Wasabi Wallet is non-custodial, meaning that you retain full ownership over your private keys and, consequently, your bitcoin. Wasabi is also open-source and emerged out of a community that promotes the values of collaboration, transparency, and meritocracy. Anyone can see and verify how Wasabi Wallet works for themselves and can even contribute to its code if desired.

Wasabi Wallet is well-known for making privacy-boosting coinjoin transactions accessible to everyone, but some may not be aware of the extent its range of customizable features allow users to shape their own experience while usingWasabi Wallet. So let’s dive into some of Wasabi Wallet’s stellar features:

• Impressive customizability with Wasabi Wallet
• Coinjoin strategies
• Privacy progress
• User-friendly pricing
• Further customizable settings
• Privacy-oriented suggestions
• General settings
• Bitcoin settings
• Engage with Wasabi Wallet’s privacy-enhancing features

Impressive customizability with Wasabi Wallet

You’re likely aware that coinjoins are special bitcoin transactions integrated into Wasabi Wallet that involve combining two or more people’s transactions, removing the link between which outputs are paid by which inputs, significantly improving Bitcoin privacy and fungibility.

Wasabi Wallet uses the WabiSabi anonymous credential scheme, which helps make coinjoins as accessible and efficient as possible. Wasabi has automatic Tor integrations that mask users’ IP addresses to enhance their privacy while using their wallet, and locally installed Tor integrations are also possible.

Wasabi Wallet backups are hierarchically deterministic, which means a single recovery seed phrase can generate a nearly infinite amount of new bitcoin addresses for users to receive payments with.

Within Wasabi Wallet, you’ll find that you can select from a range of customizable options based on your particular needs when it comes to Bitcoin privacy. A coinjoin anonymity score target can be chosen from a range that falls between 2 and 300. Users can instruct the wallet to wait hours, days, weeks, or months for the cheapest available mining fees before coinjoining in order to save every possible sat.

Wasabi Wallet is accessible to users with limited knowledge of Bitcoin privacy strategies, and the platform is equipped with guides to help users navigate the wallet. At the same time, Wasabi’s customizability makes its use satisfying to users with specialized knowledge.

Coinjoin strategies

When you launch Wasabi Wallet, you’ll notice there are three default coinjoin profile types that you can select from: Minimize Costs, Maximize Speed, and Maximize Privacy. In addition to these three default profiles, users can also opt to design their own customized profile that strikes an ideal balance between affordability, speed, and privacy.

Privacy progress

Next to your balance, you’ll notice a privacy progress bar that assigns a percentage based on the amount of your entire wallet balance that has been made private using coinjoin transactions.

When you first create your new wallet, your score will appear as 100% until you add to your bitcoin balance. From there, you’ll be able to improve your privacy progress percentage by making coinjoin transactions.

User-friendly pricing

When registering for a coinjoin, Wasabi’s default coordinator charges 0.3% for inputs worth more than 0.01 BTC. This fee is designed to only be paid once since the coordinator allows any output of a previous coinjoin round to register for future coinjoin rounds for free. This allows users to further increase the privacy of their coins without paying again. To further encourage best privacy practices, coordinator fees are also waived for any change created from payments sent using private coins.

As a side effect of allowing no coordinator fees for change outputs, the transaction recipient is able to coinjoin without paying the coordinator as well. This means that transactions sent from one Wasabi user to another will not require coordinator fees for either transaction participant.

Further customizable settings

With Wasabi Wallet, you can toggle Discrete Mode (which was previously known as Privacy Mode) which hides all sensitive information on your screen, replacing all of the numbers with hash symbols. This can be useful under circumstances wherein access to your wallet is necessary but there are other people nearby who may be able to see your device’s screen. Discrete mode is also convenient for taking screenshots of the client without revealing every detail of your transaction history.

Privacy-oriented suggestions

Before you send a transaction using Wasabi wallet, you’ll be provided with a Transaction Preview that gives you a quick overview of how much bitcoin you’re sending, in addition to the address it’s heading to, the estimated transaction time, and any fee to be incurred. When non-private coins are being sent, your Transaction Preview will let you know who could have access to information about the transaction.

When you send bitcoin using Wasabi Wallet, you’ll also get suggestions on how you can avoid creating leftover change from your transaction that is returned to your wallet. The orange shield icon appearing in the top right part of the Transaction Preview shows how much more or less to send with your transaction in order to create only one output, reducing the sender’s footprint on the blockchain.

General settings

Within the general settings area of Wasabi Wallet, you can choose whether you want to run your wallet in light mode or dark mode. You can opt for network anonymization, and whether Tor should terminate or continue to run when Wasabi is no longer active. Fees can be displayed either in BTC or sats and you can dictate whether Bitcoin addresses are automatically copy & pasted or not.

Bitcoin settings

In the Bitcoin settings area of Wasabi Wallet, you can choose which network to operate on: the Main network, RegTest, or TestNet. You can elect to run Bitcoin Knots as a full node which downloads the entire blockchain history.

If you’d like a full walkthrough of the features of Wasabi Wallet and for a visual demonstration of the range of customization that it can allow for, check out this walkthrough video.

Engage with Wasabi Wallet’s privacy-enhancing features

Wasabi Wallet is private, secure, and incredibly easy to use. The wallet lets you get up and running with just a few clicks while performing coinjoin transactions in the background.

The wealth of features available to Wasabi Wallet users emerged out of an engagement with the community surrounding Wasabi. By reacting responsively to suggestions for ways that everyone’s Bitcoin experience can be made more seamless and more private, Wasabi has continued to become even better.

