DISCLAIMER: This article is discussing an extremely politicized and sensationalized topic. I am not “pro” either side, this article was written purely through the lens of a cryptocurrency idealist.
Since the “Freedom Convoy” protests started, the Canadian government has put Canada in a state of emergency. Not only does this order give the Canadian police more, the Canadian government has basically outlawed crypto. Is the one of the largest attacks on democracy in the west, and what does this mean for crypto?
Democracy: [Latin: Demos = People | Kratos = Rule], the pinnacle of the west, the pioneer of the open-market. Arguably the best method of governance. The emergency regulations allowed the federal government of Canada to do two things:
- Reinforce provincial and local police with federal funding and power
- Use extreme measures to cut-off the protestors financial support.
I am not here to debate the actions of the protestors or the police, more to understand and explain the implications, of the tightened financial regulations on the crypto market.
In the beginning of the protests the “Freedom Convoy” accepted donations through GoFundMe, after their fundraiser was shut down by the company, the convoy moved to a different platform. This platform being GiveSendGo.
GiveSendGo received a court order from the Canadian government, saying, that they must shut down the program. GiveSendGo refused since they are based in the United States. Recently a hacker that goes by “Kirtaner” was able to access all personal details of the protestors and publicly doxxed them online. This incident has made most people lose trust in GiveSendGo, they are in dire need of a distributed, decentralized currency.
Now this is where crypto comes in, the “convoy” started accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The Canadian government began to track these wallets, and since the blockchain is fully transparent, it probably wasn’t too hard to find what address is what. Now that the Canadian government has the wallets of the “convoy”, they have begun to contact exchanges to get their addresses blacklisted. This is where the FUD begins, the Canadian government is claiming they “froze wallets” — implicating that they had hacked Bitcoin.
The Canadian government simply used their power to influence centralized services to their favor. Bitcoin is still virtually un-hackable
