CryptoTime tackles Facebook Libra exodus, BTC child pornography

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

As the missteps of BTC and Libra continue to pile up, there’s plenty to analyze and figure out where they went wrong. Bitstocks CryptoTime Youtube podcast took on the recent news of both these camps, and Relationship Managers Antonio Shillingford and James Coughlan did not hold back.

They began with Libra, discussing Mark Zuckerberg’s recent testimony in front of the U.S. Congress and the Libra association partners quickly leaving the project. They agreed that Zuckerberg pretty much had to bend to congress members to have any hope of pushing Libra forward.

The quick departure of Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and other Libra members, while unfortunate for Zuckerberg, makes a lot of sense. They have licenses and businesses to protect, Shillingford noted. “It makes sense on why all of those companies, right now, are backing out. Because they need to protect home, they need to protect their bread and butter,” he added.

To wrap up the topic, Coughlan took a look into the future. “The prediction I’m going to make is that Libra will never launch,” said Coughlan. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“I don’t think they have a working model,” Shillingford agreed.

They then moved on to the recent scandals surrounding BTC. Before discussing the specific news at hand, Coughlan shared a basic premise anyone should understand well when it comes to Bitcoin privacy. “Sometimes we have to give up things that, you know, we don’t particularly want to, with the view that it has a greater good on the other end.” he said.

Shillingford then introduced the recent news, broken by Bloomberg, that a massive child pornography ring had been tracked down and broken up thanks to analysis of the BTC blockchain. While its great that these crimes were taken down, Shillingford talked about how they thought they could get away with it due to the false portrayal promoters have created around Bitcoin:

One of the true, true powers of Bitcoin is sight. Being able to hold every single individual accountable for their actions. And these dark markets have been using Bitcoin with the lack of understanding of what it really, really is.

These criminals, he noted, understood that the BTC they were using is a peer to peer money that they can hide behind. “Bitcoin is the complete opposite” Shillingford. Noted. “The fact that, that person was accepting [Bitcoin] as a currency… insinuates that he had a lack of understanding as to what Bitcoin truly was.”

Real Bitcoin, now found in Bitcoin SV (BSV), is an immutable blockchain that shines light on every transaction, giving criminals no room to hide and allowing real businesses to transact in confidence. It provides privacy, but not anonymity. And governments are quickly learning how to use it. Shillingford added:

Governments are more than happy to communicate with each other and are actually now gaining a proper understanding as to what Bitcoin really is, and how they can track people down. And that’s how they broke this ring up.

The real trick, Shillingford added, is in sticking to the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and not what BTC wants to become. “Bitcoin works, it’s doing exactly what it needs to,” he said. “And these mechanism that have been put in place, like Segwit, like the Lightning network, will take away this ability to hold these people accountable for their actions, and at the end of the day, save lives.”

CryptoTime is always a fascinating talk about the latest news in the Bitcoin and blockchain world. Watch the full episode below to see the full conversation.