Recent improvements to Wasabi Wallet include an even smoother UI, optimized connectivity with Tor, and an enhanced experience for whales who own significant amounts of Bitcoin. If you’re looking to make bitcoin transactions in a significantly safer way, download Wasabi Wallet to get started.

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Inherent to the way Bitcoin works, however, is that when personally identifying information is attached to bitcoin transactions, it can be possible for external parties to track who is doing what with their bitcoin, which can have a negative impact on Bitcoin’s privacy-bolstering potential.

A coinjoin is a special kind of bitcoin transaction where two or more people’s transactions are combined, which breaks the link between transactions, improving each coinjoin participant’s privacy. When Bitcoin users have the ability to selectively reveal themselves to the world, everyone benefits.

Let’s take a closer look at how coinjoins work, how they can benefit you, and how Wasabi Wallet is making coinjoin transactions both more powerful and accessible to everyone.

Why use coinjoin?

One big benefit of coinjoin transactions is that they don’t necessitate any kind of modifications to Bitcoin’s protocol. They’re also trustless and can be easily implemented within privacy-minded bitcoin wallets like Wasabi Wallet.

Wasabi Wallet is open-source, trustless by design, and non-custodial, which means that it provides full transparency and sovereignty to users.

In a world where a lot of initiatives are hellbent on collecting as much information about you as possible, it’s imperative to seek out software that values your privacy and prioritizes its own transparency.

Coinjoin makes Bitcoin better

Coinjoin transactions remove the link between which outputs are being paid by which inputs. Since users’ bitcoins are mobilized in these transactions, users need the assurance that their bitcoins are secure through each step, which is facilitated through the trustless design of wallets like Wasabi.

Centralization is sometimes positioned as a necessary step in encouraging the kind of widespread adoption needed to facilitate Bitcoin’s ability to transform digital transactions globally. But this is a kind of paradox—modifying Bitcoin so that it more closely resembles existing financial infrastructure reduces its ability to disrupt existing financial infrastructure.

Rather, user-friendly Bitcoin tools that emerge from privacy-minded communities can pave the way for use of the Bitcoin network that makes it truly the currency for everyone, keeping users themselves in the driver’s seat, rather than centralizing forces.

Privacy issues inherent to Bitcoin

The importance of financial privacy is self-evident.  Nobody wants everyone to know exactly where they spend their money. Freedom is found in choosing how we reveal ourselves, not through knowing everything about everyone.

The privacy of Bitcoin can be compromised in a few ways. Some Bitcoin privacy issues are related to how users spend or receive their coins, such as using the same address to receive payments from multiple sources. Other privacy issues are caused by how your wallet connects to the Bitcoin network, which can be improved by using Tor to disguise your interactions and by using your own Bitcoin node to find the balance of your addresses, for example.

Other areas of Bitcoin privacy concern come as a result of direct efforts by regulatory bodies to surveil bitcoin users and can be improved upon by avoiding unscrupulous exchanges. Invasive “know your customer” policies are in place at centralized cryptocurrency exchanges that require the collection of an array of users’ personal information. Many Bitcoin-based projects are under pressure to collect as much of users’ data as they can.

Improving bitcoin’s Fungibility

Fungibility is an important feature of successful currencies. If some bitcoins are valued more than others because of the history of the transactions they’ve been involved in, then bitcoin can’t be exchanged evenly, which limits functionality. When there’s a dichotomy between there being “clean” and “dirty” bitcoins, users don’t benefit.

Coinjoins are an effective solution when it comes to bitcoin’s fungibility. One erroneous sentiment holding back the adoption of coinjoin transactions is the idea that simply performing coinjoin transactions could be an indicator of evasive behaviour, and that fresh coins should be approached with skepticism.

When coinjoin transactions become the norm, it’s good for everyone who uses Bitcoin. The more coinjoin transactions are completed, the closer a world wherein worry about what transactions your bitcoin was associated with in the past is not a factor.

Coinjoining is customizable

Performing coinjoin transactions using Wasabi Wallet couldn’t be easier. Coinjoin transactions take place automatically in the background of Wasabi Wallet. By default, Wasabi’s coinjoin transactions start being built automatically when the value of non-private coins is above or equal to the auto-start coinjoin threshold. However, the coinjoin process can be set to begin manually, too.

When you use Wasabi Wallet, you can customize what kind of coinjoin strategy should be adhered to. Coinjoin transactions with Wasabi are always affordable, speedy, and private, but Wasabi coinjoins can be specifically set to keep costs at a minimum, to maximize speed, or to make privacy the highest priority, depending on your goals.

Coinjoins are affordable, or even free

With Wasabi Wallet’s customizable coinjoin behavior, users can instruct their wallet to wait in the background whenever transaction fees are high and only participate during the cheapest parts of the week.

There is an optional fee collected by the coinjoin coordinator.  Newly received inputs larger than 0.01 BTC  pay a 0.3% coordinator fee. For amounts smaller than 0.01 BTC, the coordinator does not charge a fee at all. Remixing private coins is free of coordinator fees, as well as coinjoining coins that are just one hop away from a coinjoin transaction, such as your change from making a payment, or even a payment received from another Wasabi Wallet user.

Wasabi Wallet offers both power and simplicity

Bitcoin’s development originally emerged out of the work of privacy-minded online communities that had a vision for a decentralized currency that didn’t require interference from centralized banks or other intermediaries.

