Bitcoin is an island of freedom from the commodification of our purchase histories. It is our escape from the end of cash.
Mass surveillance
More and more companies no longer hesitate to sell their customers’ data to different private data dealers (Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft with Xandr, Oracle with BlueKai, LiveRamp, etc.).
This data is used by advertisers, technology companies (to train their AI), investment funds and even political parties. In particular, the purchase histories of credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard are highly sought after.
Knowing how much people spend, where, on what day, says a lot about their financial situation, their habits and, most importantly, the decisions they might make in the future. It is then possible to predict behavior. Both on the consumption level and on the political level.
For example, there is a greater chance that an American who purchased a firearm would vote Republican rather than Democratic. It is likely that a person who bought a wedding ring will soon take out a mortgage. The data crossings are endless.
Mastercard catalogs people based on purchase histories. These groups are called “audiences” that can be targeted at the micro-geographic level.
In addition to selling data on third-party platforms, Mastercard also has its own Data & Services division. Its Dynamic Yield service makes it possible to “capture data at the individual level”. It is “algorithmically predict a person’s next purchase using AI” (thanks to probabilistic statistics).
Such a surveillance system that profiles everyone is extremely dangerous for a democracy worthy of the name. We have already had the demonstration with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a dismal company specializing in psychological profiling.
From Cambridge Analytica to CBDCs
In total, Cambridge Analytica used up to 5,000 different pieces of information gleaned from Facebook to refine its targeting of voters. The firm has gone so far as to classify them according to 32 personality types.
When you combine hundreds, even thousands of likes, it is easy to create psychological profiles. These allow us to know exactly what to show us to influence us against or in favor of this or that thing.
The same thing is possible by cross-referencing data from purchasing histories, internet browsing, geolocation and attendance.
That said, it is still possible to protect your privacy on the internet using VPNs. It is also possible to move around by activating airplane mode to avoid any geolocation.
That said, to be completely anonymous on a social network in 2023, this requires using a VPN, a disposable SIM card, a ghost mailbox and an anonymous bank card.
Staying anonymous becomes a balancing act. And the future is getting even darker with CBDCs which are part of the plan to eliminate cash. Absolutely everything we buy and all our places of visit will then be revealed.
Worse, the chairman of the bank for international settlements Agustin Carstens deplored last week the fact that “nearly 80% of central banks are not allowed to issue digital currency under their existing laws.”
The banker even dared to say that “people want their money to be digital and programmable”. Knowing that money “programmable” is nothing but packaged money.
The end of cash and the possible launch of CBDCs will mean a new form of totalitarianism through rationing. The ultimate nightmare being that CBDCs are linked to social credit feeding on our private data.
Enter bitcoin
If the data that Mastercard monetizes is anonymized, this commodification of private life remains a worrying civilizational drift.
Especially since our data is used in large part to encourage consumption… This is a contradiction with the climate ambitions of the World Economic Forum and others.
Let us recall certain passages from Manifesto of a Cypherpunk written by Eric Hugues in 1993:
“Revealing our personal identity is not essential for most transactions. When I buy a magazine with cash, the newsstander doesn’t have to know who I am. When I ask my email provider to send and receive messages, it doesn’t have to know who I’m talking to, what I’m saying, or what others have to say to me. […] When my identity is revealed by the mechanism inherent in these exchanges, I have no private life. I am no longer able to choose what I reveal to others. […] What to conclude? That privacy in a free and open society requires anonymous transaction systems. […] We need to come together and create systems that allow anonymous transactions. […] We know that code is indestructible and that a largely decentralized system cannot be stopped. »
In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto realized Eric Hugues’s hope with Bitcoin…
Certainly, Bitcoin will not prevent multinationals from putting our data through the AI mill. However, it is an alternative to payment multinationals in addition to offering a buffer against inflation.
You still need to know how to anonymize your bitcoins once withdrawn from exchanges. Our article: Which wallet to choose to obscure your bitcoins?
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