How many BTC users actually care about privacy?

[cabron]

Probably the first people that have stumbled upon bitcoin in the first place, the rest are either here for the profit or have learned to value privacy along the way. Not to worry, they will all care when their interests are being threatened.

The first people who have been early adopters are the first who supported the innovation of this blockchain technology, they are more of hackers that wanted to just stay in the background without having to submit any information from them even the cookies.

Some of them are still here trading on exchanges with KYC but most probably they've set aside coins that are safe in a wallet they have secured.

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[mindrust]

If you are going to use a big exchange in the future then you will need KYC.  The only other way to get BTC will be on the black market.  Would that put you off?

Probably 99% of them don't really care. I think most people just want the number to go up and nothing else. If this was chicken shit they were trading, it wouldn't make a difference to them (as long as the number goes up). Black market/Dark market is now running mostly on Monero I heard. So, if btc traders really cared about privacy they would have moved to monero instead.

[Ararbermas]

If it's trusted exchange why not in my personal opinion. because indeed it's a big help incase of emergency, for example if you have funds in it and you want to recover your account, it's a requirements as well. But if its not licenced and trusted exchange, well obviously its not safe to pass KYC, wherein much better to find another platform that you can assure your private information is  totally safe from hacking and etc, as simple as that.

[Alucard1]

Not everyone is here because of privacy, there are so many people who enter the crypto world because of money, they think that it is way easier to earn money in the crypto world than in real life word and besides people want some free time in a way that they don't need to follow the rules of the company and don't need to wake up early, travel and go to the work. This is also what I want in cryptocurrency, I don't need to wake up early and there is no boss here but still I am earning money that makes me contented.

Privacy only matters to those big investors but for the beginners and those who are not yet a big investors they prioritize earning money than minding their privacy.

[ILuckyGuyI]

It wouldn't put me off still. I mostly use Binance exchange and I have did KYC too of course. Because I trust the exchange about not using my private info with bad things. And I trust it like I trust banks also. Because not all the banks belong to governments. There are private ones also. And we use them a lot too. So it is very similar to an exchange with a high score in the market.

[o_e_l_e_o]

As long as the cryptocurrency exchange that I want to use is credible enough, there is no problem for me to share my private information with them.

Show me any "credible" exchange and I will show you an instance of that exchange losing customer data through leaks, hacks, or selling it on.

the risk of using it in doing illegal and engaging ing money laundering is at high risk so we can’t blame the government

There is very little evidence that KYC does anything to prevent money laundering. Criminals in general aren't stupid enough to send stolen coins to their own KYCed accounts.

much better to find another platform that you can assure your private information is  totally safe from hacking and etc

There is no such thing. Any and every time you complete KYC at any exchange or service, you risk loss and/or theft of your data.

[Pmalek]

As long as the cryptocurrency exchange that I want to use is credible enough, there is no problem for me to share my private information with them.

It doesn't matter what the exchange is or isn't. One reason to be concerned is that the exchange can abuse your personal information. Another reason is that their database can get hacked, someone else gets hold of your information, and that person or group abuses your identifiable info. Don't make the mistake of thinking that an exchange values you of puts your interests and needs above theirs. They will always protect their own businesses and that means selling or sharing your data with government and law enforcement agencies if they are being required to do so. 

[Kakmakr]

Let me answer your question with a question : Would you like it if people (not even people you know) ... could have access to your financial situation?

Example : Let's say for one moment any merchant you bought something from, can quickly go into your Bitcoin address and then see how much bitcoins is in that address or if you bought your neighbor's lawnmower and he can access the bitcoin address from where you send the bitcoins and see how much bitcoins you have in that address?

This is why pseudo anonymity in Bitcoin is important.... other people should not have access to your financial matters, when you do transactions with them. (When you give the neighbor $500 in cash for the lawnmower... he cannot see how much money is in your bank account or your wallet, so why should it be any different with Crypto currencies?)

[dkbit98]

How many BTC users actually care about privacy?

Not enough.
People usually care about things only when they are affected personally or when someone knocks on their door.
All movement in world today is to abolish all form of privacy and make everything into ''Big Brother'' reality when you are constantly recorded and tracked 24/7.
I don't think that majority of people wants this, even if they are bribed with free stuff along the way.

If you are going to use a big exchange in the future then you will need KYC.  The only other way to get BTC will be on the black market.  Would that put you off?

Black markets or FREE markets existed long before Bitcoin ever existed, and they are impossible to stop, just like Bitcoin or torrents.
Government regulators may try to add more rules and regulations but they are only valid if people abide and live by them, so majority of people should just refuse them and change their governments, it's simple as that.
There is always going to be P2P trading and some form of decentralized exchanges and trading, so I really don't care so much what big centralized exchanges are doing.
It's more important what we as the people are doing.

[DaveF]

People usually care about things only when they are affected personally or when someone knocks on their door.
All movement in world today is to abolish all form of privacy and make everything into ''Big Brother'' reality when you are constantly recorded and tracked 24/7.
I don't think that majority of people wants this, even if they are bribed with free stuff along the way.

The other issue is people do not understand how or why many things work. So when someone comes along and offers them "privacy" they really do not know what they are getting and how it really works.

Want a really secure encrypted device that can't be tracked because you are a criminal:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-sold-criminals-fake-encrypted-phones-that-actually-copied-their-messages.

How about just a phone that is secure that does not spy on you:
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/freedom-phone-security-issues/

Back to the discussion about BTC privacy. If you are doing a P2P trade F2F how are you sending your BTC to the other person. Electrum on a phone or laptop? Do you know what back end server you are connecting to and what it records? Unless you are running you own node you don't. Are you using Wi-Fi in a coffee shop? Are you 100% sure that there is no MITM attack going on?

How much do you know about the person you are trading with? How good is their OPSec?

I don't want to be that guy who says it can't be done, but I really think that it's a lot more complicated then a lot of people think.

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

People usually care about things only when they are affected personally or when someone knocks on their door.

Yup. We see it all the time with exchanges which have hundreds if not thousands of complaints against them for arbitrarily freezing accounts or locking up coins, and you see an endless stream of users saying "Well, nothing's happened to me, so I think they are still fine/good/trustworthy/etc." Until next week when their account is locked and then the join the chorus of people complaining, and someone else tells them "Well, nothing's happened to me".

Government regulators may try to add more rules and regulations but they are only valid if people abide and live by them, so majority of people should just refuse them and change their governments, it's simple as that.

Wishful thinking. Most people most even change exchange when confronted with hundreds of complaints as I outlined above. And even if they do, they just hop from one centralized surveillance exchange to another.

I am genuinely curious just how bad centralized exchanges have to get for the majority of people to finally stop using them. Given all the KYC, spying, reporting to governments, freezing or seizing coins or accounts, insider trading, fractional reserve, horrendous fees, dumping scam coins, the list is endless, I would have expected most rational people to abandon them by now, but they continue to attract more and more users. Centralized exchanges frequently just close accounts and keep the coins which were on them, so outright theft isn't the limit. Coinbase actively sold customer data to third parties, so that's not the limit either. Maybe they have to send someone to your house to slap your mother?

[dkbit98]

Want a really secure encrypted device that can't be tracked because you are a criminal:

Fake encrypted Anom gov phones is a really good example, but don't think that all other smartphones are much better, Apple can now scan your system for child abusing images.
Maybe I am old fashioned but I never liked or trusted this devices and all trend of using just one device - smartphone, that is only make people more stupid looking at them non-stop.

If you are doing a P2P trade F2F how are you sending your BTC to the other person. Electrum on a phone or laptop? Do you know what back end server you are connecting to and what it records? Unless you are running you own node you don't. Are you using Wi-Fi in a coffee shop? Are you 100% sure that there is no MITM attack going on?