As Bitcoin awareness and use have become more integrated into mainstream society, there has been a slow creep towards centralization and regulation that runs counter to the ideals that Bitcoin was created in accordance with.

Wasabi Wallet offers users the ability to use Bitcoin the way it was originally envisioned—private, secure, and efficient. Importantly, Wasabi is easy to use, offering users the ability to take control of their own privacy without advanced knowledge of transactions or protocols. The best way to unearth the powerful simplicity of Wasabi Wallet is by taking it for a spin yourself.

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Bitcoin is a key factor in the investment strategies of many institutional and retail investors. Mass awareness of Bitcoin has largely arrived, as the percentage of people who are at least familiar with the idea of Bitcoin is high. However, there are gulfs between those with awareness of Bitcoin, those who own the cryptocurrency and those who use it as the currency it was designed to function as.

Considering the impressive functionality Bitcoin already possesses and the historic highs its value has hit, it can be startling to remember that mass adoption is still underway and will represent massive growth in value and applications.

As is the case with any emerging technology, those who immerse themselves in the landscape prior to mainstream adoption put themselves in a powerful position as cryptocurrency becomes more entrenched in the financial world. Let’s take a look at the path of adoption that Bitcoin is on, the tools that can make Bitcoin even better and what the implications of a hyperbitcoinized world could be.

Degrees of adoption

According to a report from 2022, around forty million Americans have either traded crypto or have expressed interest in doing so. Another report from one year earlier stated that more than a quarter of Americans own bitcoin.

While these numbers are impressive, they don’t refer to a clearly-defined standard of what adoption truly means. For example, those who buy bitcoin simply to hold as an investment strategy are certainly Bitcoin users, but they can’t be said to have embraced the full potential of Bitcoin as the world’s most promising system for value transfer and storage.

As such, the percentage of users who have adopted Bitcoin in a significant way—making it central to both their saving and spending needs—is far lower than the numbers cited above. The fact that so few people are using Bitcoin to its fullest potential is another reason to feel optimistic about the future of Bitcoin adoption, as the room for growth is immense.

Bitcoin as more than an investment strategy

Compared to many other assets, Bitcoin adoption happens on a sliding scale rather than in a binary fashion. For example, when personal computers gained popularity and affordability, computer adoption could be easily measured by whether one had a computer. When someone purchased a computer, they could be said to have fully adopted computer usage.

Bitcoin adoption, however, tends to occur in waves that increase in frequency and size. A user may experiment with trading for $20 worth of bitcoin, and then may begin exchanging more and more of their fiat currency for bitcoin when they become more comfortable and optimistic in the network’s infrastructure and the third-party tools that facilitate its use.

Particularly in the developing world, Bitcoin can empower a staggering number of people who currently do not have access to traditional banking. Across the world, decentralized finance is a pathway towards regaining the privacy that has been eroded by over-intrusive tech giants.

Bitcoin can help usher in a new area of financial liberation by helping users sidestep the issues associated with the traditional online payment ecosystem, including high fees, red tape, long wait times and a lack of control over one’s funds.

Comfort and confidence

One sign that some experts associate with widespread adoption is the ability to utilize cryptocurrencies without a full technical understanding of how they work. This point may seem counterintuitive since users with a high degree of knowledge about Bitcoin are good for the development of the landscape, too.

The reality, however, is that to become attractive to a more substantive portion of the population, Bitcoin needs to be accessible to those without extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of blockchains, peer-to-peer networks or even financial systems.

This can be compared to how smartphone adoption did not rely on users understanding the infrastructure and underlying technology that made these devices possible. It was smartphone usability that propelled these devices into each of our pockets, not a sense of their potential or an abstract belief in what they represented. Tools that help make Bitcoin streamlined and intuitive for users of all backgrounds will have a key role to play on the path toward full-on adoption.

Promising factors regarding bitcoin’s global adoption

Bitcoin is the best hard money asset

Bitcoin is a quickly evolving ecosystem. Developments and trends in the larger cryptocurrency space can be difficult to anticipate; few could have predicted the dramatic rise in popularity of NFTs, for instance, or the surge in awareness and value attributed to memecoins. In El Salvador, Bitcoin has established itself as the country’s legal tender—a degree of adoption that would have been unthinkable a few short years ago.

However, Bitcoin’s growing global adoption is unsurprising, when one keeps in mind that Bitcoin is the most solid and technologically-advanced form of hard money that exists. Though developments, value swings and news stories associated with Bitcoin can be hard to predict, its future is fixed and predictable.

Bitcoin has no elasticity, which means the supply of Bitcoin is not and never will be affected by changes in price. After all, only 21 million Bitcoin will ever be produced. In times of global instability and rapid inflation, Bitcoin’s status as hard money is made even more attractive by how it exists entirely in the digital world, making storage and security solutions ideal.

Bitcoin is always improving

While Bitcoin is often thought of as enabling anonymous transactions, it isn’t fully private by nature. Transactions and address balances are visible on the blockchain to anyone interested in viewing them. While Bitcoin addresses could be thought of as anonymous because they don’t themselves directly link to users’ identity, these addresses can be linked to users indirectly through personal information collected by merchants.

Third-party tools that bolster Bitcoin’s privacy and security represent important developments aiding adoption. coinjoin methods are one way Bitcoin’s privacy can be tightened up. With coinjoin, separation is created between each bitcoin’s past, present and future by pooling and mixing bitcoins to obscure their provenance. Wasabi offers an open-source and easy-to-use Bitcoin wallet that lets users easily utilize customizable coinjoin features.

