CIA deputy director says Bitcoin is a tool for intelligence collection

Michael Ellis called Bitcoin pseudonymous rather than anonymous and said the agency can use it to gather intelligence on adversaries Bitcoin was sold to many early adopters as digital cash that nobody could trace. The CIA’s second-in-command would like a word. CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said in a May 1, 2025 podcast interview that Bitcoin is not truly anonymous, and that US intelligence uses it to collect information on adversaries. For anyone still treating the network as a privacy cloak, that is an awkward thing to hear from a spy agency. Ellis described Bitcoin as “pseudonymous” rather than anonymous. The difference matters more than it sounds. On Bitcoin, activity is tied to addresses rather than legal names.

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