100% correct.

Privacy is recognized as a fundamental human right by a number of international bodies like the United Nations. However many people in general still cling to the ridiculous “if you’ve got nothing to hide, then you shouldn’t mind them looking” notion.

This is clearly a nonsense argument. For example, you might walk around your house naked and if so more power to you… but we're pretty sure you don’t want people staring in from the street so you close your blinds. You don’t have anything to hide and obviously aren’t doing anything illegal, but most of us like to keep our private parts well… private.

This right to privacy is extremely basic and extends to your finances as well. Most would agree that random strangers shouldn’t get to know all the things you spend your money on. But with the current fiat banking world, they do.

Another very important point about privacy is that when it comes to privacy on the Internet you can sometimes afford to make a mistake. This is because you can have articles updated or removed if they’re inaccurate or wrong. You can delete that really bad Tweet before everyone sees it or request Google to take down some search results if you want.

GDPR in particular has been excellent at giving broad, powerful privacy rights to citizens when it comes to their data and removing or changing it. On top of these active things you can do, the Internet also slowly forgets content over time as well. Even though many like to claim “the Internet never forgets” it absolutely does. A lot! That’s why there’s projects like the Internet Archive.

Bitcoin is different.

Once a transaction is enclosed in a block and confirmed by the network it is impossible to change or remove. For eternity, anyone and everyone will be able to look back on it. It will be replicated onto every Bitcoin Full Node all around the world.

This is why privacy in Bitcoin is so critical, even more critical than your privacy on the broader internet. While there are some parts that aren’t so damaging there are a few that are incredibly and eternally damaging to you and your precious stash.

As such, we have a whole category dedicated to increasing your Bitcoin Privacy, but in general some good first things to keep in mind are: