The former chief technology officer of Coinbase is warning that some of the most prominent tech companies in the world could one day betray the American people.
In a new interview on the Impact Theory podcast, Balaji Srinivasan says that if G7 nations decide that digital asset seizure is allowed, then tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Google could lend them a hand.
According to Srinivasan, a vocal Bitcoin (BTC) bull, countries may decide to seize digital assets in the future in an attempt to recover from economic turmoil. He says tech giants could easily scan our devices to find and hand over private keys to authorities if they were ever ordered to do so.
“G7 countries are going to have a real problem, and they’re going to be harder for money and then a lot of the world hinges on whether or not the G7 countries and China can seize digital assets. If they can, that’s like one branch point in history. It means that you have total states [into] CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) and so on and so forth.
If they cannot [seize assets], then you have a different branch point in history where it means that communities can now basically have digital gold or cryptocurrency and crowdfund bits of territory where they can have their own startup societies and eventually what I call ‘network states.’
And then you’d go back to the future of something more like the 1800s where you could get a plot out of land and you could build a town or something like that or even the Alaska purchase, Louisiana Purchase, things of that nature… The real branch point is fundamentally, will asset seizure be possible in the digital world?”
Srinivasan elaborates on why he believes big tech firms may help governments seize digital assets.
“The biggest risk factor for that is actually Apple, Google and Microsoft because they have operating system access. That’s actually what I’m most concerned about: it is the fact that Apple has software updates and Google can get into your Google Drive and Microsoft has Windows, and if ordered by the state, in theory, they could scan your hard drive for private keys and then pull your digital assets.”
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