Factors inhibiting Bitcoin adoption

Government fear and cynicism

Some of the aspects of Bitcoin that make it a powerful and empowering tool are the same aspects that make governments wary of it. Bitcoin cannot be readily regulated and it has the potential to weaken the ability of governments to create monetary policy and influence the economy.

Some forward-thinking governments have utilized Bitcoin to improve circumstances for both the country and its citizens. In particular, 2022 has seen Ukraine benefit enormously by embracing Bitcoin during their hardships. The government has accepted donations and other aid in Bitcoin and citizens have used it to facilitate cross-border transfers, as a hedge against inflation and to mitigate the effects of an unstable national currency.

For the most part, major countries including the United States and China have taken consistent steps to restrict and regulate the use of Bitcoin, as its decentralization poses a risk to their economic control over individuals.

Bitcoin-resistant governments often point to the link between Bitcoin and crime as being at the root of their skepticism. However, many Bitcoin and finance experts have pointed out that the link between Bitcoin and cybercrime is largely overblown.

In 2020, a report from Chainalysis stated that the percentage of cryptocurrency transactions linked to criminal use has been decreasing overall to around a third of one percent of all cryptocurrency transactions today. Meanwhile, the UN estimates that between two and five percent of global GDP can be linked to crime and money laundering—a far higher rate. For this reason, government hand-wringing about Bitcoin’s facilitation of illicit activities can be read as ill-informed at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

In an investigation of how government bodies identify black market transactions, the Wasabi team discovered that governments view anything that was purchased in a “non-compliant” way as a black market transaction, regardless of what was purchased. However, common practices among blockchain analysis firms recognize that black market transactions require more stringent classification.

Technological barriers to entry

There’s an unfortunate trade-off that often happens for new users of Bitcoin wherein monetary sovereignty is traded away in exchange for ease of use. Newcomers to the Bitcoin landscape are often looking for the path of least resistance. These all too often come in the form of heavily-marketed centralized exchanges that can be more closely aligned philosophically with big banks than they are with the modern-day cypherpunk vision.

Users with knowledge of blockchain technology tend to be aware of how to keep their Bitcoin secure, and of the importance of maintaining ownership over their private keys. On the other hand, users who make use of and trust these popular centralized exchanges for storing their bitcoin sacrifice much of the decentralized freedom that Bitcoin represents.

Adoption of Bitcoin in the future can be greatly aided by tools that provide users with a smooth and streamlined experience without leading to increased centralization. Non-custodial wallets like Wasabi that don’t make users give up their private keys are an important development, as they help Bitcoin adoption grow while protecting Bitcoin users from the relentless creep of centralization and regulation.

Wasabi Wallet’s Role in Bitcoin’s Growing Adoption

Beyond the financial benefits of pivoting to Bitcoin, the philosophical implications of a global population that’s vested in increased agency online is a reason to be optimistic for the future. Bitcoin is an inherently idealistic proposition—a decentralized currency that puts users in control of their funds and, by extension, their privacy.

A belief in Bitcoin’s widespread global adoption needs to be rooted in the realities it faces, particularly in terms of security and privacy. After all, Bitcoin’s adoption will only be a success if it retains its ability to be a crypto-anarchist-minded tool that protects users’ secure financial transactions.

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In the internet’s early days, it was structured more in accordance with anarchist ideals, offering users privacy and a less hierarchical experience. Today, the internet is dominated by government and Big Tech players that have eroded personal autonomy and transparency.

Everyone has a fundamental right to privacy. These days, pushing back against the tide of insidious data collection and online privacy infringements requires the deployment of anarchist-inspired notions of self-determination and privacy as freedom. Wrenching some sovereignty back from overreaching companies, organizations, and government agencies is feasible with the help of privacy-minded tools and strategies. Let’s take a closer look at how digital initiatives that promote greater freedom and autonomy are embracing anarchist principles.

What is Crypto-Anarchy?

The internet is at the root of how many people organize their lives. For this reason, most contemporary discussion of personal freedoms tends to be centered around the right to digital privacy.

The prefix “crypto” is often used negatively to refer to groups who have hidden motives or views. For instance, the term “crypto-fascist” refers to those with fascist views who hide their fascism in order to avoid stigma or consequences. On the other hand, the “crypto” prefix used in the term “crypto-anarchy” refers to strategies for cultivating autonomy that make use of cryptography tools.

As such, while crypto-anarchy is rooted in strategies that foster privacy and anonymity, these goals themselves are not obscured by crypto-anarchists. In fact, many crypto-anarchists are actively involved in promoting the importance and value of digital cryptography tools.

Historically, anarchism itself has been associated with left-wing thought, and anarchy’s aversion to hierarchical structures draws associations to communalism and libertarian socialism. However, crypto-anarchy today has links to anarcho-capitalism, too—a right-libertarian political philosophy centered around ownership of private property absent of centralized control.

Anarcho-capitalism calls for a voluntary society that individuals design themselves with the help of private agencies; in an ideal anarcho-capitalist society, individuals would voluntarily opt into contracts of participation designed to fulfill the will of the people.

Anarchy and Privacy

Anarchist thought is largely centered around skepticism towards coercion from intrusive governing forces. Personal privacy is widely regarded as an inalienable right. For instance, the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.”

Freedom of thought, freedom of association, freedom of expression, and freedom from discrimination are all rooted in the individual’s right to create boundaries and to choose what to reveal and what to hide from others. Actions as simple and intuitive as putting on clothing or closing the bathroom door are rooted in our implicit understanding that there are aspects of ourselves we prefer not to share with others, for a number of reasons.

