While Bitcoin is all the rage internationally, SA is no backwater when it comes to the Dark Web or cryptocurrencies. Riccardo "Fluffypony" Spagni, an SA developer, was one of seven people who built Monero, a cryptocurrency much favoured by Dark Web markets, including AlphaBay. It is seen as "more anonymous" than Bitcoin. Monero, which uses a different technological standard to Bitcoin, boasts it is "secure, private and untraceable". Spagni, who has a background in IT, told the Financial Mail that there are a lot of people like him who are building privacy technologies, believing in the "net-positive benefits" of stronger privacy. "We don’t tell people how to use it or what it should be used for. What we believe is that privacy should be a fundamental human right," he says.

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