What do you know when you use big centralized exchanges?
You know they will leak your data to anyone without you ever knowing it, for example you should know that Coinbase is sending all customer data and analytics to China.
Digital Currency Groups owns huge part of Coinbase and owner of DCG is Li Ka-shing, richest man in Hong Kong, so better think about that.

Running your own Bitcoin node is not so complicated, and people only need to spent some time and learn how to do, but sadly I think that only a few people are running node even in bitcointalk forum.

How much do you know about the person you are trading with? How good is their OPSec?

I don't need to know much about them to do private trade with them.

I don't want to be that guy who says it can't be done, but I really think that it's a lot more complicated then a lot of people think.

Maybe it's more complicated than making your own popcorns or toast, but it's not rocket science.

[GreatArkansas]

This is one of the risks for me, using centralized exchanges. Especially those centralized exchanges that are required to undergo KYC.
Yep, most of the people nowadays don't care about privacy, even on non-crypto related. Even those people that already using Bitcoin, they still don't know how to value privacy especially when it comes sharing your personal information to random people or entity on the internet.
That's why decentralized exchanges these days are starting to pop, but for me, centralized will stay and regulation about KYC or AML will still continue and probably will become more strict in terms of cryptocurrency.

[pawanjain]

Many BTC users these days are just here to make profits from trading or investments and don't really care about privacy.
Some people don't even know the what bitcoin acutally is and what it was created for.
The number of such people will just increase in future as many people will jump into the same boat and keep sailing for profits.
I personally don't care about privacy as well because I am not doing anything wrong or illegal that I should worry of.
Talking about theft or hacks, I have made a decent security but anything can be hacked and so we cannot really guarantee no stolen funds but still can secure our coins in the best way possible.

[Poker Player]

Sorry to be a pessimistic here, but pri...what? LOL. That's a huge LOL and a half.

I guess those of you who defend to the death the privacy in the use of Bitcoin will pay almost everything in cash when you use fiat, right? I mean, I do, but I would find it contradictory if you were defending privacy to the death and then paying for everything by credit card.

People nowadays don't care about privacy. The most private way to use fiat is to pay cash and people are moving to massively pay everything by card, mobile, or smartwatch. $0.70 if needed, and if it's a small store and the shopkeeper says he doesn't have a POS or it's broken, they get angry.

If Bitcoin is going to be massively adopted, it will be precisely because people don't care about privacy, large institutions have to buy publicly and Average Joe when he buys Bitcoin will do it with a custodial service, Paypal, etc.

This is not only bad, if it were not so, this would be a thing of 4 geeks that would not have become so popular.

We still have a space for privacy, just like you have if you want when you use fiat, which is using cash.

So yes, virtually no one cares about privacy, but that's part of Bitcon's success, like it or not.

[TribalBob]

I'd rather do KYC than go to the black market, where the risk that often occurs if P2p is fraudulent transactions, For me As long as the cryptocurrency exchange I want to use is credible enough, there is no problem for me to share my personal information with them. because for my financial security

[o_e_l_e_o]

I personally don't care about privacy as well because I am not doing anything wrong or illegal that I should worry of.

God, I'm getting so tired of seeing this argument parroted about on this forum.

There's nothing you want to keep private? You are that certain you aren't doing anything wrong? In that case you'll have absolutely no problem sharing your real name, links to all your social media profiles, and all your email addresses and their passwords so we can take a good look at all your communications and publicly share with your friends and relatives anything we find interesting. While you are at it, could you also share your entire browsing history, all your chat logs from Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal/Facebook Messenger/etc., your bank statements, your phone records, and a list of everything you've ever bought online. After all, you are not doing anything wrong so you don't care about privacy, right?

You are absolutely certain that in among all that information there is nothing your government or any other government which spies on people around the world (See 5-, 9-, 14-eyes for examples) might take an interest in? What about the next government in those countries? What about the governments in 40 years? You are absolutely certain that none of them will find nothing of interest in all your data?

