Uncensorable donations Donations governments cannot stop

Open government is strongly correlated to quality of life. Open government is compelled to answer injustice rather than causing it. Plans by an open government which are corrupt, cause injustice or do not alleviate suffering are revealed and so opposed before implementation. If unjust plans cannot reach implementation then government will be a force for justice. WikiLeaks

In the last two chapters we looked at the issues with digital payments, but when you think about donations you wouldn’t assume they have the same problems as payments have. For example when donating money to a charity, like Charity Water, they don’t have to be worried of charge back fraud because you’re voluntarily giving them money.1 But the same problem with third-party censorship is relevant here as well.2

Imagine a country doing something really horrible, like purging intellectuals and political opponents, that would put the government in a bad light. Journalists trying to report on this event may find it difficult or impossible to accept donations to continue their work. A payment processor (which are necessary for digital donations)—perhaps under pressure from the government—might block donations or break the journalistic anonymity,3 making donations for truth-seeking journalists very difficult or outright dangerous.

Donations is an excellent use case for cryptocurrencies, as they cannot be censored even by the most powerful nations in the world. And as I’ll argue in this chapter, this is very valuable.

1Most payment processors have lower fees for charities, but they’re still more expensive than the Most payment processors have lower fees for charities, but they’re still more expensive than the low cryptocurrency fees

2However even charities can be prosecuted for not fulfilling their promises, an experience the founder of Charity Water writes in his book “ However even charities can be prosecuted for not fulfilling their promises, an experience the founder of Charity Water writes in his book “ Thirst ”. So charge back fraud isn’t a completely irrelevant worry.

3Some cryptocurrencies also Some cryptocurrencies also give better privacy than other digital payment systems.

A powerful example of censorship is the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China 1989. It was a student led protest which was forcefully suppressed by hundreds of thousands military troops, killing large numbers of demonstrators and bystanders.4

“This gun-happy soldier, he’s firing indiscriminately into the crowd and three young girl students knelt down in front of him and begged him to stop firing,” she says quietly, gesturing with her hands in a praying motion. “And he killed them.” Margaret Holt , BBC: Tiananmen 30 years on - China’s great act of ‘forgettance’

China has gone to great lengths to cover up these events. Twitter is censored by default in China5 and anyone caught tweeting about Tiananmen might get arrested.6 On the anniversary they have police escorts for the victim’s families who wants to visit the graves—to keep them away from journalists.

Censorship is a global problem and is a big problem in for example Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. A more modern problem is manipulation on social media, with the goal to control public opinion. One way is to use trolls (fake user accounts) and another is to censor opinions that don’t fit your narrative.

4Some have drawn parallels between the recent protests in Hong Kong and Tiananmen, but with smartphones everywhere it would be close to impossible to cover up a similar massacre. The Hong Kong Free Press, an independent news source in China, accepts Bitcoin donations.

5The many others. It might be possible to work around the restrictions using a VPN, but many don’t work in China either. The censorship in China is absolutely massive. They try to scan and filter all internet traffic in China, often called The Great Firewall of China , and they’re doing a pretty good job. For example they completely ban Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, Youtube, Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, Netflix andothers. It might be possible to work around the restrictions using a VPN, but many don’t work in China either.

6You’ll probably be placed in a You’ll probably be placed in a re-education camp , they’re quite similar to camps in Stalin’s Soviet or Hitler’s Germany.

WikiLeaks is a relevant example for illustrating the importance of uncensorable payments as it shows the influence powerful actors have over payment processors, and in turn the funding for WikiLeaks. We will focus on the Chelsea Manning leaks and the aftermath, where WikiLeaks got their donation channels shut down for exposing government atrocities.

I’ll bring up the events surrounding Julian Assange, because they give context and might be relevant to the story of government abuse, but it’s not about him or any other person in particular. Even if Julian Assange is guilty of rape it does not change the importance of the leaks or WikiLeaks as a concept, which goes above individuals.7

This is not a glorification of WikiLeaks—they have endangered individuals via their leaks. Instead I hope to show that uncensorable donations are important, because exposing government atrocities can lead to your donations being blocked (and government atrocities should be exposed).

7Trying to discredit WikiLeaks by discrediting Assange is guilt by association—a logical fallacy. If we think that good deeds can only be done by perfectly good people then it follows that only Superman can do good. But in reality people are flawed like Iron Man, who’s narcissistic and alcoholic but also a hero.

There’s a minor theme in the WikiLeaks story: How the U.S. government instead of admitting these horrible events, punishing the responsible and making sure they never happen again, seem to do everything to cover them up.

This idea that American soldiers are unconditionally heroes, regardless of what they’ve done, makes me both angry and sad. Donald Trump has for example expressed concerns over soldiers being prosecuted for war crimes, and considers pardoning them. This includes a Navy Seals soldier who (allegedly) killed a 15-year old defenseless kid with his hunting knife and shot unarmed civilians. Those aren’t the actions of a hero.

But of course covering up or rationalizing events isn’t a U.S. only phenomena. Here are other examples:

As previously mentioned the Chinese cover up of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. How Genghis Khan is looked up to. Maybe you’ve heard that 1 of 200 people of all people alive today are related to Genghis Khan? That’s because he raped young girls wherever he went.18 In Scandinavian countries we talk about Vikings with pride. But the word Viking originally refers to actions of a group: “to viking”, “to pirate” or “to pillage”. And pillaging means killing, stealing, raping and taking people as slaves. Not unlike the actions of the U.S. soldiers who executed children—which we find so revolting. How leaders like Ceasar and Kim Jong-il were glorified. It was even forbidden to talk about them negatively. How Soviet tried to cover up the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.19

Unfortunately it seems like a human thing to try to hide your misdeeds instead of coming clean, even when they’re exposed.

No mom, it wasn’t me! A fidgeting child

18Dan Carlin, creator of the excellent Hardcore History podcast, brought up an interesting question: How long will it take for people to celebrate Hitler? It seems absurd to us now, but Genghis Khan did similarly awful things yet there’s a song in the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest about him and how “all women fell for him”.

19I recently finished watching the I recently finished watching the Chernobyl TV-series and I think it lives up to the hype. Among other things it captures the feeling of the cover-ups very well.

… if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ … ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’. George Orwell , 1984”

I know what some of you might say and what we others might feel: you don’t want to know about these horrible things. It’s true that you’ll feel better if you’re unaware and you’ll probably personally be better off if you act like these never happened.

But if we practice collective ‘forgettance’, where we all pretend these never happened, they will continue to happen. This is why what Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks revealed about the Iraq war is so important: we’re forced to confront the truth.20

20I’m not so naive to say the leaks will prevent future atrocities—they won’t. But knowledge of what actually happens is a necessary first step for change to be possible at all.

While the U.S. government was able to coerce payment processors and banks to drop WikiLeaks, they could never prevent Bitcoin donations. Even China, with the world’s largest internet censorship, cannot censor cryptocurrency transactions.21 The best they can do is force some exchanges to cooperate—but that can be worked around, for example by selling bitcoins in person for cash or by avoiding fiat altogether.

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, you can always accept donations digitally via cryptocurrencies. Even the most powerful nations in the world cannot prevent them, which is something unique for cryptocurrencies.