Conspiracy theories accompany humanity throughout its history, affecting a variety of areas of society. One of the most favorite topics of conspiracy theorists of various stripes – the activity of secret government organizations and United in a secret world government of the wealthiest people in the world, the purpose of which is to establish full control over humanity and subjugation of not only the main financial flows, but also the model of human behavior.
Bitcoin, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, has become another fertile ground on which more than one conspiracy theory has grown. And since the cryptocurrency is primarily considered as a new form of money – an integral and one of the most important components of the way of life of people, the idea of its possible connection with government agencies during all these years is periodically extracted from dusty cabinets and submitted to the public discussion.
This question will be touched upon further, but it should probably start with the fact that the most important conspiracy revolves around the figure of Satoshi Nakamoto – the mysterious Creator of bitcoin. There is no shortage of versions of who he really is, but there is still no answer that everyone would agree with.
The last noteworthy attempt to shed light on this issue was requests to the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) and The United States Central intelligence Agency (CIA), which were sent by Motherboard journalist Daniel Oberhaus. Based on the provisions of the us freedom of information Act (FOIA), he requested information on all internal letters from agencies that would contain information about Satoshi Nakamoto. And if the FBI, as you know, the request has not yet responded, the CIA gave its answer:
"Your request is denied. The Department can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested documents," the Department's response said.
As noted by Oberhaus at the time, he was prompted by the information that appeared in 2017 that the specialists of the us national Security Agency (NSA) with the help of total wiretapping systems PRISM, MUSCULAR and stylometry managed to establish the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. According to him, once something is known to the NSA, it is likely that information about the Creator of bitcoin may have other "agencies in three letters."
At the same time, the blog of entrepreneur Alexander Muze, who told about the alleged deanonimization of Satoshi, contains a rather curious paragraph about the reasons why the NSA took up the study of this topic:
"My source told me that the Obama administration was concerned that Satoshi might be a Russian or Chinese agent, and that bitcoin could be used as a weapon against us in the future. That's why the administration wanted to know who it was to understand his motives. As far as I know, Satoshi didn't break any laws. I don't know if the NSA was able to establish that he was a Russian or Chinese agent or maybe just a Japanese crypto hacker."
Professionals NSA allegedly failed to de-anonymize the Creator of bitcoin
It should be noted that among the various conspiracy theories around bitcoin there is a version that the NSA is behind the creation of the Sha-256 algorithm. This algorithm is known to be the basis of the algorithm Proof-of-Work, on the basis of which the bitcoin network operates. This version appeared in 2013 after the public became aware of the details of the NSA surveillance of mobile activity on the Internet using the built-in backdoor-as its supporters believe, the Agency could leave the same backdoor in SHA-256.
This theory, however, does not look so plausible if we take into account the fact that SHA-256 is an open – source algorithm, on which the best cryptographers have been working for 15 years, without revealing its weaknesses. On the website of the National Institute of standards and technology (NIST) SHA-256 is still listed as a secure Protocol.
Chinese influence
More interesting is the mention by Alexander Mewes of the Obama administration's concern about the possible involvement of other countries, in particular China, in the creation of bitcoin. The theory that the authorities of China can control bitcoin has been around for quite a long time, and its supporters cite such arguments as, for example, a significant concentration of the network hashrate in the hands of Chinese mining pools. It is also often claimed that Jihan Wu and the world's leading manufacturer of Bitmain mining equipment are directly connected with the authorities of The country.
At the same time, in 2017, the government introduced strict restrictive measures against the crypto industry – starting with a direct ban on ICO, it then closed all local bitcoin exchanges. This created a situation in which the people of the country lost easy access to crypto assets, and the state, declaring its interest in blockchain technology and its intention to create a state digital currency, actually continued its active activity in this industry. It cannot be ruled out that China is really trying to assess the full potential of bitcoin and its underlying technology, but the contradictory actions of state structures leave the question: what is actually dictated by the actions of the government of the country?
The Bilderberg group
According to another conspiracy theory, the Bilderberg club, the us Federal reserve (fed) and the Mastercard payment system are conspiring to seize full control of bitcoin. They do so allegedly through controlled companies, and the main argument is that the Bilderberg group allegedly invested $55 million in Blockstream through AXA Strategic Ventures. The fact that AXA Strategic Ventures is a division of the French insurance giant AXA Group, the former CEO of which Henri de Castries since 2012 is the Chairman of the Bilderberg club.
As you know, many employees of Blockstream take part in the development of the bitcoin code base. Investment in the company was thus able to give the Bilderberg club the opportunity to establish significant control over bitcoin and mercantiliste original vision of bitcoin as a decentralized currency.
Despite such assertions, the actual evidence is not found, they lead to other thoughts of not less exciting theory, again related to the "strong world".
Jekyll Island 2.0
The version that governments around the world are secretly trying to buy as many bitcoins as possible also exists for a long time and is probably the simplest assumption that could be made.
We propose to consider another fresh conspiracy theory, for a full understanding of which it is necessary to refer to the August note in the publication the Daily Caller. Its author, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, in particular, claims that several representatives of the us Congress are working on legislation designed to protect certain digital currencies from government intervention.
