• Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan believes governments can seize digital assets with tech giants playing a key role. 

• Srinivasan had earlier predicted that Bitcoin would hit $1 million in 90 days after March 17, but “failed to see the light of the day.”

Former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan has in a latest interview on the Impact Theory podcast disclosed that the tech giants cannot be trusted. This comes after he was asked about the possibilities of Bitcoin and other asset seizures in the digital world. 

Srinivasan is known as a vocal Bitcoin (BTC) bull and has been very active in the space for a long time. In his observation, G7 countries can decide to seize digital assets in the future in a bid to recover from economic depression. 

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.

How Tech Giants Can Betray the Ecosystem

When this decision is made, tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft can easily scan devices and hand private keys over to authorities. According to him, the biggest risk factor for this is that such companies have operating system access.

Per his observation, Apple can easily take advantage of its software updates while Google accesses users’ Google Drive. For Microsoft, they could scan hard drives for private keys and access digital assets when ordered by the state. 

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 fundamental, will asset seizure be possible in the digital world?

It is important to note that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has been backed by the G7 finance ministers. The G7 has shown a huge commitment to ensuring there is improved oversight, regulation, and monitoring of crypto assets. They have emphasized the importance of the “travel rule”.

This requires Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to make customers’ information available during transactions. 

Srinivasan’s Earlier Prediction on Bitcoin

Srinivasan had earlier predicted that Bitcoin could hit $1 million in 90 days after March 17. To be clear on that, he explained that he was not 100 percent sure of that as it could take 900 days or even 90 months for this to come to pass. According to him, his prediction is a symbol of the collapse and credit in the US financial system. 

His prediction failed to materialize on June 17, but some other analysts have in the past predicted that Bitcoin could go that far in the long term. As of press time, the asset was trading at $26,448.42.

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