The protest movement by truckers in Canada against pandemic-linked restrictions has raised money – nearly a million dollars – via bitcoin. This is after fundraising platforms backed out and the government began freezing bank accounts linked to the movement.
“20% of funds raised are being consolidated in a hardware wallet for the truckers organizers to use for immediate needs including food, hotel rooms, legal aid and fuel… 80% of funds raised are being consolidated into a multisig wallet.”
The keyholders’ identities are not being made public, ostensibly to prevent authorities from coercing them to give up access.
More about this in the article on Bitcoin Magazine.
A sister article on the same site used the phrase “permissionless financial rail” to describe this use of bitcoin.
This is quite accurate – the ‘rail’, or mechanism has worked in spite of permission being denied.
This isn’t bitcoin’s first use as “permissionless financial rail”: in 2020, Nigerian protest against a special-powers law were funded using decentralised tokens when bank transactions were allegedly “being slowed down”:
“How bitcoin powered the largest Nigerian protests in a generation”, Quartz.
Finally, remittances in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency tokens are a post in itself – they are a permissionless alternative to remittance incumbents – including banks – that charge super-high fees for cross-border money movement.
The common thread: what we are seeing is a revolution in the freedom to transact.
Something so fundamental we barely pay attention to it in real life – until that freedom is taken away. We assume we can always accept money from someone who is willing to send it to us. We assume we can use any app, any service by paying for it.
Decentralised networks of value ensure that that freedom can never be taken away.
But that freedom to transact applies to everyone. Both “good” Nigerian anti-special-powers protestors and “bad” Canadian anti-vax truckers.
With that playing field levelled, it truly becomes a battle of ideas – when all parties have unrestrictable access to capital, the “winner” is the one who can use that capital to make their case more effectively.
I am fascinated by the implications of this for the society of tomorrow.
