Topic: Bitcoin literally fixes this (Read 392 times)

I do not agree with your statement, it depends entirely on their foundation. Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency while GoFundMe is the crowdfunding platform. It remains specific to them. As long as they rely on the concentrated (bitPay) they can be victims of the same fate. Their issues are completely different.


You are absolutely right. From now on, newcomers need to be aware. If we do not all need to be aware of this, then we ourselves are going to be confused. Thank you so much for highlighting this precious word.

This message is for everyone, especially newbies. There are anti-Bitcoin trolls in the forum who will make long posts, debating other people by using strawmen, disinformation, and gaslighting. The fact is, Bitcoin is a solution to the problem that if banks refuse giving you their service, you can use Bitcoin. There’s a need that Bitcoin fills. If the truckers can’t accept donations through centralized services, then what’s the next most efficient way to accept them without fear of being censored? Bitcoin is one of them. FACT.

"bitcoin" the protocol/blockchain is not controlled by central entity
its not actually that easy for the government to just say "tomorrow, we stop the dollar(entire economy)"
much like your saying government "cant stop bitcoin(entire protocol)"

but then again gofundme does not control the entire FIAT economy. but does control a small subset amount of fiat put into its control.

much like the bitcoin 'fundraisers' dont control the whole protocol. but do control a subset amount of bitcoin

a government 'could' find that organisation and tell them to stop. whether its fiat or bitcoin(hand cuffs exist in the real world)

this is why the 'organisation' doing the bitcoin fundraiser moved the funds out of their control late in the day of the 14th. and is now said to be in the hands of an 'unknown group of trustees' because they realised that upto valentines day, the bitcoin fundraising organisation realised they were a central point of failure due to being publicly known.
yep during the fundraising campaign. the government could have done something with a simple knock at their doors and some handcuffs

dont confuse the censorship resistance of entire protocol, vs the semi-censorship resistance pseudonymous natures of allotments of coins.
after all. the bitfinex thieves got caught. silkroad got caught, mtgox ceo got in trouble,
bitcoin is not 100% unreachable by government. its just a better distance of reach than fiat is

and even now the 3 main organisers who are publicly known can be court ordered to reveal identities of the new trustees or be penalised(should government take that direction)
bitcoin does help. but its not a 100% barrier against government intervention. hand cuffs are real if you leave ID traces

as for the small subset of an amount of a currency
its not easy for government to confiscate bank notes hidden under the bed, they first have know you, knwo where you live, to break your door in, and then see dollar bills hanging out the edge of the bed/do a detailed search flipping the bed over
but then they can break your door in and just happen to see a bitcoin wallet displayed on your screen/do a detailed hard drive search

knowing an organiser. and knowing they are doing something the gov dont like the gov can court order that person/organisation(whether bitcoin or fiat)

in bitcoin there is no need to associate ID to a bitcoin address. but then its personal judgement of how much people trust someones involvement without knowing their name

much like many fiat kickstarters and gofundme, you have to trust the narrative of the plea story
many get scammed by fake campaigns in fiat.
dollar by default does not test KYC. it relies on businesses to set policy for the business to check if people using their business are real names
EG i can set up a paypal account with a fake email. and move dollar
but i cant find that many bitcoin custodian services that dont KYC anymore.. because the BUSINESS has set policy

if the bitcoin fundraiser organisation has publicly known names. the government can court order that organisation, with penalty if they refuse
bitcoin is only as good as the anonymity people keep, by avoiding using central organisations/businesses. but then that comes to then trusting unknown recipients

its why bitcoin is classed as pseudonymous rather than anonymous

What’s wrong in asking for support? Are truckers scamming people? Did they get the money without doing anything? Is this illegal?


That’s another debate, but the point in using Bitcoin is because the government and the banksters have no control over Bitcoin, and therefore can’t simply lock and take the money from the truckers.

The real problem here is that the protesters are asking for funding.
I have nothing against their protest.This is their civil right,but saying something like "give us money,so we could protest" is kinda weird to me.If you really want to protest,you could protest without asking for donations.
Anyway,having a centralized entity,that can redistribute all the funding to the people,who need that money is a must(unfortunately). That's why charity foundations exist.
It's theoretically possible for all protesters to just gather a huge list of their own BTC addresses and post them online to collect donations,but what's the guarantee that some fraudster won't add his address to the list?
Charity is always about trust,it's not about the money.
Trust is still required,even if Bitcoin replaces fiat money in these charity campaigns.

But Bitcoin does fix the problem. Bitcoin is not controlled by a centralized entity. The state can’t tell anyone to stop donating to the truckers, nor can the state stop the protocol from functioning. The Honey Badger don’t care.


That’s another debate/discussion.


Bitcoin is not merely a “currency”, it’s a protocol that provides something for people that need a protocol for value-transfer that’s not controled by banks.

Bitcoin fixed Mr. Heroine Dealer’s need for a medium of exchange in the dark markets, the Canadian Truckers also found a need for Bitcoin. If GoFundMe didn’t censor them and steal their money, do you believe they would have found the “Bitcoin-need”?

I don't disagree about Bitcoin or these points about Bitcoin. I don't think anyone who's commented does.

I just don't see how it literally fixes the problem. If GoFundMe accepts only Bitcoin today, it literally doesn't fix the problem.

I think as others have pointed out, this isn't a problem of currency that needs fixing, it's a problem of method of crowdfunding. In the example I showed, some guys used Bitcoin to crowdfundraise on this forum -- it didnd't make that campaign censorship-free. Again, the method matters, not the currency.