If you give away your privacy, then you are resigning yourself to a life of servitude:

I don't need to spend a lot of time dismantling the "nothing to hide" argument, because it is already widely discredited. I will share one of my favorite quotes on the topic though:

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there’s no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it’s in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That’s accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that’s what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.

I'd rather do KYC than go to the black market, where the risk that often occurs if P2p is fraudulent transactions

You sound like someone who has never actually traded P2P before. I am far less likely to lose my coins by using an open source and trustless mechanism such as Bisq's non-custodial 2-of-2 escrow than I am by depositing them to a centralized exchange and having an arbitrary algorithm decide to lock my account for unspecified reasons.

[pawanjain]

I personally don't care about privacy as well because I am not doing anything wrong or illegal that I should worry of.

God, I'm getting so tired of seeing this argument parroted about on this forum.

There's nothing you want to keep private? You are that certain you aren't doing anything wrong? In that case you'll have absolutely no problem sharing your real name, links to all your social media profiles, and all your email addresses and their passwords so we can take a good look at all your communications and publicly share with your friends and relatives anything we find interesting. While you are at it, could you also share your entire browsing history, all your chat logs from Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal/Facebook Messenger/etc., your bank statements, your phone records, and a list of everything you've ever bought online. After all, you are not doing anything wrong so you don't care about privacy, right?

You are absolutely certain that in among all that information there is nothing your government or any other government which spies on people around the world (See 5-, 9-, 14-eyes for examples) might take an interest in? What about the next government in those countries? What about the governments in 40 years? You are absolutely certain that none of them will find nothing of interest in all your data?

If you give away your privacy, then you are resigning yourself to a life of servitude:

The context of privacy here is referred to BTC transactions. This does not mean I would give away my social media profiles, emails or passwords.
The pseudonymous nature of bitcoin makes BTC transactions private enough for me not to worry about adding extra privacy to it.
So by the phrase "don't care about privacy" I mean I don't have to add more privacy to make BTC transactions more secure or more private.
I hope you understand what I am trying to say.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The same principles apply. If you don't take steps to maintain your privacy, then pretty much all your transactions can be linked to your real name and address. Any coins which go to or from an exchange where you have completed KYC are extensively tracked and thoroughly investigated by multiple blockchain analysis companies. They then link these to your other addresses, other services you use, when and where you spend your coins, how much you are holding, and so on. Even if you are doing nothing illegal, do you really want a bunch of complete strangers (and anyone they sell their data to - governments, marketing agencies, political groups, social media companies, etc.) knowing exactly how much bitcoin you own, knowing that you use a gambling site and how much you win from it, knowing where you spend your coins, knowing that you regularly send coins to a family member in another country, etc.

[KaliLinux]

If there's KYC, I don't like the idea anymore. Satoshi never mentioned in the whitepaper or in any of his posts or emails that we should agree with KYCs. In fact, Bitcoin as a currency is totally against anything that has to do with revealing one's privacy. Take a look at Satoshi whose identity is also hidden to prove the need for privacy. However, many people got into Bitcoin because of making gains and never had the time to think through about the main feature of the currency. I may have done KYC in a few exchanges but this is because some of us were led by investments. Eventually, most of us are now seeing the need for privacy.

Before investors uses bitcoin for sake of privacy, but now due to government stricter implementation on exchanges to avoid AML problems and scam exposures they require many platforms to do KYC, as crypto tends to become more popular the risk of using it in doing illegal and engaging ing money laundering is at high risk so we can’t blame the government, however we should do our part to study what were using and report platforms who are requiring KYC with no valid reasons or seems questionable platform with issues. We can’t get away with KYC but atleast we do it on a legit platform. 

KYC has become a thing of the day even on this platform, don't we see projects that come in here to advertise their projects and make bounty hunters do work for weeks and some time months, and when it is time for payments turn round to request for hunters to perform KYC that was not initially requested before the work started? and most of these projects are managed by some Big accounts that were supposed to kick against that type of action by project ownners? You would realize that sometimes, investors even when they know the importance of not KYCing don't have a choice and would rather take the risk even with these exchanges too.