Privacy

Blaming “a gap in [Coinbase’s] diligence process,” CEO Brian Armstrong writes that Coinbase “did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company.”

Coinbase’s Director of Institutional Sales, Christine Sandler, said in an interview last week that, in part, the exchange acquired controversial software firm Neutrino because its prior blockchain analysis providers were selling customer data.

Among other issues, Reporters Without Borders labeled Hacking Team (the team behind Neutrino) as one of five “Enemies of the Internet” in 2013 for its role in humanitarian abuses against journalists.

Bitfury responds to critics of its Lightning Peach suite of tools who have raised questions about the privacy of user data.

Taproot would expand on Bitcoin’s smart contract flexibility, while offering more privacy in doing so.

The privacy restrictions on Samourai's wallet will only affect the new version available on Google Play.

Jimmy Song explains Neutrino, a new protocol for light clients to get the data that they need while preserving privacy, without trusting a central server.

“Privacy is essential for Bitcoin. Ideally we want to screw up [blockchain] analysis so badly, that they can't even make it.”

Bitcoin technologies made great progress in 2018. In part two of our series, we look at advances in privacy, sidechains and Schnorr signatures.

The CNIL wisely points out, “Blockchain is not always the best technology for all processing of data; it may be the source of difficulties for the controller with respect to its GDPR obligations.”