There’s a conspiracy theory that the CIA created Bitcoin and promoted it as this anonymous secure way of money transfer so they could identify global crime networks.

I don’t think that’s true at all, but if the CIA had thought of doing something like that and had done a good job of it, I suspect whatever they would have created would have looked awfully like Bitcoin.

It appears anonymous as hell on the surface, but even with the slightest bit of metadata and effort it can be deanonymized. And let’s not forget that the CIA and friends are legally allowed to collect metadata in situations such as wiretaps, etc. and have massive troves of it at their disposal.

In the meanwhile, every transaction is public.

I remember the forum threads when lead developers were invited to give talks to the CIA about Bitcoin in the early years. I don't think the CIA created Bitcoin. Judging by the Satoshi's GMX email address and software coding style of the early software, I believe it was a German who grew up in Germany. Absolutely NO-ONE outside of Germany uses GMX.

Interesting! I haven't heard about this. But somewhat fits the narrative of him being a UK citizen, e.g. time zone, British english

But wouldn't someone as anonymous as Satoshi use the fact that nobody but Germans use GMX, as a way of throwing people off?

In a system where every transaction is public, how on earth would anyone think "it appears anonymous as hell on the surface"? One of the main features is the public ledger, and it's one of the first things you learn if you try to understand blockchains.

Still, many people do think it is anonymous. Maybe it's because on the blockchain you have a long number instead of your name and surname, so some people think that the number isn't traceable back to them.

if you use cash to onramp and offramp and good vpns to transact your crypto, it is effectively anonymous, transactions will be public but there is no way to tell who's on the receiving end. The hard part here would be finding the cash, which is possible for organized crime. Lately, many have started accepting crypto so there is no need to offramp to buy many things.

Do you wear a ski mask while exchanging cash and bitcoin, or how do you keep that private? Don't forget that your exchange partners are linked to your transactions.

Because almost no one actually knows how it works. People hear "bitcoin" and immediately think of the dark net, Tor, anonymity, etc.

ROFL good point! Imagine if this whole time, critics were right, both that Tether is insolvent, and that it’s used for crime, but didn’t realize that (the truths of) these two criticisms “cancel out” and result in keeping Tether alive…