From the very beginning, I've seen Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as 'freedom enablers'. Their introduction signaled the beginning of the end of government control and manipulation of our currencies and allowed us near complete freedom in who we trade with, what we purchase, and the ways we can be controlled and montored through our money. Gone were the value changes at the whim of a central bank, gone were the articifial bubbles and the inevitable bursts of those bubbles just because the banks needed to control the money supply. Finally, we had a currency that was totally controlled by the people who used it. Complete supply and demand, no regulatory controls, just complete monetary freedom.
Unfortunately, that freedom didn't last. Governments and banks around the world quickly moved in to both cash in on and exert control over the digital currency and re-establish themselves as the arbitrators of everything 'money. Slowly, place by place, Bitcoin and other currencies fell to regulation or were outright outlawed as being a threat to economic security. Nowhere was that felt more strongly than where I live; in the United States.
In my country, it's slowly becoming almost impossible to purchase Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency anonymously. The reliable exchanges like Coinbase, Glidara, and Uphold, all require some level of identity validation and at least on of them (Coinbase) is faced with having to turn over detailed information about their customers to the US Internal Revenue Service. This is not the 'freedom' that Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned when he created Bitcoin. This is not the promise of currencies that 'free the people' from their government linked chains. This is just an expansion of the monetary slavery we've lived under for more than 100 years.
So it's time to go rogue. It's time to embrace true libertarian freedom and say, in essence, 'screw the governments of the world, this is OUR MONEY". It's time for a completely darknet based cryptocurrency exchange.
The exchange I envision is a bold one. It allows its users to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies in near complete anonymity. It does not accept credit cards but allows users to directly convert cash into the currency of their choice and reverse the process to sell their coins to either a prepaid debit card or some other not-easily-personally-identifiable target. It not only doesn't comply with national laws regarding money services but it actively avoids them. It's a service that is beholden to no national regulations and has no artificial boundaries that prevent anyone anywhere in the world from using the service.
Such an exchange would quickly come under constant attack by the governments of the world. It would be demonized and we'd likely be immediately warned in large media headlines that it's being used by 'the bad guys of the day' to fun terrorism. And that might even be true. After all, the bad guys of the world use every form of currency to fund their bad activities. Cryptocurrencies would be no exception. Users would be demonized and many would likely fall away in fear that they might be 'breaking the law'. But, ideally, a strong group of users who are committed to privacy and having full control of their money would remain, fighting valiantly to make sure that the promise of Bitcoin and its cousins live on.
This proposed endeavor comes with risks. Lots of risks, in fact. With both the company behind the exchange and its customers being completely anonymous to each other, the opportunity for fraud is high. It might be tempting for the proprietars to build up the service then just disappear with everyone's money, never to be heard from again. It's happened in the out-in-the-open Bitcoin exchanges, why wouldn't it happen on the darknet?
Ultimately, this is a risk we're going to have to take. We can do things like have constant, ongoing, maybe even automatic, audits of the exchange and its assets, have a community elected board of trustees (again, all anonymous) to manage claims, etc. But, in the end, it will take time and trust to build such a business. Once it's built though, it could be unstoppable.
What do you think? Would you do business with a darknet based cryptoexchange? How would you make it the best it can be?