為什麼中央情報局對比特幣感到興奮

埃利斯（Ellis）首先承認比特幣完全匿名的神話。他告訴Pompliano：“人們可能以為比特幣是匿名的，但是我會說這是假名的，對嗎？這不是真正的匿名。”

Recently sworn-in Deputy Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Ellis offered an unusually forthright assessment of Bitcoin's role inside the national-security apparatus in a conversation with podcast host Anthony Pompliano.

最近，美國中央情報機構（CIA）宣誓就職副主任邁克爾·埃利斯（Michael Ellis）在與播客主持人安東尼·帕塞里亞諾（Anthony Pompliano）的對話中，對比特幣在國家安全機構中的角色進行了異常直率的評估。

Why The CIA Is Excited About Bitcoin

為什麼中央情報局對比特幣感到興奮

Ellis began by acknowledging the myth that Bitcoin is fully anonymous. “People may have thought Bitcoin was anonymous, but I’d say it’s pseudonymous, right? It’s not truly anonymous,” he told Pompliano. That distinction, he continued, has flipped early criminal enthusiasm into an unexpected boon for investigators. “We are … excited as well because … there’s a lot of work that we do with law enforcement to try to track illicit crypto payments by bad actors.”

埃利斯（Ellis）首先承認比特幣完全匿名的神話。他告訴Pompliano：“人們可能以為比特幣是匿名的，但我會說這是假名的，對嗎？它不是真正的匿名。”他繼續說，這種區別使早期的犯罪熱情陷入了對調查人員的意外福音。 “我們也很興奮，因為……我們與執法部門有很多工作，試圖跟踪壞演員的非法加密付款。”

The Deputy Director refused to single out Bitcoin as uniquely dangerous. “Bad actors, whether they’re drug cartels or terrorist groups or outlaw regimes, use cryptocurrency, but they used other tools as well,” he said, listing “dollars,” “cars,” and even “toner cartridges for their printers” as mundane equivalents. “Doesn’t mean we say we should ban all of those.”

副董事拒絕將比特幣視為獨特的危險。他說：“不好的演員，無論他們是毒品卡特爾還是恐怖組織還是取締政權，都使用加密貨幣，但他們也使用了其他工具，”他說，將“美元”，“汽車”，甚至是“打印機”的“汽車”，甚至是“打印機”作為平凡的等價物。 “並不意味著我們說我們應該禁止所有這些。”

Ellis then delivered the line that will echo through policy circles: “Bitcoin is here to stay. Cryptocurrency is here to stay.” Institutional adoption, he argued, is now an irreversible “trend … one that this administration has obviously been leaning forward into.” For the intelligence community, the stakes are geopolitical. “It’s another area of technological competition where we need to make sure the United States is well positioned against China and other adversaries … we need to make sure that we are a leader in these fields internationally and not a laggard.”

然後，埃利斯（Ellis）交付了通過政策界迴盪的線路：“比特幣將留在這裡。加密貨幣將留在這裡。”他認為，機構採用現在是一種不可逆轉的“趨勢……這個政府顯然一直在向前傾斜的趨勢”。對於情報界來說，賭注是地緣政治。 “這是技術競爭的另一個領域，我們需要確保美國對中國和其他對手的位置很好……我們需要確保我們在國際上是這些領域的領導者，而不是落後者。”

Pompliano pressed him on the dual-use nature of open-source payment rails. Ellis embraced that framing. “We use technology as a tool, and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are another tool in the toolbox. It’s also a target,” he explained, noting that the blockchain ledger can simultaneously “disrupt our adversaries’ use” of funds and “collect more intelligence to gather more information about them.”

Pompliano向他施加了開源付款軌道的雙重使用性質。埃利斯（Ellis）擁抱了這一框架。他解釋說：“我們將技術用作工具，比特幣和其他加密貨幣是工具箱中的另一個工具。它也是一個目標。”他指出，區塊鏈分類帳可以同時“破壞我們的對手的資金使用”並“收集更多智能來收集更多信息。”

Behind the operational talk lies a culture war playing out inside Langley. “There’s a little bit of a generational shift and a cultural shift going on that Director Burns and I are leading the way on,” Ellis conceded. “Not everyone in government … 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— that’s just not right.”

在蘭利（Langley）內進行的文化戰爭背後是一場文化戰爭。埃利斯承認：“這是世代相傳的轉變和文化上的轉變，導演伯恩斯和我正在領先。” “並不是政府中的每個人……對新技術都有這些態度。有時人們會被困在一個較舊的心態中，我們必須突破這一點，並意識到這一想法，即加密貨幣是針對那些有東西要隱藏的人，這是不對的。”

Pompliano laughed that Ellis sounded like “the in-house Bitcoiner.” If the Deputy Director’s remarks prove anything, it is that the CIA no longer regards Bitcoin merely as a curiosity on the dark web. Instead, the agency views it as a permanent fixture of global finance—simultaneously a surveillance vector, an intelligence resource, and, perhaps, a competitive arena in which national power will be measured.

Pompliano笑著說Ellis聽起來像是“內部比特幣”。如果副董事的言論證明了任何事情，那麼中央情報局不再僅將比特幣視為對黑暗網絡的好奇心。取而代之的是，該機構將其視為全球金融的永久性固定裝置，這是一種監視向量，情報資源，也許是一個競爭激烈的舞台，可以在其中衡量國家權力。

At press time, BTC traded at $95,132.

發稿時，BTC的交易價格為95,132美元。