Activists And Dissidents

Three short stories. Different countries, different circumstances, the same property that mattered.

Belarus, 2020. A disputed election, a violent crackdown, and opposition groups cut off from the banking system. International supporters wanted to help. Wire transfers were monitored. The SWIFT system was effectively inaccessible for groups the Lukashenko government had targeted. Bitcoin donations arrived. The funds paid for medical support for injured demonstrators and logistics for people who had to flee. The financial channel that couldn’t be blocked was used because no other channel remained.

Afghanistan, 2021. As the Taliban took power and banking infrastructure collapsed, women who had built small businesses found themselves barred from operating them and cut off from their savings. A handful had converted savings to Bitcoin before the collapse. They crossed borders carrying their savings as memorised seed phrases — no physical evidence that could be confiscated, no bank account that could be frozen. The savings arrived with them.

Iran, ongoing. Journalists and lawyers working on human rights cases receive support from international organisations. Bank transfers to individuals inside Iran are blocked by both international sanctions and domestic surveillance. Bitcoin — particularly acquired peer-to-peer — provides a channel that neither government has fully managed to stop.

These are not the primary use case for Bitcoin. Most people who hold Bitcoin are investors in stable countries. But they’re why the properties exist in the protocol — why the cypherpunks built censorship resistance in from the start. Not for criminals. For exactly these situations.

The people who need the system most are the people the system is most likely to exclude.

Tomorrow: energy and freedom — the week in review.

— The Daily Bit