As individuals, we make countless decisions about our privacy every day. Insisting that our privacy is not violated without consent is an important way we protect ourselves from abuses of power. However, the ever-increasing role of technology in our lives has blurred our relationship to privacy. While we would naturally feel skeptical of anyone eavesdropping on our conversations, going through our mail, or searching our homes without a warrant, digital surveillance has created a panopticon effect in which it’s nearly impossible to tell who is collecting information about us, and for what purpose.

Crypto-anarchist tools offer users renewed awareness and control over what information they are sharing with external parties, which is an important step in eradicating privacy intrusions.

A History of Bitcoin’s Relationship to Anarchy

The principles that led to the development of Bitcoin are the result of a deep and sustained engagement with anarchist ideals. The original development of this technology can be traced to the Cyperpunks’ mailing list from the early 1990s—a virtual meeting place of early digital privacy enthusiasts.

The Cypherpunks are an example of a digital voluntary society. Many Cypherpunks communicated anonymously by way of aliases, and used cryptographic tools both as a matter of principle—believing in online anonymity as a path towards greater online freedom—and to seize the potential of the power of cryptography as a path towards decentralized and uncoerced economic transactions, for instance.

Challenges Facing Bitcoin’s Role as a Privacy Tool

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. All transactions are permanently recorded and stored on the blockchain without the need for regulatory forces or third-party verification. These are essential aspects of its potential as an empowering and privacy-minded digital currency. However, these characteristics also require additional tools and strategies to ensure its capacity to maximize privacy and personal freedom.

Many newcomers to Bitcoin see it as a short-term investment vehicle, primarily focused on fluctuations in the price of bitcoin rather than the revolutionary potential behind decentralized money. Novice users may leave their bitcoin exchanges, which essentially negates the freedom-related benefits of Bitcoin.

Most popular cryptocurrency exchanges are centralized (CEXs), meaning third parties have control and oversight over users’ funds. The well-known expression “not your keys, not your coins” refers to the fact that those who have access to bitcoin assets’ private keys (CEXs) ultimately have control over the assets.

When users put their private keys in the hands of others, this is an aspect of their privacy (and freedom) that they are giving away in exchange for convenience.

The pitfalls of CEXs go beyond the privacy-related issue of private key ownership, too. Major crypto exchange hacks have occurred in the past, resulting in users losing their bitcoin. Some bitcoin exchanges, including Quadriga, have been outright scams, defrauding users of their money.

One of Bitcoin’s most integral features is how it offers users the ability to have custody of their own assets, without fear of outside interference. An understanding of the fundamental principles of Bitcoin and the history of its development is an important aspect of learning how to use it as a defensive privacy tool.

Defensive Tools to Establish Personal Privacy

Those with limited familiarity with Bitcoin often presume it to be an anonymous currency, but the opposite is true. Bitcoin operates under principles of transparency, which allow all transactions on the blockchain to be publicly viewed and verified.

Users’ public keys can be linked to past transactions, which can be linked to users’ personal identities through Know Your Customer (KYC) policies. KYC requires that merchants collect data about their customers. For instance, if you use Bitcoin to purchase an item from a website, that website may collect your address and other information, creating a link between that information and your Bitcoin address. Users’ IP addresses can also be linked to Bitcoin transactions, leading some users to enlist services that hide their IP addresses.

Anonymizing Strategies

New tools have been emerging that seek to improve Bitcoin’s privacy in order to give users more control over how personal data is shared. Coinjoin is one popular anonymizing strategy for Bitcoin. Coinjoin works by allowing users to temporarily join their funds together, acting as a kind of opaque wall between previous and future transactions.

Additionally, privacy experts tend to recommend privacy-minded internet browsers to make bitcoin-related activity less publicly viewable. Tor’s browser is a well-established anonymizing tool. Its free browser gives users the ability to mask their web activity from outside parties using multi-layered encryption. When it comes to communicating about cryptocurrency transactions, experts recommend end-to-end encrypted messaging services like Signal.

Wasabi Wallet

Privacy-minded digital wallets are an effective way to maintain control over your bitcoin and to address the privacy concerns inherent to Bitcoin. Wasabi Wallet 2.0 is a privacy-focused bitcoin wallet that is user-friendly and offers a shortcut to the privacy-enhancing benefits of Bitcoin as a tool for crypto-anarchists.

Wasabi Wallet is a zero-knowledge tool, which means its developers collect no information about users. Making use of the Tor network, block filtering, and coinjoin technology, Wasabi Wallet 2.0 is trust free. It is also a non-custodial wallet, giving users control over their own private keys, offering the full self-determining potential of Bitcoin.

Wasabi Wallet as a Defensive Technology

Without access to the right tools, protecting oneself from insidious surveillance and data collection can feel overwhelming. Across the internet, privacy and security issues are widespread, and many web-based services are oppressively hierarchical, offering little to no independence and freedom for users.

According to one study from the Pew Research Centre, four in five Americans feel they have little to no control over how their data is viewed and collected online, and around the same number believe the pitfalls of this digital surveillance outweigh any benefits. The same study shows that well over half of Americans are concerned about digital surveillance.

Those interested in preserving their privacy online have rightfully gravitated towards Bitcoin and the crypto sphere, which has a history rooted in strong-willed individualism in the face of intrusion from overbearing institutions. While some people associate the term “anarchy” with the avoidance of rules or consequences, the opposite is true—crypto-anarchist ideals are centered around transparency, equality, and fairness for all. Privacy is a key component of personal freedom, and tools like Wasabi Wallet help users defend their individual online property rights as part of a path toward a more liberated life.

The post We Already Live in Anarchy appeared first on Wasabi Wallet - Blog.

Bitcoin is at the forefront of future-thinking approaches to payments, investing and a range of other applications that extend far beyond its role as a digital currency. While Bitcoin represents the future of digital currency, its prioritization of censorship resistance has links back to the cypherpunk movement, which first emerged in the 1980s and became prevalent in the 1990s as internet adoption began to pick up steam.

Tracing contemporary privacy concerns back to early online privacy activists can be an enlightening way to develop a sense of where Bitcoin may be headed in the future. Some of the top figures who advocate for online privacy, including Timothy May, have links to the original cypherpunk movement. Assange penned the 2012 book Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, which bolstered mainstream awareness of the cypherpunk movement.

Cypherpunks tend to believe in the power of cryptography and other online privacy strategies centered around combating widespread digital surveillance. For decades, cypherpunks have been designing strategies and platforms to preserve online privacy for those who recognize its importance. Let’s dive into the history of the cypherpunk movement and how its adherents and principles are having a continued impact on the Bitcoin landscape.

Who Were the Original Cypherpunks?

In the early nineties, a group of computer scientists, programmers, and cryptographers assembled with mathematician Eric Hughes in order to discuss what they saw as the looming threat of increased surveillance facilitated by the burgeoning internet infrastructure. These early internet activists shared a libertarian sensibility—believing that the state should hold only minimal involvement in citizens’ private lives. The cypherpunk movement grew out of monthly meetings between this group and its name was a play on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction coined by Jude Milhon, which itself drew influence from early hacker culture.

The group created the first anonymous remailer,  the cypherpunk mailing list, in which they developed visionary ideas about online privacy. Tim May—who previously worked at Intel—was a founding member and prolific contributor to the cypherpunks electronic mailing list. He also put forth the idea of tools enabling anonymous browsing of the web as well as the idea of anonymous online marketplaces and anonymous whistleblowing systems—all of which are ideas that have seen a number of applications in the years since. The cypherpunks communicated in a brash, jargon-laden style, and their mailing list grew into a core hub of the discussion and development of online privacy strategies. The mailing list became defunct in the early 2000s, but by then the movement was fully up and running and had developed anonymous ways of communicating and sharing resources online.

Is the Cypherpunk Movement Active Today?

In his work “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” Eric Hughes wrote “Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” Frequently, politicians and those who run large social media companies assert that privacy can no longer be expected online, and that only those who have something to hide should be worried about being watched. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in an influential TedTalk about online privacy in 2014, we make countless choices every day about what we choose to reveal and obscure from others in our lives and we should protect our right to be able to do so online.

Many online privacy-minded applications and initiatives were either created by people with links to the original cypherpunk movement, or were directly inspired by its philosophies. As mentioned, Julian Assange was an active member of the cypherpunk mailing list and his WikiLeaks organization was directly inspired by the cypherpunk focus on the need for anonymous whistleblowing resources. Other influential people associated with the cypherpunk ideologies include Jacob Appelbaum, who was not involved with creating the cypherpunk mailing list but was later a core member of the team that developed the open-source anonymous communication platform, Tor; Adam Back, who created Hashcash (a proof-of-work algorithm) and Blockstream (a company providing products and services built around Bitcoin), and Bram Cohen, who created BitTorrent.

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper using concepts that drew directly from the work of Adam Back, with whom Nakamoto had been in contact. In Bitcoin’s whitepaper, Nakamoto referenced the revolutionary concept of a currency in which transactions are publicly viewable while utilizing private keys to sign unique transactions. Bitcoin was a leap forward in the development of the kind of cryptocurrency first posited by the cypherpunk movement.

Recent Cypherpunk Developments

Much of the appeal of Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies is centered around the values championed by the cypherpunk movement. Decentralized, anonymous currency rooted in cryptography offers resistance to unnecessary (and ultimately corrupt) government interference. Ideally, cryptocurrencies place privacy and transacting power back into the hands of individuals who are able to control what information they share.

Alongside the continued growth and development of Bitcoin—which maintains its cypherpunk-influenced integrity—there has also been a movement towards cryptocurrencies that have moved away from decentralized models. In the interest of mainstream growth and adoption, they stray from the individual privacy efforts that are central to the cypherpunk vision. Converting centralized (fiat) currency into Bitcoin often requires the use of centralized exchanges and the regulations these entail, which typically degrade users’ privacy. Many new Bitcoin users utilize centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken, which collect extensive personal information and have policies that threaten transaction privacy.

Bitcoin is central to the development of a forward-thinking movement towards individuals holding the keys to their own Bitcoin. However, there are aspects inherent to Bitcoin that have privacy concerns that innovators are taking steps to combat. The fact that every Bitcoin transaction and address balance is viewable to anyone on the blockchain is key to the decentralized authentication of Bitcoin transactions, as it avoids the need for middlemen. When each transaction’s details can be viewed, it ensures nobody breaks the rules.

While Bitcoin addresses are not directly linked to users’ identities, they certainly can be. Once one active address’ identity is revealed, the privacy of each party that has engaged in transactions with the compromised address can be threatened. Additionally, “know your customer” requirements from online merchants, which verify users’ identities over time as a security function, can disturb users’ privacy when ostensibly anonymous transactions are connected to these transactions.

