How much does anonymity cost?

Publication date: 13 August 2021

Cryptocurrencies will no longer be anonymous

One of the fundamental advantages of cryptocurrency – its anonymity – risks disappearing over the years. According to experts, states will soon introduce mandatory identification of cryptocurrencies, which will destroy anonymous platforms. Perhaps now is the best time to invest in cryptocurrency?

It’s likely that by 2025, many countries will initiate mandatory identification of the owner of cryptocurrency assets when making settlements. Only crypto deposits and savings will remain anonymous. Thus, crypto will be de-anonymized and impersonal traders and holders will disappear from the markets.

In the meantime, there is an increasing demand from ordinary people to pay with cryptocurrencies. The Pymnts resource found this out and released a report on the payment preferences of American consumers, making an aspect on cryptocurrency. The study was conducted together with BitBay. 8 thousand respondents took part in the survey, including both owners of crypto-assets and those who don’t have “new money”. The results were impressive:

• 93% of owners and 59% of non-owners responded positively to the question of whether they would like to shop with crypto.
• 60% of owners expressed an extreme interest in paying to secure purchases and increase privacy.
• 57% of owners and 21% of non-crypto owners are interested in having the offer of cryptocurrency purchase automatically present when selecting a payment type.

Let us recall that Google brought back cryptocurrency advertising from the 3rd of August 2021 for the first time since 2018. The softening of advertising policy primarily concerns regulated cryptocurrency organizations (exchange services, wallets, etc.), but not ICOs (initial coin offerings) and DeFi (analogues of traditional financial instruments).