I can’t seem to find an actual currency estimate of how much privacy is actually worth. I see a ton of articles talking about why privacy should be worth more to people or what people would pay for privacy services or how much people would sell their privacy for, but I don’t see anything that gives a value for the privacy industrial complex, so to speak. Like if you take every company and non-profit and everything else and throw it all together, how much is the privacy industry actually worth?

Edit: It’s worth at least $2.8 billion US dollars because that is the market cap on average of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero.

Edit 2: If you put Monero, Zcash, and Dash together, you come up with $3.4 billion US dollars.

Edit 3: All the above plus Signal, Proton and EFF bring it up to 3.5 billion.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    401·
    5 months ago

    This is kind of like asking, “what is water worth?”

    To an upper middle class person in the developed world, a dollar or two. To a person stranded in a desert, they might literally kill for it.

    If you are just a Joe shmoe out in the world living a basic life, privacy might not be worth hardly anything. But if you’re a whistle blower or a political dissident in an authoritarian country, your privacy is worth everything.

    • MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 months ago

      Also it is worth noting that if you are in the US, there is a good probability that the authoritarian country will apply to you in the not so distant, foraeeable future