freedom

‘Bitcoin Is the Biggest Jailbreak in Human History,’ Says Philosopher Stefan Molyneux

22/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

On February 19, the Canadian podcaster and Freedomain Radio host, Stefan Molyneux, discussed his thoughts about bitcoin following the crypto asset’s tumultuous rise capturing over a trillion-dollar market valuation. Molyneux’s recent speech describes the liberating potential bitcoin could bring to the masses and how the crypto network has the ability to change humanity for the better.

‘Bitcoin Is a Currency That Serves the People at the Expense of the Parasites’

Just recently the crypto evangelist and philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, spoke about the Bitcoin blockchain in great detail. Molyneux opened his speech by answering a question about BTC and ETH having a hard time scaling. The Freedomain radio host said that it is good to critique, but that people in the crypto space wouldn’t give up so easily.

Molyneux mentioned that bitcoin’s market capitalization just crossed the trillion-dollar milestone and noted that the people who have added that value won’t throw in the towel. He insisted that many crypto proponents have given a decade of their lives toward spreading adoption, and mentioned there are solutions like bitcoin cash (BCH) and the Lightning Network.

“The Bitcoin community is composed of just about the most brilliant, and economically and ideologically motivated human beings on the planet,” Molyneux stresses in his video. “Bet against them at your freaking peril, because Bitcoin is not just an alternative currency, it’s not just a store of value, it’s not just a cool public ledger. Bitcoin is a passionate FU to the powers that be,” Molyneux adds.

The Freedomain philosopher continues: “Bitcoin, as I’ve argued publicly in speeches many years ago— Bitcoin is the potential end to war, to end hyperinflation, to end intergenerational debt— Bitcoin is a mission of mercy to the future— Bitcoin is the Jesus to the new conference of the religion of peace called crypto. Bitcoin is the people regaining control over their currency for the first time in the history of the world— Bitcoin is currency democratized, unpolitized, unpredatored.”

Molyneux added:

Bitcoin is a currency that serves the people at the expense of the parasites, rather than the currency which serves the parasites at the expense of the people at the moment. Bitcoin is rescuing your precious labor from being hoovered up endlessly by the invisible vampire mosquitoes of central banking.

Today’s Fiat Currency Is Slavery Tethered to Unborn Generations

The philosopher continues by commending the Bitcoin community and says that the people in crypto are “seriously brilliant.” Beautiful and “deranged people,” he says that are “committed to the future of peace and plenty that Bitcoin could represent.”

Molyneux further notes that the current fiat currency distributed by the world’s oligarchic bureaucracy is “slavery.”

“What we understand is currency now is slavery. The currency is summoned into existence at the expense of your children’s futures. What you think of as a dollar sign is a slow jugular sucking noose twined and twisted around the necks of your children,” Molyneux reveals.

National debt, Molyneux continues to highlight is “a real human trafficking problem.” You need to understand the Bitcoin space he adds. “The passion that these incredibly brilliant people have brought to bear on the oldest human problem— How do you store a value so that thieving predatory vampiric assholes can’t get their jugular sucking tentacles on it at all times? How do you store value so that you can actually come back to it?” Molyneux asked.

He adds:

Civilization is all about the storing of value. How do you store value? That’s civilization you understand. Bitcoin is about how you store value so that [parasites] can’t get their hands on it. They just can’t. You put your money in the bank, inflation eats it away, you store your meat by the river, the flies lay their eggs in it and you can’t eat it, you got gold coins in Rome, they put all kinds of a bimetallic [crap] into the gold and destroy its value in your hand.

‘The Likes of a Revolution That We Have Never Ever Ever Seen Before in Human History’

Molyneux says that humans are all about storing value and in the evangelist’s opinion, the storage and retention of value is everything in life. “By creating something that can store value outside the state, that is the likes of a revolution that we have never ever ever seen before in human history,” the philosopher insists.

“If shells on some island are the currency,” Molyneux details in an analogy. “Then you need three shells a day to live, and if you get four shells, someone’s gonna take the fourth shell. Then tomorrow you won’t bother to get the fourth shell. You just stick with getting three shells and nothing will ever progress, because nothing can be saved or stored up in value. Nothing ever gets built because everything you build is going to be taken away from you,” he added.

Molyneux continues: “Imagine… everything you build is going to get taken away. It’s happening [right] now, you understand. Everything you have built is already taken away by unfunded liabilities, national debt, inflation— Everything you build is already taken away. You are just holding it now to have it for a little while to give you the illusion so you can go to work tomorrow.”

Bitcoin Represents a New Financial System That Doesn’t Leverage the Unborn as Collateral

Molyneux says you can have a house. But it’s really not your house. He highlights that you have to pay the government every year to keep it.

“And the government put it in so much debt and you in so much debt, that it’s gonna be owned by some foreign bankster, at some point,” Molyneux’s speech details. “Or the entire currency is going to collapse and society goes back to savage gangs and you lose your house. You pretend you have a house, you pretend you have electricity, you pretend you have a car, you pretend you have everything but you have nothing.”

The Freedomain radio host further says:

You know this 2030 ‘you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy,’ [that’s the way it is] now. In fact you owe, you don’t own, you owe. You are only allowed to pretend you own something so that you will get up and go to work tomorrow. That’s it man.

Bitcoin has changed this course, Molyneux emphasizes. Bitcoin is the first of its kind that can actually keep parasites away from stealing value he notes. He says that the society we live in today treats babies and the unborn as “collateral.” Bitcoin can bolster a system that does away with such an immoral system.

“If you generally understood how much debt was taken out on your behalf just because you are breathing,” Molyneux notes. “If you genuinely looked at that math, you can find it pretty easy,” he added.

Molyneux’s speech continues for another 20 minutes longer, and news.Bitcoin.com readers can watch the rest of his speech here.

What do you think about Stefan Molyneux’s recent Bitcoin speech? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Political Prosecution Of Julian Assange Calls For Nonviolent Cryptographic Defense

02/10/2020 by Idelto Editor

On October 1, 2020, WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing at the Old Bailey in London came to an end. What unfolded during 18 days of hearings was a Kafkaesque show-trial of a free press, where Assange was placed behind a glass case, unable to have access to his lawyers. This is a war against journalism, and an empire’s assaults on the rights to the self-determination of people around the world.

For so long, narratives of our society have been controlled by those in power. WikiLeaks set frozen history in motion. Calling it “the rebel library of Alexandria,” Assange explained how WikiLeaks is “the single most significant collection of information about how modern institutions actually behave that doesn’t exist elsewhere, in a searchable, accessible, citable form.”

The defense witness during Assange’s extradition hearing testified on the effect of WikiLeaks in facilitating democracy. The publication of Iraq War Logs revealed the existence of an estimated 15,000 civilian casualties that were previously unknown, restoring dignity for those victims of senseless war. In a written statement, a German citizen Khalid El-Masri who mistakenly was identified as a terrorist and kidnapped and tortured by the CIA, addressed the court about how information released by WikiLeaks helped him to make his own court case and get justice.

Bitcoin has aided WikiLeaks’ quest: To bring the power to shape history into the hands of ordinary people. Appearing in the form of a hologram at The Nantucket Project conference, from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was arbitrarily detained, Assange spoke of the significance of blockchains, Bitcoin’s underlying technology, particularly in relation to journalism and holding those in power to account.

WikiLeaks’ editor in chief described how Bitcoin’s distributed trust can be used to provide “proof of publishing at a certain time” without central authority, and the whistleblowing site utilized the censorship resistance that it enables to make its publications immune from being altered. As the prosecution of Assange continues, can this technology that helped WikiLeaks restore history now be used to defend the freedom of its founder?

Hijacking Of History

Since registering its domain on October 4, 2006, WikiLeaks has published more than 10 million documents with a pristine record of accuracy. Its publication of documents concerning the U.S. wars in the oil-rich Middle East informed the public about the rise of the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his farewell speech in 1961.

The release of the Collateral Murder video, depicting a U.S. military airstrike killing innocent civilians including two Reuters journalists in a suburb of Iraq, let people around the world see the faces of real victims of the U.S. War on Terror — transnational corporations’ strategic petrodollar hegemony for the conquest of territory.

“Vault 7,” the largest publication of confidential documents on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency exposed the agency’s excessive power with its ability to hack any Android or iPhone, as well as Samsung TVs and even cars, to spy on citizens. It shed further light on militarization of the internet with the penetration of intelligence agencies like the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, that came to light after the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations. Information that was brought back to historical archives revealed the unaccounted power inside the U.S., and it’s hijacking of a republic into a national security and surveillance state.

In Defense Of American Ideals

The original vision of America was articulated by Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. With ideals of equality and liberty for all people, he laid out a foundation of government based on individual rights and the rule of law. Despite the founder’s hypocrisy and contradictions — manifested in the genocide of natives, enslavement of blacks and suppression of women — it has been said that the Declaration of Independence was a promise; the Constitution was the fulfillment.

In recent years, in order to fulfill this promise, the younger generation of America came forward. Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, the source behind WikiLeaks’ release of the largest trove of state secrets in U.S. history, indicated that she risked her personal liberty in order to “have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.” Inspired by her courage, Snowden also engaged in an act of civil disobedience to defend those ideals.

One person’s act of courage becomes contagious, creating waves of whistleblowers. The U.S. Empire came on in full force to attack those truth-tellers, by charging them under the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act of 1917 is the outdated law created after World War I for wartime prosecutions. This is now weaponized to punish the publisher.

Assange has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of conspiring with a source to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his reporting on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture at Guantanamo Bay. He now faces the risk of extradition to the U.S., where he would receive no trial. If convicted, he would be sentenced for up to 175 years in prison and be held under extremely inhumane conditions through Special Administrative Measures, known as the darkest corner of the U.S. federal prison system.

Self-Evident Truth

On October 31, 2008, before the tsunami of WikiLeaks disclosures began challenging the government’s secrecy, the ideals that inspired American independence were quietly being rekindled. Called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” the white paper written by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto presented a new design for a store of value — a way to preserve the virtue of liberty more securely.

Thomas Jefferson in proclamation of America’s independence to the world wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” This self-evident truth described by his words didn’t require any proof of its validity by anyone. It was based on each person’s heart-knowing, recognized by a 17-century prominent French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal when he noted; “the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

Acknowledging the intrinsic value of individual liberty enshrined in the document, 56 delegates each through his own volition signed the Declaration. Trusting their truth confirmed in the heart, they united, putting their lives and livelihoods on the line to revolt against the British monarchy. In a similar way, early adopters of Bitcoin, each recognizing the virtue inherent in the technology, came together in freedom to uphold the value of then nascent cryptocurrency.

Whether it be religious doctrines of salvation, campaign slogans of politicians or a promissory note, we no longer want to believe. We want to know — we want to verify the truth on our own. In Bitcoin’s decentralized timestamp, each person through running a full node can participate in validating bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin educator and developer Jimmy Song elucidated on the genius of consensus algorithm at a core of Bitcoin technology:

The reason #Bitcoin works is because we can agree on the truth, which is verifiable by everyone running a full node.

The reason fiat money doesn’t is because the central banks tell us what is the truth and expect us to obey.

— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) August 6, 2020

Through the imagination of computer science, ideals that were kindled in each individual’s heart can now be proven. The self-evident truth of equality can be made universal.

The Constitution Of The Heart

In Jefferson’s vision of free society, the source of legitimacy is placed in this heart that knows this self-evident truth of equality of all people. It is from this foundation of knowledge that the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people are recognized. In Bitcoin, this premise of equality is implemented as a method of decentralization to secure fundamental rights.

Now, around this protocol of peer-to-peer digital cash, a new model of governance is emerging, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. From wallet providers, merchants, miners and developers, each are obeying the supreme authority within themselves to participate in a grand scientific enterprise of proof-of-work to shape a course of history rooted in the consensus of We The People.

