A transaction should be a personal choice. Giving something out should be something an individual decides to do willingly. For that to the true, the individual must have ownership of the thing to be given. To have true ownership, both the person and the asset have to be resistant to censorship. To be censorship-resistant, both secrecy and freedom are required.

For the person, secrecy means nobody knows who you are, therefore nobody can force you to do anything against your will. Freedom means you can move freely from place to place, in case someone wants to force you by not giving you any other option.

For the asset, secrecy means nobody can see the transaction and follow it back to you, voiding the previous point. Freedom means self-custody, so nobody can spend or use your funds without even needing to force you in the first place.

If we lose the previous properties, then it’s not a choice. If it’s not a choice, more often than not it won’t be aligned to our own interests. If we multiply that by millions, we end up with a few powerful individuals deciding for the rest of us.

The probability of most of us being happy in such scenario is very small. So, we need to work towards maintaining such sentence a reality: A transaction should be a personal choice.

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