Scenario 2040: Complete deanonymization or total privacy? Two contrasting futures for financial fraud.

[Professor]

Abstract: The future rarely arrives in a linear fashion. More often, it emerges from a clash of opposing trends. In the area of financial security and privacy, we could reach two radically different outcomes by 2040. One is a world of total transparency, where every transaction is verifiable and anonymity is considered suspect. The other is a world of absolute privacy, where finances become everyone's personal business and surveillance is technically impossible. This article is not a forecast, but an exploration of two extreme scenarios. We will consider how financial fraud will look in each of these worlds, what technologies will determine the rules of the game, and which future will be more humane.

Introduction: Divergence of Values​

The driving forces behind these two scenarios are not the technologies themselves, but a fundamental societal choice between two values: security and freedom. Security, maximized, requires complete transparency. Freedom, understood as privacy, requires cryptographic privacy. By 2040, evolving regulations, public sentiment, and disruptive technologies could tip the scales, creating fundamentally different ecosystems.

Scenario 1: "Glass Wallet" – a world of complete deanonymization​

In this world, the demand for security, transparency, and control prevails. Digital citizen identifiers (analogous to the Unified Biometric System or digital passport) are becoming the essential key to any financial transaction.

The technological basis:

• Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) with programmable functions: All settlements are conducted in the digital yuan, digital euro, and digital ruble. Each unit has a unique digital footprint.
• Global ID: A single, biometrically linked identifier required to open an account, make a transfer, or make a major purchase.
• Integrated ledgers and AI oversight: All transactions are entered into secure ledgers in real time, where cross-access AI systems (banks, tax authorities, financial monitoring) scan for anomalies.

What does financial fraud look like in this world in 2040?
Fraud isn't disappearing, but it is transforming into a high-tech, rare, and very expensive activity for criminals.

1. Identity-level fraud (ID-Theft 2.0): The primary goal is to forge or usurp a digital identity. Methods include deepfakes to bypass biometric gateways, hacking biometric databases, and corruption within ID-issuing authorities. Successful identity theft grants complete control over all of the victim's assets, but is extremely difficult.
2. Social engineering with elements of coercion: Pressuring a person to authorize a transfer under the fraudster's control (e.g., under threat). The system sees a legitimate transaction, confirmed by biometrics, and is unable to stop it.
3. Exploitation of trusted individuals and white-collar criminals: Hacking the accounts of employees of financial or government institutions with extensive system privileges. This amounts to state-level cyberespionage.
4. Attacks on AI surveillance infrastructure: Targeted attacks designed to blind or deceive data analysis systems by introducing bias or creating blind spots.

Side effects of the scenario:

• The disappearance of petty cash and private payments. A gift to a friend, a donation to an inconvenient cause, a therapist's fee — everything is tracked.
• The risk of total social scoring. Financial behavior could become the basis for a trustworthiness rating, which affects access to services.
• The system's fragility. The centralized ID system is a single point of failure. A successful attack on it could paralyze the entire economy.

Scenario 2: "Cryptographic Garden" – a world of total privacy​

In this world, the value of personal autonomy prevails. Technology is used not for control, but to guarantee privacy. Regulators recognize privacy as a fundamental right.

Technological basis:

• Next-generation privacy cryptocurrency (ZKP coin) distribution: Using advanced zero-knowledge cryptographic protocols (Zero-Knowledge Proofs, ZKP). Proving that you have the funds for a transaction and are not violating sanctions is possible without revealing who you are, to whom, or how much you are transferring.
• Decentralized IDs (DIDs) and Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI): You control your own digital identities, revealing only the smallest pieces of them (e.g., just the fact that you are an adult) only when necessary and without a central registry.
• Hardware-based, multi-signature wallets: Store keys on personal devices that require physical confirmation for transactions.

What does financial fraud look like in this world in 2040?
Fraud is returning to its roots, but in a hyperbolic form. It's based on pure social engineering and the exploitation of human weaknesses, as it's technically impossible to trace money after an anonymous transfer.

1. Mass vishing and phishing aimed at wallet takeover: The main goal is to obtain a seed phrase or private key. Fraudsters create entire virtual universes (games, communities) for long-term "griefing" — building trust for the purpose of subsequent theft.
2. Romance scams and targeted blackmail in the metaverse: Building deep personal relationships with the victim in an anonymous digital environment, followed by extortion of funds or access.
3. DeFi and Smart Contract Scams: With developers anonymous, creating fake liquidity pools, investment protocols, or NFT projects for pump-and-dump schemes is becoming extremely profitable and virtually unpunished.
4. Privacy-as-a-Service: The emergence of legal but opaque financial services that, for a fee, "clean" criminal money through a maze of private transactions, making it ultimately untraceable.

Side effects of the scenario:

• The complexity of investigating real crimes: Terrorist financing, human trafficking, extortion — all can use the same private channels.
• A crisis of trust in the economy: Who to trust when everyone is anonymous? The value of reputation systems and decentralized arbitration is skyrocketing.
• Financial exclusion of the "unsophisticated": Elderly or technologically illiterate people are extremely vulnerable without understanding how complex cryptographic wallets work.

Scenario 3 (Probable): "Contextual Transparency" - A Hybrid Path​

The future will likely fall somewhere in between. By 2040, a model of contextual transparency could emerge.

• Different privacy levels for different transactions: Micropayments in the metaverse are completely anonymous. Buying an apartment requires full verification and transparency for regulators. Transferring a large sum to a friend requires your consent to disclose your data to the recipient, but not to the government.
• Regulators as validators, not overseers: Government agencies will be able, with court approval, to use "cryptographic lenses" (such as special ZKP protocols) to pinpoint suspicious transactions in private networks without violating the overall privacy of everyone else.
• Platform Responsibility: Wallet and financial service providers will be responsible for implementing basic, user-friendly protections against social engineering in their products (transaction delays, alerts about new contacts, mandatory training).

Conclusion: The Future as a Design Choice​

Financial fraud won't disappear by 2040. It will be a mirror of the society we build. In a "glass wallet" world, it will be the preserve of highly skilled hackers and corrupt insiders. In a "cryptographic garden" world, it will return to the art of manipulation and deception, but in digital form.

The choice between deanonymization and privacy is not a technical question. It's a question of what risk we, as a society, are willing to accept: the risk of total control by systems or the risk of losing the tools to protect the weak in an environment of total anonymity.

The most humane path likely lies not in extremes, but in creating a smart, multi-layered system where the level of transparency flexibly matches the level of trust and risk in each specific financial interaction. The task of the next twenty years is to develop technologies and social contracts that will allow us not to choose between freedom and security, but to find a wise balance where everyone has the right to privacy but will not be able to cause harm with impunity. This will be the greatest design challenge of our digital age.