With the expansion of financial surveillance and global regulators who envisage stricter controls, the defenders of cryptography warn that the fight for digital life enters a critical phase. In the latest episode of the Clear Crypto podcast, Peter Van Valkenburgh, Executive Director of Coin Center, described the current moment as a tilting point.
Crypto in politics
“The issues have just climbed to DC, not necessarily even better,” he said, pointing a political climate where the crypto has become both more common and more polarizing.
“You may have more partisan discussions, more boosters for technology that sometimes stimulate things that they should not increase, and more detractors of technology that think that it is only scams and corruption and must therefore be prohibited.”
Founded in 2014, Coin Center has long been an independent voice in cryptographic political circles. At that time, legislators began to have questions about Bitcoin.
“There is no business that you can call who is Bitcoin, who can explain the correct answers that are impartial and intact.”
“So Coin Center has risen … in order to be a voice of confidence to explain this to the members of the Congress who plan to make laws.”
Regulation limitations
He underlined the close mission of the organization: defending the rights of developers and users to publish code and execute decentralized networks.
“You should regulate people who trust this space … But you should not settle people who simply develop technology and allow people to do peer transactions.”
These transactions, he warned, are increasingly threatened by global financial surveillance regimes. “When the US Treasury says you have to collect all this information on your customers … It will often also go in an international organization such as the financial action working group … and say that all other countries must collect all this private information,” he said.
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Van Valkenburgh also stressed the importance of technologies improving privacy as well as zero knowledge. “We must build them with zero integrated knowledge,” he said, warning that without change, “identity will become unnecessary because we will never know if we are dealing with a real person or a bot that has just bought [your] Driving license on a dark market. »»
For Van Valkenburgh, privacy is more than a technical challenge; It’s cultural.
“Crypto … is our best hope of building a new Internet and a new way of interacting online more personal and less depersonalized.”
To hear the complete conversation on the Clear Crypto podcast, listen to the full episode on the Cointelegraph podcast page, Apple or Spotify podcasts. And don’t forget to consult the full range of Cointelegraph of other shows!
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