Whenever a so-called ‘expert’, official, or other talking head starts pontificating on the evils of Bitcoin, one argument that never fails to get trotted out is how people are using Bitcoin to hide their money from the government. That argument, of course, usually segues in with the “Bitcoin is cryptocurrency of preference for criminals and Very Bad People” argument. But Bitcoin wasn’t designed to hide wealth from the government. It was designed to allow people to control their own wealth. There is a difference. And frankly, if anonymity is a user’s primary concern, there are far more privacy-centric cryptocurrencies out there. Bitcoin is hardly anonymous – in fact, there is an entire growing industry dedicated to tracking transactions.