The CIA Is Deep Into Cryptocurrency, Director Reveals

[Hydrogen]

CIA Director William Burns said the agency has "a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency" on the go.

There's a long-running conspiracy theory among a small number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts that Bitcoin's anonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, was actually the CIA or another three-lettered agency. That fringe theory is having a fresh day in the sun after CIA Director William Burns said on Monday that the intelligence agency has "a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency" on the go.

Burns made his comments at the tail end of a talk at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Summit. After discussing everything from the possible Russian invasion of Ukraine to the challenges of space, someone in the audience asked if the agency is on top of cryptocurrencies, which are currently at the center of the ransomware epidemic that U.S. officials are attempting to get a handle on and stamp out. Here's what Burns said:

"This is something I inherited. My predecessor had started this, but had set in motion a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency and trying to look at second- and third-order consequences as well and helping with our colleagues in other parts of the U.S. government to provide solid intelligence on what we're seeing as well."

This is hardly surprising given the focus ransomware is getting from every corner of government. This year, a ransomware attack targeting a pipeline company led to a shutdown, panic buying, and a gas shortage in several states.

Cryptocurrencies "could have enormous impact on everything from ransomware attacks, as you mentioned, because one of the ways of getting at ransomware attacks and deterring them is to be able to get at the financial networks that so many of those criminal networks use and that gets right at the issue of digital currencies as well," Burns said.

Crypto-Twitter had a field day with Burns' comments, with varying degrees of seriousness, which proliferated via—what else?—a tweet from the frequently apocalyptic, "Tyler Durden"-authored blog ZeroHedge.

"damm the CIA made Bitcoin smh. Pack it up it’s over," said one tweet. Another tweet by crypto influencer Crypto Cobain jokingly ranked crypto projects by their likelihood to be CIA plants. (Most likely memecoin? SafeMoon.)

Some posters even took the opportunity to say that even if Bitcoin was a CIA plant, it wouldn't matter.

"If it came out (and was proven) that Bitcoin was created by the CIA, it wouldn’t significantly diminish my bullishness. The only thing it would change is my view of Satoshi. But, crucially, Satoshi is not Bitcoin. That connection was severed years ago," tweeted Spencer Schiff, who is a Bitcoin promoter and the son of stock broker and anti-crypto advocate Peter Schiff.

Of course, (almost) everyone is just having a bit of fun with the joke that the CIA created Bitcoin. But the CIA itself seems pretty serious about its current activities in the crypto space, which no doubt reflects how troublesome ransomware attacks and the like have become.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp7vw/the-cia-is-deep-into-cryptocurrency-director-reveals

....


Finally a serious remark from a credible source on the topic of whether intelligence agencies like the CIA are involved in cryptocurrencies.

I doubt they were involved with the initial development or deployment of bitcoin. It took many years for regulators and establishment personnel to take cryptocurrencies seriously. It seems they have finally decided to get serious. As is witnessed with crypto regulation being passed in recent US infrastructure bills.

Would anyone care to take a guess as to which recent cryptocurrency projects the CIA might be involved with.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Would anyone care to take a guess as to which recent cryptocurrency projects the CIA might be involved with.

Jesus....who knows?  It could be any of them, though I'd be betraying my ignorance about the origins of some of the altcoins out there if I were to guess--Ripple is the first one that comes to mind, followed by Tether.

By the way, here and there for the last few years I've been posting my thoughts about whence bitcoin was suddenly unleashed upon the world, and government agencies have been in my mind whenever I've posted about that.  It just seems extremely unbelievable that a human being could fly so far under the radar while creating something as huge as bitcoin that no one, not even any of the law enforcement or intelligence agencies around the world have been able to identify him.  And you bet there would be a lot of interest in doing so, even if it was only from the IRS.

The alternatives are that 1) Satoshi isn't a single person, but someone working for a government (probably the US), or 2) The government has already gotten to whoever Satoshi is and has recruited him for whatever cryptography projects they could buy him off for.  I suppose there are other alternatives, but those seem the most likely to me.  Granted, I wasn't around in the early days and didn't see Satoshi's posts or know any of the original people involved, so my perspective is completely skewed--and obviously I know I could be wrong about my theories.

But don't any of you think it's weird that Satoshi apparently couldn't be traced, that he vanished without a trace while still leaving what's presumably a digital trail behind that should lead investigators to him?  Oh, by the way Hydrogen: I'm not surprised whatsoever that the CIA is involved with cryptocurrency. 

[Wind_FURY]

Would anyone care to take a guess as to which recent cryptocurrency projects the CIA might be involved with.

I don’t know, but someone in Twitter said that, “If gun pointed to my head, and forced to say which Bitcoin organization/project/company the CIA is involved in, I would say Blocksteam”.

He didn’t give a reason.

[dkbit98]

Would anyone care to take a guess as to which recent cryptocurrency projects the CIA might be involved with.

