If you have been following my latest articles or the news coming from Canada for that matter; you already know about the Truckers protests in the country.
The situation has escalated and the Canadian government has blocked the crowdfunding campaigns of the protesters as well as their bank accounts in order not to get access to their funds.
The attempt of the protesters to gather donations through crypto platforms drew a fierce response from Justin Trudeau's government that asked Centralized Exchanges to blacklist the Bitcoin wallet addresses associated with the protesters' campaign.
The Canadian government has deployed the police, the army, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) with their horses to break the "Freedom Convoy" protesters that have been occupying central Ottawa. The scenes are disheartening with peaceful protesters, among them elderly and people with disabilities, being trampled by the RCMP.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has also taken action after the government's decision to seek the ban of Bitcoin wallet addresses. For that it asked Nunchuk, a Bitcoin wallet software provider, to freeze the assets from blacklisted wallet addresses.
The response from Nunchuk team is epic in itself, showcasing how futile it is to try and ban Bitcoin.
In summary it says:
- They cannot freeze their users' assets
- They can't stop them from moving them
- They do not have knowledge of their users assets by design
Their rebuttal is a checkmate to every attempt to censor crypto and shows the power of decentralization. It is one thing to censor custody wallets of financial intermediaries such as centralized Crypto Exchanges and totally another thing to try and censor self custody wallets where the user is the one to hold the keys to their wallet.
Even if the Canadian government tries to block Crypto wallet apps from Google and Apple store, or initiates a blanket ban against Crypto there will always be alternative. People will use trusted APKs to download the apps, use cold storage wallets, use browser extension wallets, use VPNs and DeFi. To ban Bitcoin right now is to ban the access to the internet, which is impossible in most of the world.
It is high time that governments are educated on the power of Crypto, what is open source software, how wallets work, and the fundamentals of Bitcoin that make it unique.
PS: Can Bitcoin be the force that will take down leaders when they turn authoritarian?
You can also follow me on
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ceekz5
NoiseCash: https://noise.cash/u/Ceekz
Hive: https://peakd.com/@ceekz
