During a recent interview with cryptocurrency advocate Anthony Pompliano, Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said that Bitcoin is “here to stay.” 

“Look, Bitcoin is here to stay. Cryptocurrency is here to stay,” he stressed. 

Ellis has noted that “more and more” institutions are adopting it, which he thinks is a “great trend.”

The Republican political operative views Bitcoin as part of global technological competition, and he believes that the US should stay ahead of China. 

Furthermore, he has mentioned that there is “tremendous potential” to specifically use crypto in order to track what U.S. adversaries are doing and disrupt them.

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“We can use these technologies to collect more intelligence to gather more information about them,” Ellis said.

There have been longstanding outlandish conspiracy theories about the CIA’s alleged involvement in crypto. 

Prominent Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen visited the CIA back in early 2011 in order to discuss Bitcoin. Notably, Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the original cryptocurrency, left the Bitcoin community shortly after the visit. It is highly unlikely that the two events are related, but some believe that Satoshi’s disappearance was somehow linked to the CIA’s involvement. Of course, this theory is based purely on speculation, which is why it should be taken with a major grain of salt.

As reported by U.Today, former CIA Director Bill Burns confirmed that the agency was working on some crypto projects back in 2021, further fueling various conspiracies.   

Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, previously stated that Bitcoin should be viewed as a forensic tool by government agencies since blockchain technology makes it easy to identify illicit activities.