X Enforces Mandatory Location Feature, Triggering Backlash Across The Crypto Community

X’s has just rolled-out a new feature which would expose an account holder's country. This new release has unleashed a tidal wave of concern among crypto users, who say that platform is forcing them into involuntary exposure.

X director of product Nikita Bier announced the new feature on Saturday, framing it as a way to ensure the integrity of the platform and allow users to verify information.

The new feature-which is enforced unto the users with no methods of disabling it-has immediately triggered an uproar from pseudonymous developers and on-chain researchers who feel that they are being unmaks out of their own violation.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was the first major figure to warn against the new feature, claiming that it might bring more danger than benefit. While he admitted that the feature might improve transparency at the same time, it might also be used by bad actors to track high-worth investors to attack them in person.

"I thought about this more and I think responders are right to reveal the country non-consensually without offering any opt-out option, not even using your account is wrong."

Buterin later added that the concern runs deeper in crypto than in other online communities. Many users rely on pseudonyms for their own protection—whether because their governments penalize open political expression, or because their work in decentralized systems challenges local financial controls. For such individuals, automatic location tagging isn’t a neutral feature. It’s a liability.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams labeled the update as “mandatory doxing,” arguing that location disclosure can be acceptable when voluntarily chosen—but becomes harmful the moment it is imposed.

Others, such as Summer.fi CTO Andrei David, said the change violates modern digital privacy standards, which typically default to minimal data exposure unless users explicitly grant more access. In countries where dissent is criminalized or state surveillance is pervasive, simply being identified as interacting with certain crypto communities could put users at real risk.

Crypto Users: Privacy Isn’t Optional

The backlash intensified as more users noticed that the feature did not merely apply going forward—it exposed long-standing accounts retroactively. Artists, VTubers, pseudonymous researchers, and independent journalists publicly expressed fear that the update could compromise their safety or violate expectations they held when they first joined the platform.

Several VTuber communities warned that revealing their country of origin could lead to real-world harassment or doxxing, shattering the digital boundaries that keep their identities separate from their public avatars. Others stressed that crypto culture, which depends on pseudonymity to protect whistleblowers, developers, and privacy advocates, is fundamentally incompatible with forced location transparency.

While X has since added controls that allow users to switch from displaying their country to showing only their broader region, many argue this does little to address the underlying issue. Forcing users to navigate new privacy settings after the fact—even briefly exposing their location before they opt out—still represents a serious breach of trust. Critics note that features affecting sensitive data should always be opt-in by default.

The introduction of additional planned disclosures, including whether an account is using a VPN, has heightened anxiety. Crypto users fear that stacking these features together could create a more complete profile of their behavior, reducing their ability to operate privately in a world where privacy is already difficult to maintain.

For those living under restrictive regimes, even a regional label may be too revealing. Critics argue that X appears to be designing features for a political climate centered on U.S. transparency debates, without considering that its global user base faces wildly different risks.

Supporters Defend the Feature, but Crypto Remains Unconvinced

Despite sweeping criticism, the new feature does have supporters—particularly among political analysts and tech investors. Venture capitalist Nic Carter argued that displaying location improves the integrity of online discourse by preventing foreign actors from impersonating local voices in sensitive political conversations. Proponents claim that X is simply responding to years of concerns about misinformation, bot farms, and political astroturfing campaigns.

This camp argues that transparency strengthens public debate, making it harder for bad actors to misrepresent themselves or manipulate trending conversations. They believe users worried about location exposure can rely on new region-only settings or VPN detection to maintain some degree of privacy while still contributing authentically to the platform.

However, crypto-native users counter that these benefits do little to mitigate the risks imposed on a global, pseudonymous community. While forced transparency might make sense for political candidates or corporate accounts, it can endanger ordinary individuals who use pseudonyms precisely because revealing their identity—or even their country—could cause real harm.

For a sector built on permissionless systems and user sovereignty, the update feels like a step toward centralized surveillance rather than legitimate transparency. The debate highlights a widening ideological divide: one side believes platforms must expose more data to protect democratic discourse, while the other insists that privacy is an inherent human right that must never be compromised.

As X continues adjusting the feature in response to the backlash, it remains clear that crypto users—perhaps more than any other online community—are unwilling to compromise on personal safety. To them, mandatory location disclosure is not a simple UX change. It is a direct threat to the anonymity that has long been essential to participation, innovation, and even survival within the blockchain ecosystem.