This is the third in a 10-episode video series focusing on Bitcoin privacy, filmed at bitcoin++ Privacy Edition in Riga and elsewhere. Each episode will touch on some aspect of Bitcoin privacy, tools to use Bitcoin privately or surveillance techniques.

Privacy is heads, censorship resistance is tails. They’re two sides of the same coin. 

Everything people do together is inherently interactive. When those interactions cannot be conducted privately, when they become common public knowledge, the participants can be subjected to external pressure. They can be shunned, shamed, jailed or penalized in many other ways. 

Without privacy, you have no censorship resistance. Without privacy, most people will censor themselves. 

In this first episode, I sit down with Yuval Kogman from Spiral to discuss Bitcoin privacy. We go all the way back to Section 10 (Privacy) of the Bitcoin Whitepaper, and trace the path from there to the modern day.

We discuss how privacy can be degraded based on how you use Bitcoin, the different specific ways you leak private information, as well as the lineage of tools that have been created over the years to help users prevent those leaks and protect their transactional privacy.

Click the image below to watch the talk: