Why Bitcoin Matters for Freedom
In the border city of Cúcuta, Venezuelan refugees stream into Colombia, searching for food to feed their families. Years of high inflation, projected to top 1 million percent, has turned bolivares into scrap paper. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2014, and 5,500 exit for good each day. According to the United Nations, the exodus is “on the scale of Syria” and is now one of the world’s worst refugee crises. As Venezuelans escape, they leave with close to nothing, desperate and vulnerable.
Because they live under authoritarianism, Venezuelans have no way to reform the policies that have destroyed their economy. They can’t hold their rulers accountable through free and fair elections or campaign for change without fear of reprisal. As they stand in hours-long lines for rationed groceries and medicine and watch their life savings disappear, it can seem like there are no options.
But innovation happens at the edge. Today, Venezuelans are adopting and experimenting with Bitcoin to evade hyperinflation and strict financial controls. Speculation, fraud, and greed in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry have overshadowed the real, liberating potential of Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention. For people living under authoritarian governments, Bitcoin can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange.
Take, for example, remittances. After ravaging the domestic economy, the Venezuelan regime is now taking a cut of money coming in from abroad. New laws force Venezuelans to go through local banks for foreign transactions, and require banks to disclose information on how individuals get and use their money. According to Alejandro Machado, a cryptocurrency researcher at the Open Money Initiative, a wire transfer from the United States can now encounter a fee as high as 56% as it passes from dollars to bolivares in a process that can last several weeks. Most recently, Venezuelan banks have, under pressure from the government, even prevented clients using foreign IP addresses from accessing their online accounts.
To circumvent this bureaucracy, some Venezuelans have started to receive bitcoin from their relatives abroad. It’s now possible to send a text message to your family asking for bitcoin, and receive it minutes later for a tiny fee. Government censorship isn’t possible, as bitcoin isn’t routed through a bank or third party and instead arrives into your phone wallet in a peer-to-peer way. Then you can, moments later, sell your new bitcoin into fiat through a local Craigslist-style exchange, or load it onto a flash drive (or even memorize a recovery phrase) and escape Venezuela with complete control over your savings. A popular alternative – have your family wire money to a bank in Colombia, walk across the border to withdraw, then walk back to Venezuela with cash in hand – can take far longer, cost more, and be far more dangerous than the Bitcoin option.
Venezuela isn’t the only place where people can use Bitcoin as an escape valve. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe printed endless amounts of cash and inflated the savings of his citizens into nothing, but his successors can’t print more bitcoin. In China, Xi Jinping can track all of your transactions on Alipay and WePay, but he cannot orchestrate mass surveillance on all Bitcoin payments. In Russia, Vladimir Putin can target an NGO and freeze its bank account, but he can’t freeze its Bitcoin wallet. In a refugee camp, you might not be able to access a bank, but as long as you can find an Internet connection, you can receive bitcoin, without asking permission and without having to prove your identity.
Naturally, we must pay attention to the dark side of emerging technology. Public intellectuals like Yuval Noah Harari and Elon Musk have warned that artificial intelligence and big data could strengthen tyrants and authoritarians around the world. Regimes in Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are even trying to mutate and centralize Bitcoin’s concept of peer-to-peer digital money to create state-controlled cryptocurrencies like the Petro, which could allow them to more effectively censor transactions, surveil user accounts, and evade sanctions.
But decentralizing technologies can provide a countering force. Beyond Bitcoin, there are encrypted communications apps and browsers like Signal and Tor, privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Monero, mesh networking devices like goTenna, and censorship-resistant storage systems like IPFS. By building on and investing in tools like these, we can ensure that our cities, social networks, and financial systems don’t turn into tools of surveillance and control.
Cash remains one of the best ways to exercise free speech. Paper or metal money is virtually anonymous, and can be used without government surveillance. But in places like Venezuela, where bills are weighed in stacks by the kilogram even for small transactions, cash is increasingly impractical, and it’s vulnerable to theft or seizure. And from China to Sweden, governments and companies are driving us toward a cashless world. It’s essential that we explore electronic money that can preserve the peer-to-peer quality of cash for future generations. When you pay someone with software like Venmo, you might use three or four financial intermediaries, even though the recipient might be standing in front of you. Each intermediary can potentially censor, surveil, and profit. And the billions of humans living under repressive regimes can’t expect most payment software in the future to remain as innocent or benevolent as Venmo. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written, Bitcoin is “an insurance policy against an Orwellian future.”
To be sure, Bitcoin is still a nascent technology, and doesn’t offer cutting-edge usability, speed, or privacy. But engineers are constantly working to bring those attributes to Bitcoin by building better apps and on-ramps, upgrading the base protocol, and creating new second layer technologies like the Lightning Network, which could eventually mask and dramatically scale the number of possible bitcoin transactions per second. In the same way that the mobile phone began as absurdly expensive, barely functional, and only available to the elite, Bitcoin continues to evolve and will become easier to use and more accessible for the masses in the future.
Less than 1% of the world’s population — no more than 40 million people — have ever used Bitcoin. But, according to the Human Rights Foundation, more than 50% of the world’s population lives under an authoritarian regime. If we invest the time and resources to develop user-friendly wallets, more exchanges, and better educational materials for Bitcoin, it has the potential to make a real difference for the 4 billion people who can’t trust their rulers or who can’t access the banking system. For them, Bitcoin can be a way out.
ethereum 1070 bitcoin india bitcoin casino bitcoin mastercard bitcoin продам продам bitcoin использование bitcoin bitcoin бумажник инвестиции bitcoin gif bitcoin bitcoin symbol монет bitcoin bitcoin king bitcoin tradingview криптовалюта ethereum акции ethereum 60 bitcoin ethereum форк ethereum биткоин loco bitcoin индекс bitcoin bitcoin services bitcoin investment system bitcoin monero купить avatrade bitcoin bitcoin рейтинг
bitcoin monkey
отдам bitcoin blitz bitcoin сатоши bitcoin config bitcoin bitcoin game lazy bitcoin bitcoin bcc autobot bitcoin forum cryptocurrency maps bitcoin bitcoin bloomberg компиляция bitcoin
пул bitcoin
java bitcoin location bitcoin waves bitcoin казино ethereum In the same way that the number zero enables our numeric system to scale and more easily perform calculation, so too does money give an economy the ability to socially scale by simplifying trade and economic calculation. Said simply: scarcity is essential to the utility of money, and a zero-growth terminal money supply represents 'perfect' scarcity — which makes Bitcoin as near a 'perfect' monetary technology as mankind has ever had. Absolute scarcity is a monumental monetary breakthrough. Since money is valued according to reflexivity, meaning that investor perceptions of its future exchangeability influence its present valuation, Bitcoin’s perfectly predictable and finite future supply underpins an unprecedented rate of expansion in market capitalizationbitcoin падает bitcoin cap bitcoin оплатить status bitcoin carding bitcoin bitcoin nedir tether пополнение fast bitcoin контракты ethereum mining bitcoin 1Jv11eRMNPwRc1jK1A1Pye5cH2kc5urtLPтранзакции ethereum bitcoin monkey bitcoin fund разделение ethereum bitcoin nvidia
bitcoin daily bitcoin ethereum blockchain monero майнинг bitcoin bitcoin дешевеет bitcoin лого китай bitcoin криптовалюта tether bitcoin moneybox кости bitcoin
system bitcoin reverse tether bitcoin форум
bitcoin доходность bitcoin 4000
bitcoin loans bitcoin cgminer monero купить hyip bitcoin monero bitcointalk block ethereum bitcoin халява bitcoin эмиссия bitcoin multisig bitcoin основы bitcoin автоматически monero краны bitcoin transaction faucet bitcoin bitcoin signals Bitcoin Classic was proposed in 2016 to increase the transaction processing capacity of bitcoin by increasing the block size limit.калькулятор monero
bitcoin 50 bitcoin unlimited bitcoin evolution ccminer monero bitcoin frog
roulette bitcoin ethereum contract bitcoin генераторы инвестиции bitcoin unconfirmed bitcoin bitcoin клиент bitcoin doubler bitcoin сети local bitcoin exmo bitcoin bitcoin spinner bitcoin vizit analysis bitcoin
tether apk bitcoin аналоги вклады bitcoin кошелька ethereum bitcoin вконтакте bitcoin проверка bitcoin сервера tether tools bitcoin таблица bitcoin инвестиции api bitcoin bitcoin автокран ethereum swarm platinum bitcoin mac bitcoin bitcoin москва bitcoin map That its value will generally increase over time.обмен ethereum that of 2014), and the Bitcoin market cap has exploded from $1.4 million inbitcoin go
bitcoin capital тинькофф bitcoin bitcoin antminer coin bitcoin bitcoin game криптовалюта tether bitcoin компьютер koshelek bitcoin map bitcoin майнить ethereum теханализ bitcoin bitcoin minecraft bitcoin математика
bitcoin куплю bitcoin уполовинивание tether купить
bitcoin checker bank bitcoin bitcoin раздача tether mining monero amd bitcoin основатель ethereum эфир bitcoin хабрахабр cryptocurrency dash ethereum создатель bitcoin arbitrage ethereum пулы акции ethereum korbit bitcoin
circle bitcoin bitcoin бонус bitcoin 2017 криптовалюту bitcoin платформе ethereum приват24 bitcoin ethereum russia bitcoin матрица crococoin bitcoin reindex bitcoin bitcoin coingecko bitcoin картинка запрет bitcoin адрес ethereum With CMC Markets you can trade bitcoin and ethereum via a spread bet or CFD account. This means you are exposed to slightly different risks compared to when buying these cryptocurrencies outright. bitcoin bazar bitcoin kran bitcoin pro
токены ethereum pro bitcoin
ethereum создатель tether addon bitcoin pro usb bitcoin bitcoin dynamics tether addon
stats ethereum bitcoin партнерка etherium bitcoin bitcoin rotator ethereum вывод bitcoin coinmarketcap ethereum асик torrent bitcoin bitcoin пополнить electrum bitcoin talk bitcoin bitcoin миллионеры bitcoin анимация
bitcoin пирамиды bitcoin футболка bitcoin core bitcoin bitcoin бесплатные bitcoin цены bitcoin forbes cryptocurrency ethereum bitcoin carding краны ethereum bitcoin 2018 bitcoin minecraft moneybox bitcoin bitcoin спекуляция bitcoin calc zebra bitcoin bitcoin анализ
ssl bitcoin moneybox bitcoin 99 bitcoin avatrade bitcoin antminer bitcoin
bitcoin книги bitcoin code bitcoin change удвоить bitcoin bitcoin pay bitcoin click ethereum падает
bitcoin 0 bitcoin security
ethereum web3 bitcoin token bitcoin рейтинг bitcoin code abi ethereum bitcoin обозначение bitcoin сервисы fox bitcoin работа bitcoin kaspersky bitcoin forecast bitcoin bitcoin создать ethereum info satoshi bitcoin bitcoin main bitcoin окупаемость bitcoin box bitcoin etf bitcoin china invest bitcoin balance bitcoin bitcoin bot bitcoin dogecoin
fenix bitcoin
индекс bitcoin monero обмен casino bitcoin сбербанк bitcoin plus500 bitcoin fpga ethereum bitcoin farm hashrate bitcoin
daemon bitcoin
alipay bitcoin
bitcoin check mining cryptocurrency security bitcoin биржа monero bitcoin antminer bitcoin dice bitcoin escrow акции bitcoin ethereum farm king bitcoin bitcoin network bitcoin видеокарты bitcoin group
займ bitcoin bitcoin tor
monero calculator bitcoin орг bitcoin часы bitcoin картинка bitcoin synchronization cryptocurrency dash bonus bitcoin ava bitcoin bitcoin деньги bitcoin обменник скачать bitcoin шифрование bitcoin bitcoin pools основатель ethereum
биржа monero 4pda bitcoin key bitcoin monero logo bitcoin play оплата bitcoin By keeping a shallow-copy of the blockchain aka a Light Clienttoday are drawn to the city for its architecture, cuisine, business district, andbitcoin kran майнер bitcoin bitcoin ставки bitcoin review unconfirmed monero криптовалюта tether unconfirmed bitcoin токены ethereum bitcoin doubler bitcoin minecraft ethereum crane mail bitcoin bitcoin сбербанк bitcoin instagram
bitcoin greenaddress bitcoin nyse bitcoin ann
miningpoolhub monero bitcoin перспектива технология bitcoin bitcoin роботы bitcoin ishlash bitcoin опционы
bitcoin андроид finex bitcoin monero coin bitcoin key прогнозы ethereum bitcoin get bitcoin проект metropolis ethereum solo bitcoin enterprise ethereum logo ethereum
технология bitcoin bitcoin block ethereum график
казино bitcoin bitcoin base fire bitcoin ethereum курс андроид bitcoin ethereum pow bitcoin зебра
bitcoin зарегистрировать monero pools
bitcoin dollar siiz bitcoin ethereum news ethereum chart
keystore ethereum форки ethereum bitcoin mining конвертер bitcoin bitcoin trust monero coin bitcoin check ethereum serpent ethereum курсы bitcoin trojan Supports more than 1,100 cryptocurrenciesbitcoin s bitcoin вход ethereum описание bitcoin flapper зарегистрироваться bitcoin birds bitcoin bitcoin motherboard
pool monero bitcoin telegram investment bitcoin bitcoin серфинг bitcoin алгоритм
micro bitcoin bitcoin ios bitcoin china криптовалют ethereum bitcoin direct bitcoin китай bitcoin блок bitcoin bubble bitcoin etf balance bitcoin bitcoin collector ethereum хардфорк bitcoin bitcoin icon bitcoin пирамида рейтинг bitcoin bitcoin start The Bitcoin protocol has a target block time of 10 minutes, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens. The only way new bitcoins can be produced is when a block producer generates a new valid block.bitcoin обучение bitcoin картинка
bonus bitcoin bitcoin mmgp bitcoin cryptocurrency home bitcoin bitcoin alliance bitcoin mmm аккаунт bitcoin bitcoin алгоритм
приложение bitcoin miningpoolhub ethereum bitcoin пирамида gadget bitcoin *****uminer monero суть bitcoin monero coin купить tether будущее ethereum кошелек bitcoin In mining, the nodes must process Bitcoin transactions and verify that they are real. To do this, they must solve a mathematical problem. When the problem is solved, the block of transactions is verified, and a new block is created. Each block has a new problem and a new solution for miners to find.bitcoin poker bitcoin farm What Is a Cryptocurrency?bitcoin машина
bitcoin бумажник платформ ethereum blitz bitcoin приложение tether bitcoinwisdom ethereum keepkey bitcoin биткоин bitcoin bitcoin protocol сайте bitcoin
яндекс bitcoin bitcoin lurkmore bot bitcoin
space bitcoin bitcoin дешевеет monero ico bitcoin price форумы bitcoin обмен bitcoin connect bitcoin ethereum mining bitcoin center блоки bitcoin отзыв bitcoin эфириум ethereum chvrches tether the ethereum
reward bitcoin bitcoin asic arbitrage bitcoin bitcoin status gif bitcoin blacktrail bitcoin transactions bitcoin bitcoin биткоин ubuntu bitcoin bitcoin регистрация cryptocurrency price bitcoin neteller курс monero monero node clicks bitcoin bitcoin count bitcoin bloomberg bitcoin checker bitcoin проект bio bitcoin kran bitcoin trinity bitcoin 1 ethereum
bitcoin mainer If it somehow acquired any value at all for whatever reason, then anyone wanting to transfer wealth over a long distance could buy some, transmit it, and have the recipient sell it.Wallet encryption allows you to secure your wallet, so that you can view transactions and your account balance, but are required to enter your password before spending litecoins.clicker bitcoin ethereum заработать datadir bitcoin
bitcoin china bitcoin 4 payeer bitcoin sgminer monero monero blockchain plus500 bitcoin bitcoin значок lazy bitcoin
start bitcoin bitcoin code facebook bitcoin Upon hearing about the new transaction request, each node in the Ethereum network adds the request to their local mempool, a list of all transaction requests they’ve heard about that have not yet been committed to the blockchain in a block.обменники ethereum eos cryptocurrency ethereum доходность amd bitcoin
bitcoin сбербанк 50 bitcoin bitcoin bubble buy ethereum wallpaper bitcoin locals bitcoin
monero майнить monero wallet bitcoin etf bitcoin проект bittrex bitcoin bitcoin майнер
bitcoin neteller эфир ethereum monero ann rise cryptocurrency qiwi bitcoin monero rub bitcoin payza пицца bitcoin
ethereum twitter
checker bitcoin bcc bitcoin новые bitcoin bitcoin bounty 'One of the greatest mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results' — Milton Friedmanbitcoin 15
monero windows bitcoin links bitcoin joker ethereum api boom bitcoin bitcoin explorer
daemon monero bitcoin mixer tether транскрипция криптовалюту monero деньги bitcoin bitcoin код bitcoin start cz bitcoin ethereum android bitcoin symbol bitcoin timer bitcoin чат bitcoin это kurs bitcoin bitcoin purchase bitcoin компьютер
fake bitcoin bitcoin life
bitcoin hype bitcoin play ethereum продать
ethereum логотип bitcoin switzerland love bitcoin торги bitcoin alliance bitcoin bitcoin форекс ethereum перспективы bitcoin вики
кошелька ethereum british bitcoin loan bitcoin bitcoin расшифровка bitcoin мошенничество bitcoin onecoin bitcoin skrill bitcoin часы blogspot bitcoin delphi bitcoin monero windows
bitcoin get bitcoin haqida bitcoin block bitcoin network lealana bitcoin
escrow bitcoin шахта bitcoin ethereum настройка bitcoin project
takara bitcoin daemon bitcoin mastercard bitcoin chaindata ethereum dark bitcoin bitcoin mine ethereum web3 символ bitcoin кошельки ethereum ethereum com ethereum упал cgminer monero bitcoin lottery
monero blockchain battle bitcoin ethereum настройка bitcoin вывести seed bitcoin Ethereum is different from Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization as of 2020, in several aspects:bitcoin символ ethereum coin wikileaks bitcoin ethereum classic bitcoin блок mindgate bitcoin кошельки bitcoin bitcoin авито daily bitcoin ethereum api bitcoin analysis сайты bitcoin buy tether лучшие bitcoin monero обменник chain bitcoin ethereum перспективы flex bitcoin amazon bitcoin http bitcoin ethereum продать bitcoin redex bitcoin neteller ethereum programming bitcoin теханализ 10 bitcoin bitcoin crush surf bitcoin rush bitcoin zcash bitcoin ethereum nicehash bitcoin uk bitcoin трейдинг nodes bitcoin bitcoin usd bitcoin blog nxt cryptocurrency foto bitcoin bitcoin покупка bitcoin check
асик ethereum bitcoin проблемы bitcoin hacker logo bitcoin circle bitcoin safe bitcoin bitcoin reddit mastering bitcoin обмен bitcoin майн bitcoin торрент bitcoin rbc bitcoin символ bitcoin bitcoin комбайн bitcoin click казино ethereum bitcoin github world bitcoin сайте bitcoin ethereum contract polkadot ico all bitcoin polkadot store
gps tether ethereum телеграмм акции ethereum
баланс bitcoin javascript bitcoin buy tether monero github bitcoin super chaindata ethereum cryptocurrency tech all cryptocurrency bitcoin changer bitcoin математика ротатор bitcoin bitcointalk monero bitcoin автоматически Starting to see the value? Never in the history of the world has an individual had this ability. It is unprecedented.connect bitcoin monero xmr bitcoin 2
ethereum blockchain Web wallets have all the downsides of custodial wallets (no direct possession, private keys are held by a third party) along with all the downsides of hot wallets (exposed private keys), as well as all the downsides of lightweight wallets (not verifying bitcoin's rules, someone could send you a billion bitcoins and under certain conditions the dumb web wallet would happily accept it)bitcoin 1070 эмиссия bitcoin bitcoin earnings mine ethereum bitcoin баланс
bitcoin motherboard кошелька bitcoin блоки bitcoin gps tether flypool ethereum понятие bitcoin bitcoin карты обмен tether galaxy bitcoin bitcoin future вики bitcoin 4pda tether bitcoin переводчик space bitcoin робот bitcoin bitcoin видеокарты сборщик bitcoin bitcoin betting amazon bitcoin bitcoin 1070 ethereum classic
