Bitcoin as a Nonviolent Tool Against State Financial Censorship

https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/187407

by miohtama • 3 years ago

51 39 3 years ago

yieldcrv3• 3 years ago

Conclusion: … (c) bitcoin can be of great interest for human rights activists and NGOs, illustrating how misconceptions regarding its association with illegal activities should be reconsidered.

for me it highlighted the relativity of “illegal“ When it comes to capital flows

should I respect any nation’s rationale for a capital control?

any nation’s rationale for freezing a custodial bank account or asset they know of? even in an individual nation with distributed enforcement, its not always respected or even an intended outcome

is arbitrarily “dirty” bitcoin automatically cleaned because any sovereign country seized it for their arbitrary reasons? could any random municipality/state/nation state offer cleaning as a service? can chain analysis software even consider that or are merchants and exchanges going to be stuck flagging deposits automatically because it hit a silk road address 10 years ago, 100 hops back?

balderdash3• 3 years ago

“Offshore banking” today brings to mind white collar criminals, tax evaders, etc. but over time it has served to protect people from capricious actions of the state. Not sure why one needs to resort to bitcoin when they could just use a bank account in the US (in the Canadian example).

simonh2• 3 years ago

They protect rich people from having to follow the rules that apply to everyone else. I say this as a conviction capitalist and neoliberal, but on this my friends on the left are quite correct.

EscapeFromNY• 3 years ago

I feel like people make getting an offshore account sound easier than it is. I live in the US, and when I opened my US accounts, I needed to give them my SSN. Canadians don't have SSNs.

Just now I tried opening an account at a few random Canadian banks, and they all say I need to be living in Canada. How is an average joe supposed to work around those requirements?

I'm not saying it should be easier either. When you're dealing with state-issued currencies there are reasons for those restrictions. But the draw of bitcoin is that it's politically neutral and you don't need to jump through the hoops of any particular country, or hire a lawyer to navigate foreign laws. Just download an open source app and you're ready to go.

simonh2• 3 years ago

“ should I respect any nation’s rationale for a capital control?”

If you enjoy the protections, privileges and rights that nation affords you then yes. You have an obligation to follow the rules, or strive to change them through political means, just the same as everyone else.

There’s so much whining about rights these days, but so little talk about responsibilities. Every freedom you enjoy is a consequence of someone else taking on a responsibility for it.

yieldcrv3• 3 years ago

ok but this is about the other 180+ nations I’m not getting anything afforded by

the financial system is based on whitelisting transactions based on what the other countries say is legal or not

alexb_• 3 years ago

illustrating how misconceptions regarding its association with illegal activities should be reconsidered.

What? The entire point of being a tool against state financial censorship is that, by definition, it's illegal.

TSiege• 3 years ago

I believe the author is more implying the morality of such restrictions, not their legality. It seems to me in the vein of the argument of MLK's argument of just vs unjust laws

From "Letter from Birmingham Jail":

An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote.

CrazyStat• 3 years ago

Then he should use the right word. Illegal means illegal, not immoral.

trompetenaccoun• 3 years ago

The student arguing that is has the potential for that doesn't contradict the fact that Bitcoin is not mainly used for illegal activities currently. Even if you assume buying weed on dark markets was a major driver of adoption in the early days (having followed the space early on I find that doubtful because the people who were in Bitcoin were mainly interested in the technology), when you look at it currently the vast majority of the funds isn't even moved much. It sits in cold storage as digital gold. It's mainly an investment these days. Even Blackrock is coming out with an ETF now, they just announced it a few days ago.

As for criminals, they have learned that authorities understand blockchains a lot better than they used to, and that there are professional firms tracking crypto movements. It's all public after all. Unless they're in a jurisdiction where they're safe from prosecution because they have state backing, it's not really used illegally much any more. So these cases are more state terrorism, where countries like Russia or North Korea intentionally hurt businesses in enemy states, or at least turn a blind eye in the latter case. In those cases it's ultimately the internet that enables it.

rollcat2• 3 years ago

[...] the vast majority of the funds isn't even moved much. It sits in cold storage as digital gold. It's mainly an investment these days.

So you're saying, all of that CO2 has been "invested" into our atmosphere, where it will continue getting the planet hotter (can we call it "hot storage"?) until somehow removed (someone else's problem!); in order to enable continued speculation, while the ridiculously overprovisioned infrastructure is not even doing much anymore, in terms of processing actual transactions?

Future of finance.

hospitalJail3• 3 years ago

In a liberal democratic state, there may be merit to blocking illegal transactions.

In a dictatorship run by a warlord who is printing money, extorting people, and generally should be resisted, Bitcoin is good.

throwaway220322• 3 years ago

It's all language, isn't it?

I personally have never done anything remotely morally controversial with cryptocurrency. All taxes paid, no drugs.

But I've almost certainly engaged in "money laundering" because it doesn't seem to be a well defined concept. It seems to me that the idea is that normal peer to peer interaction has to be regulated and reported. We need passport scans and logs of previous transactions and all of that stuff.

I wouldn't even say that I don't agree with that - I just don't do it. I'm yet to be given a real explanation for why AML and other nonsense should exist beyond "that's just how it is".

theamk2• 3 years ago

I believe that DDOS exthortionists and encryptor malware operators should be prosecuted, and I don't see how this can be done without money tracking with things like AML.

(especially DDOS criminals.. they are the reason some sites switch from plain servers to Cloudflare, which is pretty bad for anonymous browsing.)

throwaway220322• 3 years ago

I don't see how AML prevents people from producing ransomware.

It adds a little bit of friction to everyday users. It's not like the only way to derive benefit from money is to spend it in a regulated manner.

emmender• 3 years ago

where is the study on "bitcoin as a tool in ransomware" ?

Bilal_io• 3 years ago

It's getting released next week along with the study on "the dollar and its big use in world wide illegal activities"

hospitalJail3• 3 years ago

Heck, Bitcoin is incredibly unsafe for illegal activities since everything is publicly recorded on a ledger. There is a reason people moved to Monero for such transactions.

miohtama• 3 years ago

May I ask why Master Thesis is flagged? It's an academic peer reviewed study. If you disagree with its content it should not be the reason for flagging.

hospitalJail3• 3 years ago

Bitter people who knew about Bitcoin and never bought it.

Bitcoin as a Nonviolent Tool Against State Financial Censorship

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