Bitcoin may have been the best investment of all time. If someone had bought one unit of the digital currency for $0.0008 in July 2010 and sold it for $66,974.77 on October 20, 2021 he would have seen the value of the investment rise by a factor of almost 84 million in just a little more than 11 years.
The cryptocurrency allows people to send or receive money via the internet without the need for a third party, and neither sender nor recipient has to be linked to a real identity.
Invented by a person (or persons) using the name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and implemented the following year, the currency remains unregulated today, and the lack of an identity requirement has made it attractive to criminals.
But in truth Bitcoin accounts are not fully anonymous. According to CIA Director Michael Morell, the technology is a very powerful but underutilized forensic tool for governments to identify illicit activity and bring criminals to justice.
That’s because the Blockchain technology behind Bitcoin records every transaction, thereby providing investigators with a permanent and unchangeable record that they can trace back to the user.
Michael Morell believes bad actors will increasingly move away from Bitcoin and seek other avenues to hide their money laundering and other illegal activities.
But he cautions: Osama Bin Laden stopped using his satellite phone to avoid surveillance, but the US Government got him anyway.