{"id":24776,"date":"2025-05-01T18:01:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24776"},"modified":"2025-05-01T18:01:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:01:50","slug":"excited-about-bitcoin-cia-official-admits-its-staying-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24776","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Excited\u2019 About Bitcoin: CIA Official Admits Its Staying Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In a conversation with podcast host Anthony Pompliano, Michael Ellis\u2014recently sworn in as Deputy Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)\u2014offered an unusually forthright assessment of Bitcoin\u2019s role inside the national-security apparatus.<\/p>\n

Why The CIA Is Excited About Bitcoin<\/h2>\n

Ellis began<\/a> by acknowledging the myth that Bitcoin is fully anonymous. \u201cPeople may have thought Bitcoin was anonymous,\u201d he told Pompliano, \u201cbut I\u2019d say it\u2019s pseudonymous, right? It\u2019s not truly anonymous.\u201d That distinction, he continued, has flipped early criminal enthusiasm into an unexpected boon for investigators. \u201cWe are \u2026 excited as well because \u2026 there\u2019s a lot of work that we do with law enforcement to try to track illicit crypto payments by bad actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Deputy Director refused to single out Bitcoin as uniquely dangerous. \u201cBad actor<\/a>s, whether they\u2019re drug cartels or terrorist groups or outlaw regimes, use cryptocurrency, but they used other tools as well,\u201d he said, listing \u201cdollars,\u201d \u201ccars,\u201d and even \u201ctoner cartridges for their printers\u201d as mundane equivalents. \u201cDoesn\u2019t mean we say we should ban all of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellis then delivered the line that will echo through policy circles: \u201cBitcoin is here to stay. Cryptocurrency is here to stay.\u201d Institutional adoption, he argued, is now an irreversible \u201ctrend \u2026 one that this administration has obviously been leaning forward into.\u201d For the intelligence community, the stakes are geopolitical<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s another area of technological competition where we need to make sure the United States is well positioned against China and other adversaries \u2026 we need to make sure that we are a leader in these fields internationally and not a laggard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pompliano pressed him on the dual-use nature of open-source payment rails. Ellis embraced that framing. \u201cWe use technology as a tool, and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are another tool in the toolbox. It\u2019s also a target,\u201d he explained, noting that the blockchain ledger can simultaneously \u201cdisrupt our adversaries\u2019 use\u201d of funds and \u201ccollect more intelligence to gather more information about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the operational talk lies a culture war playing out inside Langley. \u201cThere\u2019s a little bit of a generational shift and a cultural shift going on that Director Burns and I are leading the way on,\u201d Ellis conceded. \u201cNot everyone in government \u2026 has these attitudes around new technologies. People are sort of trapped in an older mindset sometimes and we have to break through that and realize this idea that cryptocurrency is for people who have something to hide\u2014 that\u2019s just not right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pompliano laughed that Ellis sounded like \u201cthe in-house Bitcoiner.\u201d If the Deputy Director\u2019s remarks prove anything, it is that the CIA no longer regards Bitcoin merely as a curiosity on the dark web<\/a>. Instead, the agency views it as a permanent fixture of global finance\u2014simultaneously a surveillance vector, an intelligence resource, and, perhaps, a competitive arena in which national power will be measured.<\/p>\n

At press time, BTC traded at $95,132.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a conversation with podcast host Anthony Pompliano, Michael Ellis\u2014recently sworn in as Deputy Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)\u2014offered an unusually forthright assessment of Bitcoin\u2019s role inside the national-security apparatus. Why The CIA Is Excited About Bitcoin Ellis began by acknowledging the myth that Bitcoin is fully anonymous. \u201cPeople may have thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-24776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}