Coinjoin as a Contemporary Cypherpunk Innovation

An important concept when it comes to Bitcoin’s ability to provide an anonymous and private payment method is fungibility. Fungibility refers to the ability of an asset to be exchanged freely for the same denomination of the same asset. For instance, an unmarked $20 bill’s value does not depend on the bill’s provenance. On the other hand, non-fungible stores of value include artworks, which are unique and where previous ownership is factored into an item’s worth.

Bitcoin is designed to be a fully fungible currency, but this can be threatened when certain coins can be linked through their transaction history to an unscrupulous user or exchange. One technique associated with restoring fungibility for Bitcoin users is Coinjoin. Coinjoin is an obfuscation strategy that severs the tie between previous transactions by joining coins together, which effectively anonymizes them.

CoinJoin activity itself can be viewed on the blockchain and there is still a limit to the success of this obfuscation strategy. Some users may feel that coins that have undergone this process are undesirable. For this reason, the widespread adoption of Coinjoin may be necessary in order to create a situation where obfuscation is destigmatized and seen as a privacy-retaining tool, rather than as a sign of suspicious activity.

The growing mainstream adoption of Bitcoin is an example of destigmatization of this nature, as the link between Bitcoin and anonymous online marketplaces like Silk Road (wherein users paid in bitcoin for goods and services that were illegal in certain jurisdictions) became less of a focus.

Wasabi Wallet as a Tool for Cypherpunks

One groundbreaking tool that goes a long way towards making Bitcoin adhere to the privacy standards that the original cypherpunks strove for is Wasabi Wallet—a privacy-focused, non-custodial Bitcoin wallet. Wasabi Wallet uses Coinjoin obfuscation and integrates Tor as a strategy to prevent network deanonymization attacks.

One challenge faced by Bitcoin wallet developers is how to ensure the privacy of users while also making wallets user-friendly and accessible to those without extensive technical knowledge. The original cypherpunk movement was composed of developers, programmers, mathematicians, and cryptographers. The movement’s motto — “cypherpunks write code” — refers both to the programming skills of the community and the focus on encryption. These days, widespread adoption among those without specialized knowledge is the goal of many developers of Bitcoin-related tools.

Wasabi Wallet is a desktop wallet, which tends to allow for more robust software than mobile offerings. It prevents third party access to users’ wallet information, increased fungibility provided by Coinjoin technology, and offers the privacy benefits of the Tor onion network.

The recently-launched Wasabi Wallet 2.0 provides a revamped interface. Wasabi Wallet lets users choose between three coinjoin strategies, depending on whether their main priority is maximizing privacy, maximizing speed or minimizing costs. Users can easily view their wallet’s privatization progress and can also implement Discreet Mode, which further hides sensitive information.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tend to naturally attract those who value online privacy and who see the benefits of being in control of how information is collected and distributed. Wasabi makes it easy to send and receive Bitcoin with more privacy than other services suited to average bitcoin users. Coinjoin and other anonymization strategies implemented by Wasabi are paving the way towards a landscape in which it’s possible for all Bitcoin users to be cypherpunks, even without specialized knowledge.

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In his work “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” Eric Hughes wrote, “Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” The weight of this comment may not be immediately obvious but is increasingly relevant in our day-to-day lives.

The importance of online privacy is relevant to everyone—not just users who are looking to avoid the scrutiny of authorities for reasons related to questionable activities. Even users who are comfortable with having their every move online tracked should be aware that large data breaches regularly occur at major companies and governments. These events expose users’ personal data to hackers, which can be exploited in various ways.

Everyone on the Internet Should Understand Online Privacy. But do they even care?

As a journalist and online privacy advocate, Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a widely-circulated 2014 TED talk that the Internet was, at one time, thought of as a new frontier for democratization and liberation. According to Greenwald, the internet could now be considered a “zone for mass surveillance”.

Greenwald claims that some feel there’s no harm in mass online surveillance because it only threatens those who are engaging in illegal activities. This line of thinking includes the idea that only those who have something to hide should be concerned about their privacy. It frames the notion that some people wouldn’t want to share every aspect of their lives with the government as defensive behavior. In 2010, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed that privacy should not even be expected online as it is no longer a social norm. This is a dangerous belief, which unfortunately seems widely accepted in mainstream narratives despite its negative effects on individual liberties. Why should one care about privacy? Is one truly free to speak without it?

According to one study published in 2022, more than half of internet users are concerned about their online privacy. Let’s take a look at some key concepts and terms relevant to online privacy and steps users can take to better control and protect their data.

Important Concepts Linked to Online Privacy

Common concerns that relate to online privacy may include the preservation of sensitive personal and financial data and users having a say in who they are advertised to.

Personal Data

Personal data is any information that can be used to identify you. It can include your name, address, social insurance number, birthday and can also extend to your entire financial, educational, employment and medical history. Information including online identifiers and browsing history can also be considered personal information. One qualifier that defines personal data is that it is clearly about one particular person.

Personal data is considered valuable by advertisers and regulatory bodies alike, and the collection and sharing of users’ personal data is an important aspect of how many companies and apps are configured. Personal data is collected by websites, social media platforms, employers and more. This data is stored on web servers across the world, often changing hands in ways that are unknown by the users themselves. The selling of data is often part of the fine print and terms of service when using apps and websites, and is defined under things like GDPR or CCPA.Such regulations are often thought of as privacy friendly, but really only state that you have to consent to the sale of your personal data.