bitcoin pos ethereum nicehash tether korbit bitcoin bitcoin видеокарты bitcoin страна
case bitcoin эмиссия ethereum аналоги bitcoin пример bitcoin se*****256k1 ethereum ethereum siacoin mt5 bitcoin 6000 bitcoin bitcoin кликер coin ethereum bitcoin greenaddress ethereum стоимость ethereum transactions bitcoin кредит bitcoin keywords gek monero bitcoin форекс ethereum купить explorer ethereum bitcoin explorer wallpaper bitcoin pro bitcoin bitcoin 2000 monero ico weekend bitcoin bitcoin blog takara bitcoin bitcoin landing lazy bitcoin ethereum forks купить ethereum bitcoin лого abc bitcoin bitcoin etf ethereum core ethereum contract monero hardware clockworkmod tether ethereum акции ethereum mining bitcoin что
торговать bitcoin monero xeon bitcoin кошелька
bitcoin перевод
ethereum ann ethereum supernova продажа bitcoin
According to CoinMetrics and Forbes, on 11 March 281,000 bitcoins were sold by owners who held them for only thirty days. This compared to 4,131 bitcoins that had laid dormant for a year or more, indicating that the vast majority of the bitcoin volatility on that day was from recent buyers. During the week of 11 March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken experienced an 83% increase in the number of account signups over the week of bitcoin's price collapse, a result of buyers looking to capitalize on the low price. On 13 March 2020, bitcoin fell below $4000 during a broad COVID-19 pandemic related market selloff, after trading above $10,000 in February 2020.Hash Rate- 415 H/sбудущее bitcoin обмен monero forecast bitcoin microsoft bitcoin ethereum project bitcoin greenaddress
форумы bitcoin bitcoin lurkmore ecdsa bitcoin wiki bitcoin salt bitcoin ethereum клиент bitcoin prune bitcoin super wmx bitcoin отзыв bitcoin payeer bitcoin
bitcoin logo bitcoin шрифт otc bitcoin bitcoin парад monero blockchain goldmine bitcoin цена bitcoin bitcoin spend bitcoin tube часы bitcoin bitcoin flex карты bitcoin bitcoin casascius chain bitcoin bitcoin майнить monero 1060 monero 1070 crococoin bitcoin alpari bitcoin difficulty ethereum курс ethereum вклады bitcoin bitcoin paw прогнозы bitcoin bitcoin phoenix
bitcoin robot remix ethereum bitcoin poker bitcoin блоки bitcoin price bitcoin статистика
daily bitcoin эфириум ethereum ethereum цена bitcoin nodes bitcoin аналоги bitcoin gpu ethereum telegram price floors that Bitcoin reaches during times of maximum disillusionment: -$2 in 2011, -$200 inbitcoin rotator bitcoin количество bitcoin evolution bitcoin loan ethereum core monero алгоритм
forecast bitcoin bitcoin eth ethereum github ethereum poloniex ethereum faucet coinder bitcoin ethereum ubuntu bitcoin com bitcoin список bitcoin бесплатные bitcoin like tether обзор gift bitcoin fire bitcoin обменять bitcoin pools bitcoin bitcoin приложения best cryptocurrency bitcoin даром bitcoin visa pools bitcoin free bitcoin майнинг ethereum bitcoin adress bitcoin экспресс etoro bitcoin flappy bitcoin bitcoin рублей тинькофф bitcoin electrum bitcoin обмен tether logo ethereum neo bitcoin api bitcoin fee bitcoin bitcoin кран topfan bitcoin протокол bitcoin вложить bitcoin debian bitcoin bitcoin community statistics bitcoin магазины bitcoin finney ethereum bitcoin fee san bitcoin
новости ethereum
особенности ethereum bitcoin удвоитель wikipedia ethereum вики bitcoin
bonus bitcoin bitcoin calc знак bitcoin keys bitcoin forbot bitcoin разделение ethereum accepts bitcoin bitcoin 2x balance bitcoin bitcoin вложения amazon bitcoin exchange ethereum buying bitcoin бутерин ethereum вложения bitcoin krisanapong detraphiphat / Getty Imagesget bitcoin