It doesn’t change the fact that Bitcoin is STILL a censorship-resistant, self-sovereign cryptocurrency, which is the point. That it STILL can’t be controlled by the banks and the government. You are merely debating about operations security, which is entirely another discussion.

Let’s take them separately because any such comparisons would only lead to confusion.

+1
Hence the popularity of Bitcoin escrow companies in past fundraising eras (ICO is such a bad word now) and the continued popularity of escrow services on this forum -- Bitcoin itself doesn't solve the trust issue of crowdfunding.

Am still curious to see if Bitcoin will further develop smart contract capabilities for such a simple case (escrow). I know it has to be possible, as it has been discussed before. Just always wondered why it's not an in-demand utility.

Remember what happened with this Bitcoin charity fundraise.

That’s another debate, and almost a nitpick to the point of this topic. It’s actually a debate on a user’s operations security, and how he/she uses Bitcoin for a potentially problematic matter legally. Because users can always have better security through the use of services like ChipMixer for example. They can mix the donations there, and to be sent to another wallet the original holders don’t control. Or the wallet is controlled be someone outside of Canada.

The point is that when you use bitcoin the government and other corrupt entities such as banks or GoFundMe no longer have their hand in your pocket. So they can't just take your money freely and whenever they wished to. Now with bitcoin they have to force their hand in your pocket violently which is a lot harder and complicated.

For example in case of fundraising for Canadian truckers if someone raises funds through bitcoin (and apparently someone did according to this topic) all it takes is for Canadian government to raid the homes of those who hold the keys (as they are known already) and arrests them for any reason they like such as money laundering, terrorist financing, ... and they can easily force them to give up their private keys (ie their money).

The problem is with the underlying dictatorship in the west and that is not something bitcoin can solve. Hence my initial statement that "bitcoin fixes part of the problem".

OK, are you saying that the government can force ANYONE to give their keys? Or that we should merely comply? What then is the point of Bitcoin as a protocol? Of Proof of Work? Of decentralization? Do you believe that everyone should merely be HODLing Bitcoin only for the purpose of Store of Value/wealth?

Bitcoin has never had a better debate to exist for years until the entire world saw GoFundMe confiscate the people’s money.

I don't know the Canadian laws and that doesn't matter because what I do know is that laws can be and have been bent by the governments whenever it suits them. For example all it takes is using certain keywords like "national security" and it simply overrides everything else.

Not sure how bitcoins would fix gofundme campaigns, bitcoin is a currency whereas gofundme is a website where people can ask for money from strangers. It might feel like censorship if the admins take down a campaign, but the company has set out a certain rules to avoid misuse and scammers. Bitcoins could help to setup something similar where the campaign manager has more flexibility and doesn't need to worry about being cancelled. The problem here would then be to make sure no fraudulent campaign is being run on the website. It is just to easy that when you hear about a big tragedy on TV to go and create a campaign for the victims, but who is going to check and verify that you are actually helping the victims with the money and don't pocket it yourself. Bitcoins has a lot of good features, anonymity is usually a good one. In the case of collecting money from strangers it 's probably not so helpful.

Isn't this more of a problem with a centralized fund raising platform than a problem about currency? If, for example, the Freedom Convoy 2020 campaign would ditch GoFundMe and would instead solicit funds by secretly reaching out to select individuals, groups, and institutions, would that not sufficiently address this problem?

Could cash, for example, be censored? What if the group would completely do away with banks and other centralized platforms? Wouldn't that be enough for their funds to avoid getting frozen?

Bitcoin is a payment network, GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform. You can't organize a fund raiser with Bitcoin network alone. If those people just posted their BTC address on social media, they would gather only a tiny fraction of what they would get with GoFundMe. To compete with GoFundMe, there should be a crypto-based platform, but it's not going to succeed now, because the general population is not using crypto, and few people would bother setting up exchange accounts, passing KYC, paying ridiculous exchange fees, all to donate $5 worth of BTC to someone.

You can’t even argue about vaccination, but in Russia a certificate costs $100, in Europe it’s $200, is it really a problem in Canada? Just the sellers of these certificates accept bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies so that you do not pay unknown people from your bank card.

I'm not a vaccine opposer, and given that the anti-vaccination movement isn't huge in Canada (it's much bigger in my country), I think that GoFundMe is simply blocking the funds because of not liking the cause. And if anti-vaccination movement focuses on getting funds in Bitcoin, it will show that Bitcoin can't be censored similarly (at least, not if it's just a Bitcoin address posted directly), but it will also be a blow to Bitcoin's reputation given that vaccines are widely accepted and supported in developed countries. Also, they'd probably get way less money this way because:

• most people still don't use Bitcoin
• those who use Bitcoin know how popular Bitcoin scams are and would be wary of donating Bitcoin
• there still remains a problem of using this money which might require selling of fiat, and at that point the censorship can return

What exactly surprised you? That the aggression (intimidation, coercion, etc) against others is arguably the only way to deprive people of cryptographically-secure currency or that the government can perform aggression against others to take away someone's money? As for the former part, the only non-aggressive method of confiscating money that I can think of is to generate accidentally a private key or seed that has already been funded by a previous owner, which is practically infeasible but still probable. As for the latter part... Do you know any non-aggressive methods governments use to acquire money to fund their needs? Please, name a few... That governments have been employing for thousands of years different coercive methods to acquire wealth shouldn't come as a surprise. Coercion, intimidation, aggression is the only possible means with which an entity that produces nothing can finance their endeavors. It even doesn't matter what currency we are talking of: if the government wants your money, they will find a way to take it away from you since the mere existence of the government solely depends on it.