As the Gun Market Moves to Crypto, Deeply Private Owners Reveal More Than They May Know

By Erich Pratt

In American gun culture, a desire for privacy runs deep. For many gun owners, any government attempt to keep tabs on who owns what is a non-starter. “I’m not for any type of registration,” John Crump, the special projects coordinator at the Gun Owners of America, said in a recent interview.

Cryptocurrency advocates have a similar ethos and often talk about empowering people to avoid government oversight via their newfangled financial ecosystem.

Crump lives in the overlap between those two worlds. At GOA, which describes itself, quoting former U.S. congressman (and presidential candidate) Ron Paul, as “the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington,” he’s an in-house expert on crypto and blockchains.

The latter, of course, is what makes crypto possible in the first place. Blockchains are digital accounting ledgers that publicly track when a token moves from one person to another. While built to be anonymous (nobody has to record their identity in a blockchain), that shroud of secrecy can be pierced by law enforcement or anyone with the right sleuthing skills.

And that’s where crypto can get tricky for gun owners. In effect, when someone purchases a gun with a cryptocurrency, a digital paper trail is created. The blockchain record might not spell out the name of

Source: Gun Owners of America