When bitcoin first broke onto the internet scene, it made a massive impact on the fiat money system, stripping power away from financial institutions and giving it back to the people – should they choose to embrace it. This technological breakthrough also hugely enhanced users’ privacy. Why is privacy so important when it comes to transactions? How can the public ensure privacy in their fund storage and payments?
The importance of keeping your payments private
One of the most important models of operation of the bitcoin network is in how an account is created. With a bitcoin account, you can fund it and keep it secure all by yourself without the involvement of an institution. You now no longer need the help of banks and other financial institutions to make that happen.
This also means is that you don’t need to go through a verification process or worry about your purchases getting taxed, among other things. This is the beauty of a completely decentralized currency.
Of the numerous benefits that this privacy brings, the advantages of paying with bitcoin under an anonymous persona makes the difference for a large class of people. Political dissidents, activists and societal misfits can now pursue their causes under pseudonyms without having to step into the light when the need to make purchases occur.
Bitcoin empowers anonymity
Bitcoin promised to give power back to the people and it has not failed to deliver. The possibilities that bitcoin’s anonymity brings on board allows for a lot of diverse applications:
Protests can now be successful managed, funded and staged by members of the same working group with no trace to their financial involvements. Likewise, a person can easily stash away stocks of their money secretly until they are ready to dig into it for whatever reason. With the ‘eye’ that most people fear lingering over them out of the way, bitcoin almost gives people a new way to live the life they want.
Perhaps the greatest coupling to this anonymity feature is that crypto is borderless. You can receive payments for a job, donations to a cause and support for a movement from anywhere in the world while keeping the identities of your funders secret if need be.
Protect yourself from being de-anonymized
Bitcoin transactions are not managed by any one person but rather, the entire community of users. That blockchain serves as a single ledger where all transactions happening in the bitcoin scene can be seen. This transparency is one of the greatest strengths of bitcoin but it could also be its biggest weakness if exploited.
Whenever you go online and login to your bitcoin wallets, you are doing so from an IP address that can be linked to you. If you make a transaction from the wallet too, there is a unique identifier from which anyone curious enough can see a part of your wealth floating around on the blockchain. When your IP address gets associated with the bitcoin account and all its transparent transactions, your identity and your track records are revealed.
One of the ways to combat this is by using a quality VPN to make sure your IP address is not traceable to you. ExpressVPN is one of the top-rated and highly-trusted options on the market right now. To get started on beefing up your security and staying anonymous across the bitcoin network, you can grab these ExpressVPN coupons before they expire.
Privacy as the essence of Bitcoin
Bitcoin will be relevant in as much as it can empower anonymity. The moment that power is lost, it becomes just another platform not quite different from the system it aims to fight. That is why it is important to safeguard your privacy if you are to enjoy the benefits that comes with the cryptocurrency.