Online Encryption

One step that users can take to make themselves less vulnerable online and to put their privacy more into their own hands, is by focusing on apps and software that offer encryption. Encryption refers to the scrambling of the data stored and shared online, aiming to allow only trusted entities to interact with personal data.
Encryption ensures that only those with the relevant access keys are able to view the related content. It allows users to have more, but not ultimate, security over the information they share. Using a secret passphrase known only to the sender and receiver to unlock information is an excellent way to improve your security.

End-to-end encryption refers to encryption wherein only a user and their intended recipient are communicating without the ability of even the communication service to view or collect users’ data. While some messaging services are said to offer end-to-end encryption, some online security advocates challenge these claims as the services may provide “backdoor” access to government bodies. Oftentimes, the justification for this is to collect data necessary for fighting crime.

Threats to Online Privacy

When it comes to ways of protecting personal data, there are steps that individuals can take to decrease the risk of security breaches and minimize the amount of information readily available to unwanted external parties. Tools from ethical, security-minded companies can help users store and share data with more control, making use of the latest web security technology.

While taking steps at the individual level can enhance users’ online privacy, there are policies at the institutional level that can make it difficult to avoid the collection and sharing of personal data. In these cases, simply learning about policies and programs that involve your personal data is a way of being more aware of circumstances when your data could be collected, and of knowing how it could be used.

Mass Surveillance

Signing up for any new online account or app often involves agreeing to a range of terms and conditions wherein users permit organizations to collect agreed-upon information in exchange for the use of the application. Whether it’s on computers or phones and whether or not users are aware of what information is being collected, government bodies and private organizations alike are able to create detailed profiles of people based on data they willingly provide to websites. Often, users don’t even read the terms and conditions when signing up for a new service.

Controlling the amount your private data is collected may be increasingly relevant as smart cities that adopt surveillance technologies become more prevalent. Mindful online conduct may include making a list of each of the accounts and online services you subscribe to and determining whether the information you knowingly provide to each of these entities is worth the benefits of each service.

Online Privacy Regulations

Data breaches affecting companies as large as Facebook have sparked conversations as to the degree of involvement government policies should have regarding the collection and use of personal data. While government regulation is often necessary to lay the foundation for public market participation, the excess of such is also a risk factor that commonly limits progress.

As whistleblower disclosures have shown, government bodies themselves may also collect and use data in ways that average internet users could not have anticipated or foreseen. In the United States, for instance, all phone and internet data has been monitored by Federal law enforcement since the ‘90s. This data is unfathomably vast, so agencies including the NSA and the FBI create systems that analyze this data for use by intelligence and local law enforcement agencies.

Software Vulnerabilities and Secure Protocols

There are a number of security risks associated with typical internet usage. Free, public Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly available—which is a boon for those who work on the go and those with limited data plans—but these free, public Wi-Fi networks can be easy targets for those seeking access to users’ personal data for nefarious purposes.

Adversaries can access unsecured devices on public networks, which can provide unfettered access to important personal information including credit card data, passwords and personal documents. When users’ privacy settings allow for file-sharing across a network, it’s an opportunity for hackers to implant malware on users’ devices, further compromising their online privacy.

There are steps diligent users can take to make themselves less vulnerable when using unsecured networks. A VPN (virtual private network) creates a private network on top of an existing public network, improving security. VPNs also often include encryption, making stolen data less useful to hackers.

HTTPS is a protocol that helps to protect data by preventing access from parties aside from the primary user and the server they’re accessing, using encryption and a series of communication exchanges referred to as a “handshake.” Other security-minded steps include turning off sharing on devices on public networks and keeping Wi-Ffi off, aside from when it’s being used as devices are known to transmit some data even to networks users aren’t connected to.

Online Privacy and Bitcoin

Bitcoin is seen by many as being a new frontier for digital privacy. Its potential for decentralization means that users have more ability to control their own data and to have more agency in controlling decisions that relate to their privacy.

However, Bitcoin transactions are, by design, not confidential. Transactions on the block chain are secure, but their details are publicly viewable. When bitcoin is obtained in a way that is linked in some way to a user’s identity, and when information about transactions is shared, its pseudonymity in future transactions is easily negated. For example, if a user makes an online purchase using bitcoin, but does so through a regulated exchange which requires the completion of KYC processes, then pseudonymity can easily be compromised.

There are inherent issues associated with many bitcoin exchanges and users may be left with a sense of uncertainty with regards to how their personal data is being used. Developers may be able to collect sensitive personal information and the exchanges themselves are vulnerable to hacks, as seen in the Mt. Gox debacle and many since.

Wasabi 2.0

Initiatives like Wasabi Wallet—which offer anonymous communication using the Tor network, coin mixing and non-custodial personal control over private keys—can go a long way towards putting users in control of their bitcoin and retaining their privacy online.

The anonymization strategy employed by Wasabi Wallet and other Bitcoin privacy solutions is called coinjoin. Coinjoins are a collaborative bitcoin transaction. Users send their bitcoins to themselves with other users at the same time to reclaim their privacy. When the transaction occurs, everyone’s bitcoins are mixed with one another to make it much harder, if not impossible, to trace their transaction history.

As technology continues to grow into nearly every aspect of our lives, privacy as a resource is growing more scarce. We recommend the use of privacy tools, like Wasabi Wallet, to maintain your right to privacy. Consider taking control of your personal information to defend yourself from the intended (and unintended) repercussions of our increasingly digitised society.

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