alt Hacker NewsI'm building a financial censorship monitor at https://nofunds.org/, that tells a story of how money has been turned into a political weapon to silence journalists, activists, and civil society by freezing assets, blocking accounts, sanctioning, and banning payments. It's part of my master's thesis https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/187407 and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430596, but now I wanted to make a more comprehensive list, using Claude API and manual work. I'm designing a website right now, and the site is live within 2 months (given the API rate limitations currently to process articles). I know Hacker News is quite critical of Bitcoin, but it's also worthy to warn that, indeed, Bitcoin is at least a marginal tool to those whose bank accounts may be endangered. I'm basically arguing that Bitcoin can be used to resist such financial censorship, deplatforming and so on.
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Have you read or connected with Rainey Reitman, who just published the book Transaction Denied?
this is interesting.
my hunch is that we're moving towards more surveillance, censorship and deplatforming in the future, and CBDCs are a major tool for that.
I like Bitcoin, despite its problems (price volatility and quantum vulnerability) but I think censorship-resistant stablecoins would be a better solution for people looking to protect themselves from Big Brother.
Don't they sneeze peoples' Bitcoin just the same?
With Feds showing up with your door with guns and handcuffs, you'll have to hand over your private keys, and that's how they freeze BTC accounts. It's not particularly immune to the same threats.
I built cross-border compliance Management info system dashboards at a Swiss private bank. The much more widespread reality is: entire nationalities and residencies get quietly moved to "do not serve" lists because the regulatory cost of serving them exceeds revenue. No public process, no appeal, no notice, you just can't open an account:financial exclusion most people never see.