Topic: Does Bitcoin weaken the Wests ability to fight enemies of freedom? (Read 228 times)

Good answer, and interesting about crypto exchanges following international sanctions.

When the full-scale war started, I've seen people in the Ukrainian human rights movement that wanted to suggest boycotting Bitcoin because it can be used by Russia to avoid sanctions. I successfully argued against it, saying that Bitcoin itself is a neutral technology that can't be blamed for how it's misused, can't be effectively banned and is also endorsed by both Ukrainian society and Ukrainian government. Even in the crypto area, there were cases of crypto exchanges following the international sanctions and thus restricting relevant Russian accounts from using the funds. And without big exchanges, it's hard to move a lot of funds around, especially if you have fiat and need to exchange it for Bitcon and then vice versa. I don't think Bitcoin should be a part of the conversation about undermining the Western impact on the enemies of freedom, and in the end I don't think Bitcoin played a major role helping Russia stay afloat and finance the war in practice.
As for arguments in support of Bitcoin, I'd emphasize the impracticability of trying to restrict its usage because it's decentralized and Russia can find ways anyway, and that Bitcoin also became a medium that brought lots of support to Ukraine in the form of donations (major funds, including "Come Back Alive" and the presidential "United24" accept cryptos, and there've been major news articles on how much money was gathered by Ukraine via crypto donations).

It is partially because of lack of resources in the West compared to the East and partially because the "West" is built based on colonization, and without colonizing it all falls apart. If you look at what each country did over the past year, you can see they haven't given up colonizing either. For instance France over the past year has been trying to rob other countries like those in Northern Africa and Yemen to get gas for themselves. They even fund/support the invasion of Yemen (while blaming Russia for invading another country)!

Unfortunately there will always be some people who will try to white knight for governments and that's funny. First of all, lets face the reality that there are some organizations in the world who are actually enemies of the freedom, and also lets face that west is not that much in love with freedom neither.

Look at USA right now, they reversed abortion law, meaning you can't get abortion even if you wanted to in some states, is that the freedom you are talking about? Does it really sound like a freedom given to people? Some states allow weed and some don't, is that the freedom you are talking about? Just because some things are illegal in your own belief system, doesn't mean you have the right to stop others, and that's why west is as dictator as anywhere else.

Allow me to explain what happened when the Naira's design was introduced in my country and what I learned about the deadline people were given to return the old money in circulation. People found themselves without the cash they were used to, and this is the freedom the government can take away at any time. The same thing happened in Russia and other western countries that didn't want any organization controlling their funding, which is why they turned to Bitcoin: it can't be controlled.

However, given how vehemently Russia has been attacking Ukraine, if the government, organization, and other countries want to follow that bitcoin with reliable analytical tools, they can do so because no respectable mixers will want to be associated with Russia once they learn about the massacre they have committed against innocent people in other countries but  Bitcoin will continue to operate as it does, and society must respect its inherent qualities.

I think in this case the intention is definitely not that because indeed with the current state of affairs to say bitcoin is like that would obviously make them seem like an absolute crime.
Bitcoin exists and was created for everyone (who wants it) and its purpose is also definitely not to support terrorists or create a scam farm because these can be accusations that are actually groundless and very easy to debunk so indeed I think it's enough not to corner bitcoin as if this is get bad.

funny part is
russias reaction to sanctions is a 2.5% GDP loss
compared to their 2020 level is still above 0% of a 3 year average)

yet 2020-21-22 has seen them same sanctions affect "the wests" economics by more then 2.5% negatively

yep the inflation due to russian sanctions has made all peoples "value" shrink by 13%+

..
the sanction were supposed to make russian citizens lives worse for them to revolt and want a new president

the results though is the wests economics got hit harder making people want different leaders around the world
..

the funny parts are whilst the west are saying "hate the middle east, hate russia, hate china" we are now seeing how reliant the west is/was on the east. due to all the effects the east has had on the west

Agreed. Sanctions that target commodities - stuff the target of the sanctions needs to make stuff - are a more effective form of sanction than targeting currency.

This is a good point and a good retort to the question I posed.

Well, it's true that Bitcoin would weaken the ability to implement economic sanctions. I don't think it's possible to argue otherwise.

But the argument I would make is that sanctions don't only include economic restrictions. And even with economic restrictions, asset forfeitures and penalties are only part of the sanctions that could be issued. You wouldn't necessarily need decentralized currencies to implement successful sanctions and there are other ways to gut a country's economy even if they were to circumvent such measures through Bitcoin.

For example -- if the U.S. provides military aid to a country, merely withdrawing that aid would be sufficient to compel compliance. And of course, the U.S. has military holdings all over the world which direct influence over other countries.

I do not want to say that Bitcoin is not used to evade sanctions, but there are some evidence that it might be happening, but I think the amount we are talking about is small, compared to what is being told in the media. 

I also see people saying that economic sanctions are useless, but I will take that over full scale war ....any day. It must be seen as one of the preventative tactics to prevent full scale war, so we should not condone the use of Crypto currencies to bypass these sanctions.

Yes. Bitcoin weakens and even eliminates West's ability (and other similar anti-freedom regimes) to fight freedom seekers. That is why bitcoin is known as the solution for those who seek financial freedom. Specially when you consider that the most corrupt banking system exists in the West like in United States and also the most privacy invading regimes are in the West (eg. NSA which is a military department of US) who are against anything that is remotely related to freedom.

Please consider the following.


Another interesting case.


There have been many cases like these over the years. Even the UN (united nations) has accepted cryptocurrency for many years to fund projects aimed at helping the poor in africa and abroad.

Could bitcoin's humanitarian and philanthropic trends go unnoticed by the public?

I often wonder how many people across the globe are aware of events such as these.

