North Korea has always been notorious for its human rights violations. Recently, the totalitarian dictatorship has been drawing criticism for the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On March 8th, Cheollima Civil Defense(CCD) released a video on its website claiming:” Han Sol, the son of Kim Jong Nam, and two other family members were met quickly and relocated to safety. “

I browsed its website and found this on its statement:

“If you would like to offer anonymous financial support for our protection efforts, please use the below Bitcoin wallet address, with our deepest thanks:

134ytYQnZVAEVV6YZVfx1NBUGc9GY45FBm”

Out of curiosity, I checked transaction records of the address and found that 24 transactions have been made with 2.7 bitcoins in total within two days.

Now you might wonder as I do, where are these anonymous donors from?

Could it be China?

The statement released by CCD thanked China for its assistance. Plus, Han Sol had been living in Macau under Beijing’s protection after the family went into exile a several years ago.

Could it be Japan?

North Korea fired four ballistic missiles early Monday morning with some landing in waters as close as 300km(190miles) from Japan’s northwest coast. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe strongly protested that:

“The launches are clearly in violation of security council resolutions. It is an extremely dangerous action.”

It sounds reasonable that Japanese bitcoin investors would support CCD.

Could it be America who has been imposing sanctions on North Korea?

It could be anyone. We never know.

But does it really matter?

Now with bitcoin, on the one hand, every man and woman of integrity can reach out to others by offering financial support to organizations fighting for human rights, gender equality, LGBT community and justice without worrying about a privacy leak. On the other hand, however, it could also be used for drugs, crimes, terrorism. Does this make bitcoin bad?