer a return to the norm. It enables direct, permissionless exchanges between individuals without the necessity for identity checks or central oversight. This is basically a form of digital return of what coins and money once offered.
But one way or the other in our incorrect discourse, privacy-protecting crypto is labeled as a deviation. Critics call it suspicious, radical and dangerous. The 70-year experiment in financial surveillance is seen as normal. The thousand-year tradition of personal transactions is seen as strange.
Critics often describe privacy coins as tools for illegal finance. This misses their broader societal advantages. Just as money enables legitimate, private purchases, private crypto preserves freedoms in increasingly monitored digital environments. In countries with authoritarian regimes or unstable banking systems, private digital money will be the only solution to securely store and transfer value.
Society already tolerates private money transactions without criminalizing the medium itself. It doesn't ban £50 notes because someone might misuse them. The same logic should apply to digital assets protected by privacy laws. Instead of being viewed as a threat, they ought to be treated as modern equivalents of physical money: useful, legitimate, and consistent with centuries of monetary tradition.
While crypto can definitely be a solution to challenge central bankers, its deeper value lies in maintaining the form of private exchanges that existed for millennia before our surveillance-based money took over.
The real fallacy isn't private crypto; It assumes that each financial transaction ought to be visible to 3rd parties, subject to algorithmic evaluation and vulnerable to political influence. We don’t ask for special privileges; We defend standards that were in effect until around 1950.
When critics call privacy coins suspect, they argue that natural human trading is inherently criminal. They view the thousand-year tradition of personal transactions as aberrant and the 70-year experiment in financial surveillance as normal. Anyone defending the present established order should take a better have a look at history.
Opinion by: Carter Feldman, CEO of Psy.
This article is for general information purposes and shouldn’t be intended to constitute, and mustn’t be construed as, legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the creator alone and don’t necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
