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Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin (LTC<\/a>), made an appearance at this year’s Proof of Work Summit in Frankfurt, Germany, to contrast Litecoin’s privacy-enhancing features with the nearly inescapable transparency of the Bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) network.<\/p>\n Lee explained that the unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), which underpin the Bitcoin ledger, carry a history of how the transactions were spent — potentially ruining the fungibility of the digital asset. Lee told the audience:<\/p>\n “Because of the history attached to every Bitcoin that is spent, each Bitcoin is not equal to another Bitcoin — which is something that I think is important for money.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A hypothetical example of this would be an onchain analytics company attaching labels to a Bitcoin address believed to be associated with illicit activities. The label may dissuade investors or traders from accepting BTC associated with the address — lowering the market price of those particular coins and sats.<\/p>\n Moreover, if the Bitcoin in question passes through centralized exchanges or other institutions with Know Your Customer controls, the assets could be frozen or seized<\/a> at the behest of government authorities such as the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm to stand trial after judge denies dismissal<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Privacy on the Bitcoin network is notoriously difficult, but not impossible. On Sept. 20, a mysterious group of developers announced a fork of the privacy-preserving Samourai Wallet. <\/a><\/p>\n The Ashigaru Open Source Project<\/a> uses CoinJoin and other mechanisms to mask Bitcoin transactions and builds on the work of the original Samourai team — though the new Ashigaru team has denied any connection to the previous developers.<\/p>\n Paul Brody, the global blockchain leader at EY, recently told Cointelegraph at Token2049 that a lack of privacy was hindering blockchain adoption<\/a>. The executive explained that privacy matters, especially for large institutions that must keep certain information private.<\/p>\n Businesses “Are very happy to tell you how many tons of carbon they save,” Brody stated. “They just don’t want you to be able to see that on a week-to-week or a day-to-day basis.”<\/p>\nThe fight for privacy comes into sharper focus<\/h2>\n