It's probably ethereum, because it has 70% premine, it's mostly run on AWS and other cloud servers, and it is one of the most popular cryptocurrency, that is perfect conditions for them.
They are probably running or they infiltrated many fake dex exchanges like uniswap and they are collecting all information, IPs and addresses.
This is just my theory and I can't prove any of my claims, but it's likely they would be involved in something where most people are.

[Wind_FURY]

Or it's also probably Craig Wright and his social-engineering attacks against Bitcoin, the community. Where does he get his money to fund all those lawsuits? Follow his paper-trail. If it's a web of confusion, then he's hiding something. Tin-foil hats on.

[Mauser]

From what I read about the CIA in the past is that they use all kind of shady ways to fund their clandestine operations. Engaging in large scale drug trafficking in the past is probably the most famous one. That is why I am not surprised they are involved in crypto currencies. To be honest they could even run a few of the well known projects. Acting behind closed doors and using famous entrepreneurs as their public face is a speciality. I don't think they worry too much about regulatory aspects since they mostly operate outside of the USA anyways.

[davis196]

The CIA is "deep into" everything.I would be surprised if the CIA actually decided to stay away from the cryptocurrency world.
I couldn't care less about the crypto projects,that are launched or influenced by the CIA.
AFAIK,The CIA is a conglomerate of private intelligence companies,which are hired as contractors by the US government.However,I might be wrong about this.
There's nothing we can do,in order to stop one or more of these private intelligence companies to get involved into the cryptocurrency industry.
Just try to reveal less personal data,when registering accounts at crypto websites.
Using VPNs and Tor most likely won't help against the CIA.

[Lucius]

Does anyone believe that the Central Intelligence Agency would do something like creating Bitcoin? They are not intelligent enough to do something like that, and you also need to know some historical facts that say that Gavin Andersen went to the headquarters of that agency in 2011 to give them a lecture on Bitcoin.

I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories:  I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.

Would anyone care to take a guess as to which recent cryptocurrency projects the CIA might be involved with.

If the people from that agency deal with cryptocurrencies, then it is obvious that they do not have anything smarter to do, because it is difficult to fight terror and there are almost no serious terrorists in the world. It is my opinion that whatever they do, nothing good for all of us will come from it.

[Argoo]

Intelligence agencies are forced to deal with and investigate cryptocurrency, as well as everything connected with it, since it is also used by fraudsters, terrorists and other criminals. In order to solve crimes, you need to have a good knowledge of the technologies and methods used by the criminals. Therefore, I do not see anything unusual in this. This is part of the necessary work of the special services. What the special services are still doing with the help of cryptocurrency, we still will not see in available sources and will not hear from officials.

[el kaka22]

It is clear to me that we are talking about something not so obvious. Sure he might say that there are number of projects regarding this space, and that is alright but about what? I mean crypto is a vast space and "projects" doesn't make it any less vague neither. All in all it looks like they might be just a bit interested in it and that's it.

This doesn't narrow down what they are doing about it neither. Are they doing something regarding money laundering? Are they doing something regarding drug business? Are they looking about terrorism financing? What are they are really looking at?

I do not know what the point of it all is, but I know that "projects about crypto" is not really news worthy at all, what those projects are and what they are doing with it is the most important part of it all and without knowing that then we have nothing in our hands.

[Sterbens]

Interestingly, there is indeed activity from the CIA that shows links to cryptocurrencies so far. Given the CIA is an institution that is closed in carrying out its activities. Perhaps if it is examined further, it will produce various assumptions, however, this intelligence agency is quite difficult to dismantle if there are no leaks from former high-ranking officials who have served in it.

From the statement of a William Burns we get a little leak, and of course it can be justified. How about Tether? It seems more prominent to be associated with them, who managed to escape the charges and disappeared until there was no further clarification regarding the ending of Theter's case. Is this all starting to get into the realm of conspiracy, ah I will not enter that kind of thing.

[kryptqnick]

CIA having a number of crypto project and Satoshi being a CIA agent/product is far from the same thing. Given how cryptos are often involved in crimes and also offer a way for the CIA itself to finance whoever they want with way less oversight than with banks, I'd be surprised if they didn't investigate and employ cryptos in their operations. I think it's more than likely that one of numerous altcoins was made by the CIA, but I don't think Bitcoin or any other top-10 crypto is among them.

[fiulpro]

Why wouldn't they?
It's extremely easy to not only track the person, to track the transactions but at the same time, you can monitor every cent thats sent or recieved. It can not only be used against dark market but they can also control tax evasion. I do not think that bitcoins was their project since time and again they do so much to ban it.
Considering other cryptocurrencies they *might* be powered by CIA or they might be dipping their hands in the flowing river soon, but at the end of the day, I do think that it's not entirely bad since this not only give cryptocurrencies a major indirect support and a positive point but at the same time, it gives the government a entire new perspective. Still it would be irresponsible if they would be using this power to control and to invade privacy which they have already been doing since a very long time. <They are just gonna try and track everyone, nice new tool for them >

[wxa7115]

By the way, here and there for the last few years I've been posting my thoughts about whence bitcoin was suddenly unleashed upon the world, and government agencies have been in my mind whenever I've posted about that.  It just seems extremely unbelievable that a human being could fly so far under the radar while creating something as huge as bitcoin that no one, not even any of the law enforcement or intelligence agencies around the world have been able to identify him.  And you bet there would be a lot of interest in doing so, even if it was only from the IRS.

The alternatives are that 1) Satoshi isn't a single person, but someone working for a government (probably the US), or 2) The government has already gotten to whoever Satoshi is and has recruited him for whatever cryptography projects they could buy him off for.  I suppose there are other alternatives, but those seem the most likely to me.  Granted, I wasn't around in the early days and didn't see Satoshi's posts or know any of the original people involved, so my perspective is completely skewed--and obviously I know I could be wrong about my theories.

But don't any of you think it's weird that Satoshi apparently couldn't be traced, that he vanished without a trace while still leaving what's presumably a digital trail behind that should lead investigators to him?  Oh, by the way Hydrogen: I'm not surprised whatsoever that the CIA is involved with cryptocurrency. 

Without a doubt that is something that is going to be one of the big mysteries of the century, after all it is understandable that we do not know who invented the wheel, as it seems it was developed over many different civilizations and it happened so long ago.

But the fact that someone could remain anonymous in this day and age and created something so big is without a doubt suspicious, however as unbelievable as it may seem I think there is a very high chance that satoshi was indeed a single individual, and my reasoning for this is that if this was a team then someone would have talked about it already and shown evidence this is the case, but nothing like that has happened so I have the tendency to believe satoshi was working alone.

But why no one has found him? There are only three possibilities I can think, the first one is the one you mention, he was indeed found and has been recruited by government agencies, the second is that he is still free and keeping the secret, while the third possibility is that he is dead, I prefer the second scenario but I think the most likely option is the third.

[magneto]

Well this just shows the feasibility of blockchain technology.

Granted, they are probably working on centralizing control rather than decentralization but the point still stands - this is a testament to the commercial viability of DeFi tech as a whole.

Though this is hardly groundbreaking, one would think that the CIA would be at the forefront of cryptography in the first place.

[TheNineClub]

Yeah, I'd say they were not involved in the early stages of BTC, but I doubt they wouldn't want to dip their toes into crypto as early as 2012 or so. But to counter the statement before me, I'd say they would rather have it decentralized, as that means that they could direct their funds however they wish without someone looking over their shoulder. Crypto is perfect for that, as was the dark web that was created by the likes of them.

[paxmao]

It makes sense in many ways. Firstly, CIA has to pay an immensely large number of agents across the world and those payments carry certain risks. Firstly, if done in person (and many times that is the only option) they can be detected and intercepted. Secondly, individuals that get the money can look suspicious unless they somehow hide it "under the mattress". Using blockchain for payments solves quite nicely the problems.

And on another matter, they certainly must have projects on blockchain investigation, e.g. reverse-engineering the chipmixers?

[fullhdpixel]

Finally a serious remark from a credible source on the topic of whether intelligence agencies like the CIA are involved in cryptocurrencies.

I doubt they were involved with the initial development or deployment of bitcoin. It took many years for regulators and establishment personnel to take cryptocurrencies seriously. It seems they have finally decided to get serious. As is witnessed with crypto regulation being passed in recent US infrastructure bills.

Have always had it in mind that in one way or the other, the government would be involved in cryptocurrency. But what I never believed is when people say that the government are the ones who created Bitcoin, nah I do not agree with that one at all. I just believe that cryptocurrency was created by someone who goes by the identity Satoshi Nakamoto, as a way to cover his real identity.

Moreover, if you go through the story of how bitcoin was created, it is quite clear that it is one person that was behind everything, although he did need the help of some people who dedicated themselves to work hard and help him finish the project. So, it wasn’t created by the government, I do not believe that. Come to think of it, the government won’t create something and give the control over to the public, they would want to be in control.

[Obito]

It's more likely that the people behind bitcoin are probably former employees or current employees rather than the popular theory that it's CIA itself. They're just trying to get into cryptospace so they can probably infiltrate stuff that needs infiltration, I mean why would the CIA be involved in all of this if they're not going to get any benefits from trying their hands on cryptocurrencies.

[Rruchi man]

If you've seen a lot of spy and secret agent movies, you can see that there is a hint of high tech savviness and sophistication on levels higher than civilian standard that these secret government agencies operate on. Crypto and the Blockchain technology is the future , the CIA must know this, hence I am not surprised at this news of their involvement. IMHO, i think the major concern for most government and why they preach regulations and sometimes ban citizens involvement is because they have identified and recognised the power cryptocurrency provides to every user and are perturbed by it.