I first recommended Bitcoin on this website in November 2015. The price was less than $400. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about it, and a lot has changed. Bitcoin is currently at $43,000 and has been as high as $69,000. It is extremely reliable, and much easier to purchase than in 2015. It was a bit of a challenge to purchase it at the time, but it was also anonymous.

I purchased my first BTC by depositing cash into a company’s bank account and emailing them a picture of the receipt from the bank. I gave them my wallet address and they sent it to me. No one asked for my name. I bought more by meeting a guy at a convenience store and gave him cash. That is still a valid method for maintaining privacy, and I’d still do that, but it’s not quite as worry-free as it was at the time. I even had a Coinbase account where I linked my bank account, but gave a false name. Not sure how privacy-minded it is to link your bank account and give a false name, but it’s an indication of where Bitcoin was at the time.

At some point, Bitcoin decided they wanted to please the government so you can’t buy it on any decent exchange without KYC (know your customer) and providing all your information. You can’t buy very much at a Bitcoin ATM (which are a huge ripoff) without KYC. Americans are banned from many exchanges because they don’t want to comply with whatever the US government is requiring. Bitcoin is government’s bitch.

That’s not all. Something I didn’t realize until recently is that from the beginning, every wallet balance and every transaction is completely public and will be public information as long as Bitcoin lasts. At first it was pseudonymous, as I pointed out. But now, the government can track everything and for the most part can know every penny you spend. It is a government dream-come-true. It is not even close to being as private as a bank.

Bitcoin may still be useful and may still go up in value. However, since most people don’t realize how public it is, they aren’t being careful about how they use it.

Furthermore, when I first got into Bitcoin, its purpose was to work as a currency. Now, they say it’s digital gold. You’re not supposed to ever sell it. It would be foolish to sell it or use it as a currency, because it is going to go to $100,000 or $1 million or whatever. It was supposed to be a way to phase out dollars. You can’t use it to phase out dollars if you’re only supposed to hold it.

There are alternatives that I can recommend. I can’t guarantee they’ll go up in value like Bitcoin, but I think they will. However, they aren’t to be horded but they are to be used and traded. They aren’t digital gold; they are currency to be used.

Monero and Pirate Chain are two completely private currencies. No amount of government spying on the block chain will yield any results for them. Pirate has the best technology, while Monero is older but definitely good. We need to be using these and developing businesses with them. They aren’t to be horded but used to destroy the monopoly of incredibly depreciating US dollars.