Bitcoin has a long history to it, even if its measured in little more than a decade.

Oh please... give me a break  
There is no East or West, they are all political puppet controlled by small group of people, and we should all be aware of that after things that happened in last few years and decades.
Military industrial complex machinery is running full steam and I only see paid people putting more gasoline on this wild fire.
Bitcoin can be used by anyone without limits, and sanctions are not doing anything btw, they made much more damage to the ''West''.
All this circus reminds me a lot on George Orwell's book (and movies) 1984, with Oceania ''fighting'' Eurasia, and in reality few rich lunatics are in war with majority of regular people.

I could be wrong, but I think they are still allowing us to play with Bitcoin until they release their stupid CBDC crap.
For some people it will be easier to accept that slave CBDC money, now when they got used to Bitcoin and QR codes.
Again, I hope I am wrong... but let's check back on this post in 5 or 7 yearsm, and see if I was wrong.

Russia has not been bypassing 5he sanction made because of Bitcoin except if we are not going to address the e tire situation as it is, Russia never made Bitcoin a legal tender even though most of the citizens engage the use of Bitcoin on their daily activities but the government here still suffers alot due to the impact of the sanction on them.


There are many areas of the economy whereby the country on sanction can enjoy nothing than total restrictions because there are materialize economics that needed the role of currency and Bitcoin could have been an alternative but Russia here is possibly building on how it can introduce it's own digital fiat cbdc


No, but Russia could have taken that very option with Bitcoin as an advantage, but yet they suffers the international collaborations they had built with other countries as a result of this sanction.

Who determines what freedom is, who is an enemy of freedom and who should be allowed to act certain ways?
There's no global police nation with the moral rights to hand out sanctions and restrictions to erring countries.

Bitcoin offers freedom, freedom to the West and every other part of the work, freedom to make your own choices and use as you wish, freedom to spend and transact without restrictions.

Sanctions should not be used as weapons, like the US is doing. Sanctions should have a preventative effect not a destructive, coercive one.

We know what weaponized sanctions do. Just like at what happened to Germany before WW2. In fact I would go as far as to say sanctions were the main cause of WW2. Had the Germans not been bled dry and left to their doom, then they may have not followed a maniac who wanted to exact revenge on those exact people and steal what he considered rightfully theirs.

And Bitcoin cannot be used to overcome sanctions that easily. In fact, Fiat is way more useful in money laundering and sanction evading because its not on a public ledger, unlike Bitcoin. Nobody knows where Fiat goes.

The criticism that Bitcoin undermines the US ability to sanction the enemies of the West is legitimate, but it must be seen in the context of the larger landscape.

 First, financial sanctions are just one of many foreign policy tools at the disposal of the United States and its allies.  There are many other forms of pressure that can be exerted, such as diplomatic isolation, trade embargo, international cooperation to increase pressure on the enemy, economic warfare, and so on.

Which is a good thing in oppressive regimes that oppress their own people - the people now have a way our of financial prison - but not so good when that oppressive regime is being targeted by sanctions - they now have a way out of those: Bitcoin. And Im hearing this more as a valid critcism of Bitcoin from people in important think-tanks. My retort is usually "the money based sanctions werent very effective anyway". Which is true but usually not satisfactory.

Im not being negative, Im a big Bitcoin advocate. The question Im posing is going to become more and more important. I understand your retort, that a money isn't a good way to sanction an enemy country. I agree, but currently it is being used as a tool, though it hasnt been very effective.

Prefer to live in Russia, Iran or China would you?

Bitcoin was created with many things in mind but one of the most famous reasons bitcoin was created is to be an alternative currency used by humanity in purchase of goods and services and also in other transactions. This clearly means that bitcoin is money.
And having an alternative of spending money other than the Fiat money is a good one.
For instance in my local banking, one of the banks was febiting people's account for no reason. And since I had an account in another bank, I simply moved my money to the other bank and stopped using the former bank.

This is the situation with the west as you discussed in the topic. If you are stopped from using one pattern of payment, you have no option than to embrace bitcoin because it is an alternative and the representative of freedom.

The US is the military arm of the WEF, and as such is one of the greatest enemies of freedom. Bitcoin gives us the chance to resist the banking oligarchs, who are seeking to restrict our freedom.

Please don't distort the usability of Bitcoin like this.

Bitcoin serves everyone, every nation want to use it and it was not created to support terrorists or dictators or help any country to exploit sanctions.

If you think of Bitcoin like this, weaken the sanctions against bad countries that break world standard about freedom or any standard, please think of guns and gun powder. They were not created to kill people and to create wars by Nobel but later people use those discoveries in many different ways.

Bitcoin is the same and it can be used for many use cases and has wide usability. It can help many people and it is a biggest helpful usability of Bitcoin. Think of positive contribution from Bitcoin please. For negative effects, we can not control it and initially Bitcoin was not created to serve bad or immoral activities.

One of the most valid criticisms of Bitcoin is that it reduces the ability of the Unite States to sanction enemies of the West e.g. the billions of dollars in accounts belonging to Russians confiscated last year after the invasion, and the kicking off of Russian banks from the SWIFT network.

Given we are now moving back to the war portion of the war-peace geopolitical cycle, using the dollar and the traditional monetary network to sanction enemies is going to become more important. Does Bitcoin weaken the West's position? It's obvious to most people that the West has a growing number of enemies whose values are antithetical to freedom - mainly Russia, China and Iran. Therefore the problem Im outlining is going to become more into focus.

What's a good argument here, beyond "well the dollar-based sanctions weren't very effective anyway"?

Note:  I dont want to go down the road of whatabouttery and arguments about how the West is no better than Russia/China. It clearly is, and needs defending.