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The Next Frontier for the Surveillance State Countries are launching digital currencies to rival Bitcoin—and opening up new ways to snoop on their citizens in the process. ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER At first, it might have sounded like manna from heaven. Chinese authorities announced they would be distributing more than $1 million to a select number of citizens, as part of a test of its new currency: a digital yuan that could be easily spent almost anywhere. Reports out of China showed happy recipients using “digital wallets” to buy groceries with their free money and marveling at ho...

Advertisement Even as bitcoin soars in price and enjoys a wider demand as an asset, Australian investors and analysts are divided over its longer-term implications for cryptocurrency on the world. Sydney-based venture capitalist Mark Carnegie says that although bitcoin is flawed, cryptocurrency points to new possibilities for global finance that Australian policymakers ignore at their peril. “China understands that this is their weapon to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” says Carnegie, of M.H Carnegie & Co. “And Australia is ignoring the whole issue....