It’s impossible to think about cryptocurrencies without associating them with the word anonymity.
The first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous person or a group of people. Despite the success that followed, Satoshi has chosen to remain anonymous throughout the years.
This mystery portrays, Satoshi, as a hero of modern times. In Bitcoin's genesis block, or block 0, Nakamoto instilled within the Block's raw data: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." The text is a headline for an article in the January 3, 2009 edition of The [London] Times about the British government's failure to stimulate the economy following the 2007–08 financial crisis.
As a hero, Nakamoto wanted to free the world from a well-established financial system , which he thought was controlled by a minority of people taking advantage leaving the vast majority empty-handed. Heroes may choose to stay anonymous because they don't want to be thanked for their generosity. They do the good work because they enjoy it, not for purposes of self-aggrandizement. Another reason may be that they want to protect themselves and their family from the villains.
I don't really know the real reasons, But I think Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymity has helped Bitcoin in its early days. On April 26, 2011, Satoshi told fellow Bitcoin developers that he had “moved on to other projects” while handing them the cryptographic keys to the network alerts. Bitcoin has become a community project with many many volunteers helping it to succeed. It's harder to fight a community rallying for a cause they think it's for the good of humanity.
Bitcoin has come a long way, from dying more than 466 times, to being recognized as one of the best performing assets today.
Unfortunately, anonymity seems to be a curse in crypto adoption right now
From the beginning of 2021 through the first quarter of 2022, 46,000-plus people were bilked out of more than $1 billion in crypto-related frauds. The FTC reports that crypto scams have increased by an incredible 900 percent since the start of the Pandemic.
I think all these scams in crypto are facilitated by the fact many crypto projects are led by anonymous teams. Some teams decide to remain anonymous for good reasons. Cryptocurrencies are still new and many governments are against them. So, keeping a low profile while delivering good products has been what many have been doing. But many more bad guys are staying anonymous for bad reasons.
It's way too easy to be scammed because investors have no idea who is behind a project. It's also harder to track attackers to bring them to justice, making the crypto space a virtual wild wide west.
For crypto to be successful, it has to be adopted by the masses. This means regular people have to feel safe enough to start using cryptocurrency projects. I know you don't really need to know who created a product before using it. But you have peace of mind when you know who has to be accountable for any issues.
The internet also was once seen as a risky place to navigate. Today, the internet is part of our lives where we do pretty much anything without worrying much about the websites and apps we are using. The internet has to earn people's trust by solving major issues.
I think the crypto space still has many issues to solve and I think anonymity is a big part of it.
Some of the biggest projects today are a not led by anonymous teams. Everybody in the crypto almost knows who are behind great projects like Ethereum, Avalanche, XRP, BINANCE or Coinbase.
Many others who choose to stay anonymous usually do it for bad intentions