The plan is to actually squeeze bitcoin out of circulation, replacing it with some new cryptocurrency that would not only have the same rights as the dollar, but would function in full compliance with anti-money laundering laws.
An analysis of who could be behind this initiative, carried out in his article on HackerNoon known enthusiast of bitcoin Beautyon. In particular, he recalls the history of the fed – a private Bank, which is entrusted with the task of issuing and managing cash in the United States. Its launch in 1913 was preceded by several years of secret negotiations of American moneybags, which took place including on the island of Jekyll near the East coast of the United States.
And it would be a great delusion and naivety to think that in our time of open technologies and the speed of information dissemination secret meetings of the powerful are no longer possible, the author writes. According to his owls, the plan developed within the walls of the Congress to replace bitcoin with a new cryptocurrency can be called "Jekyll island 2.0".
"Because of the confidentiality and complexity of the issue, the three agencies that are engaged in its study, asked not to disclose their names," — said in a note in the Daily Caller.
That is, government agencies that operate on taxpayers ' money, hold secret meetings behind closed doors, actually trying to violate the First amendment to the us Constitution. It is the First amendment that Beautyon draws attention to, and is the law that already protects bitcoin, since it is the text, and the text is a statement or action protected by the law on freedom of speech. Thus, bitcoin does not need any additional protection measures.
If all this information is true, then the actions of the politicians involved are nothing more than a clear attempt to circumvent the Constitution and make bitcoin useless. The problem, however, is that if the stated goal of the initiative is to make such a new cryptocurrency unfit for criminal purposes, it is not only unrealistic, but also completely illiterate from a computer point of view.
"These people should be honest. Drug trafficking and other unpleasant things are not the problem they want to solve. The real problem is the existence of bitcoin, which is recognized as a real threat to Fiat currencies," writes Beautyon.This, he recalls, was very clearly stated by the international Monetary Fund (IMF), which in one of its reports spoke about the need to resolve the issue with bitcoin "other measures".
Turning directly to conspiracy, the described initiative suggests that in order to create a new "legitimate" cryptocurrency, or JekyllCoin, as the author calls it, the US government will need to seek the services of certain developers. They will face a huge task to create a network that will surpass bitcoin in its parameters. This task will not only be time-consuming, but also extremely expensive, and therefore the best solution would be to replace today's main Bitcoin Core client with its own client, and then make it impossible to make changes to the source code.
The most obvious candidate for this role, Beautyon calls BTC1-fork Bitcoin Core, on the basis of which in the so-called "new York agreement" was presented a solution to scale the network called SegWit2x.
Why BTC1? First, this client had at the time a wide support of business representatives, and secondly, is not associated with China, which is also important in this matter. It is enough to remember who is behind this client. First of all, this is Jeff Garzik — a former Bitcoin Core developer, and now the head of his own blockchain Analytics company, and his business partner Gavin Andresen. Also, it will not be a big surprise if the name of Mike Hern again POPs up, at the time with the scandal that left the bitcoin ecosystem.Also, don't forget about Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, another very influential force behind BTC1 that could bring millions of new users with IT.
At first, untwists the thread of the plot of beauty, this new old client will be virtually indistinguishable from the existing bitcoin. Congress will proclaim it" official " bitcoin, the price of the coin will skyrocket, banks will offer customers official cryptocurrency accounts, the industry will flourish. That long-awaited "legitimization" in its pure form.
There's one thing. All this will be one big "trick", which can be compared with the unfair practice of attracting buyers to the store — initially advertising one product at a low price, they are offered other, more expensive products, explaining this by the absence or low quality of the first.
After some time, the client will be injected with a deadly poison in the form of increasing the issue from the current 21 million coins, creating black lists of addresses, a comprehensive KYC/AML procedure, the reversibility of transactions and everything else that people like Mike Hearn and half-crazy economist Paul Krugman, as well as bankers from the Federal reserve will consider necessary.
This also includes an increase in the size of the block, which was insisted by the supporters of SegWit2x, followed by the impossibility of launching full nodes by private users and, as a result, providing access to the financial system only to carefully selected persons.
JekyllCoin will be the death of bitcoin, and the use of cryptocurrency in the form in which we know it now will probably be illegal. The creation of any altcoins will also be illegal. Game over.
Although the author admits that he may be wrong in his assumptions and that all of these people have nothing to do with the alleged initiative of the us Congress. However, this does not change the fact that if such an initiative does exist, it is directed solely against the very existence of bitcoin.
The good news is that such an attempt is almost doomed to failure. Free and technically more advanced bitcoin will inevitably take over, as the market will always give preference to a better product. Moreover, even if such a JekyllCoin is created, its user base will be limited to the US territory, since no other country, China, Russia, Japan or Nigeria, will accept it. Bitcoin for them is the only chance to get rid of the hegemony of the dollar, especially since any businessman who had the pleasure to face the us banking system knows what is at stake. Ultimately, the emergence of JekyllCoin will lead to the opposite effect and only emphasize the superiority of bitcoin.
Concluding the topic of conspiracy, we can assume that the new theories will continue to proliferate further, giving rise to new discussions. Often they turn out to be useless and sucked out of the finger, but as the German cryptocurrency enthusiast Leo Weese recently wrote, bitcoin itself is one huge conspiracy theory designed to teach us Economics, Finance, politics and computer technology.