There are tons of private intelligence agencies. Janes is the first that comes to mind, but there are certainly others that do more interesting things than OSINT analysis. Most serious organized crime groups have their own intelligence units, often having members/leaders who were trained by national military intelligence services. In fact a characteristic of a phase III smuggling enterprise is sophisticated intelligence and counter intelligence operations, as well as having connections to legitimate national intelligence services (phase II organizations begin to practice rudimentary intelligence and counter intelligence, but their intelligence people lack the sophistication, connections and training of phase III organizations...also phase II smuggling enterprises often don't have a specific group compartment dedicated to intelligence) Most major corporations have their own intelligence and counter intelligence wings as well, although they are technically limited by certain laws to mostly doing OSINT (at least in USA, although this doesn't mean that corporations always follow the law). Corporate espionage is a huge industry. Wikileaks is essentially an intelligence agency (although they take measures in an attempt to prevent themselves being classified as such), they have gathered data (or obtained data gathered) via OSINT, COMINT and HUMINT operations at the very least, and they use counter intelligence tools to protect themselves from SIGINT, COMINT etc etc Stratfor is apparently a private HUMINT agency according to the info Wikileaks has released on them: www.christianpost.com/ news/ wikileaks-exposes-stratfor-intelligence-agency-releases-5-million-ema ils-70350/ there are also cliques of leet hackers who sell zero day exploits to the highest bidders (usually intelligence agencies). I imagine they also gather intelligence themselves on occasion, information is very valuble just as much as the tools to obtain it are. I have heard of underground communities on the internet that trade in intelligence, including trade secrets of corporations etc. RBN is a cyber crime group that has provided services to Russian intelligence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network They also offer bullet proof hosting, good luck getting an RBN hosted server taken down even if you manage to get its IP address. The people behind Ghostnet probably sold intelligence to the Chinese government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet Even if you ignore private intelligence services, Bitcoin would be a useful tool for paying intelligence sources. Look at Robert Hanssen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen He obtained payment from and gave information to the Russians via dead drops. Keeping his identity secret from the Russians was important to him (although I am pretty sure he failed at it). There are plenty of other potential intelligence sources who wouldn't even risk picking up dead drops of cash for their services, knowing that it could be a sting or it could be monitored by the agency they are selling the information to (after all if the agency knows who passed them data, they can demand more data to be passed and refuse payment, instead threatening to reveal that they are spies. It would be entirely realistic for a HUMINT agency to retain their asset via blackmail over finanical payment). Getting payment via mixed Bitcoins would be a potentially smart strategy for such a spy, and it would be smart for a HUMINT agency to offer payment in a way that they can prove it anonymous. Also look at the Russian spy network busted in USA in 2010 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegals_Program One of their main functions was laundering cash for the Russian intelligence services. They would potentially have been smarter to use mixed bitcoins, after all then there wouldn't be surveillance videos of them passing bags filled of cash. Brush passes < Digital mixing. There is a reason that the CIA wanted to learn as much as they could about Bitcoin from fairly early on: www.bitcoinblogger.com/ 2011/ 04/ bitcoin-technical-lead-to-present-at.html It is potentially very useful for them, just as much as Tor is. I'm just afraid that analysis of the block chain will end up being useful for FININT since I don't think people are taking the required precautions with bitcoin, instead thinking that it is inherently anonymous (or that using mixes will not get them watched and/or charged with money laundering if they don't take some steps to cash out anonymously also).