In over 10 years of existence, the Bitcoin protocol has maintained its integrity, showing its resilience against both internal and external attacks. It has survived through the block size debate; heated disputes over scaling that turned into a political battle. Legal scholar and smart contract pioneer Nick Szabo noted that the power of math can withstand brutal force:

In mid September, with hash rates rising to a record high 143.138m terahashes per second, the security of the network is becoming ever stronger. Every 10 minutes, the heart of Bitcoin beats, confirming our social contract through which each of us freely choose to oblige ourselves to one another.

Call For Cryptographic Direct Action

The crisis of legitimacy that came to light through the WikiLeaks publications has shown that the governments of the world have failed to protect human rights, repeating the injuries of the past. The patronage network of global elites with their printing presses infinitely fund their illegal wars, piling up debts and stealing from future generations. These authoritarian regimes have degraded the ideals in the Declaration of Independence, keeping the entire population in a never-ending cycle of death, slavery and the pursuit of misery.

In order to free people from their control of narratives, Assange, through his work with WikiLeaks, has helped his sources reveal history that belongs to civilization. With the shield of strong cryptography, he fiercely fought to protect whistleblowers and he sacrificed his liberty to defend the network of contagious courage.

As the conscience of truth-tellers became defenseless before the Espionage Act, Assange too has been broken down by the government’s aggressive political prosecution. The evidence read into court on the last week of his extradition hearing included U.S. intelligence sources’ plans to poison or kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, as well as their alleged spying activities on Assange and his lawyers.

Now, once again, from London’s maximum-security prison, Assange calls on his fellow cypherpunks: “Cryptography is the ultimate form of nonviolent direct action… It is time to take up the arms of our new world, to fight for ourselves and for those we love.”

As the legal theater at the criminal court in Central London carried on its mockery of justice, showing the tyranny of the Old World of fiat, it is a duty of cypherpunks to write software to build just systems for a New World.

Cypherunks write code. Sovereign individuals run the code of their own choice and use the nodes to receive transactions to create economic activity. Together, we engage in nonviolent direct action, to take back our own power, as authors of our own lives. Now history has begun. Through our collective cryptographic defense, we can end this illegal prosecution of Julian Assange and truly realize justice and liberty for all people.

Author’s Note: Get informed about Assange’s extradition case at AssangeDefense.org and learn how to get involved to stop his prosecution at Don’tExtraditeAssange.com. Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris has launched a crowdjustice campaign to fund his legal defense. You can contribute to her cause here and also please consider donating to the WikiLeaks Official Defense Fund.

The post Political Prosecution Of Julian Assange Calls For Nonviolent Cryptographic Defense appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Lysander Spooner: Natural Law – The Science of Justice

30/08/2020 by Idelto Editor

The science of mine and thine – the science of justice – is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The essay “Natural Law- The Science of Justice” or a “Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society; Showing That All Legislation Whatsoever Is an Absurdity, a Usurpation, and a Crime” was published in 1882. It has been published on various venues and is reprinted here on Bitcoin.com for historical preservation. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or quality within the historical editorial.

Section I.

It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.

It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.

These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.

So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other. But when either of these conditions is violated, men are at war. And they must necessarily remain at war until justice is re-established.

Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind has attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other.

The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: “To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.”

This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.

Section II.

Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow-men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty – that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men – his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.

Section III.

Although it is the right of anybody and everybody – of any one man, or set of men, no less than another – to repel injustice, and compel justice, for themselves, and for all who may be wronged, yet to avoid the errors that are liable to result from haste and passion, and that everybody, who desires it, may rest secure in the assurance of protection, without a resort to force, it is evidently desirable that men should associate, so far as they freely and voluntarily can do so, for the maintenance of justice among themselves, and for mutual protection against other wrong-doers. It is also in the highest degree desirable that they should agree upon some plan or system of judicial proceedings, which, in the trial of causes, should secure caution, deliberation, thorough investigation, and, as far as possible, freedom from every influence but the simple desire to do justice.

Yet such associations can be rightful and desirable only in so far as they are purely voluntary. No man can rightfully be coerced into joining one, or supporting one, against his will. His own interest, his own judgement, and his own conscience alone must determine whether he will join this association, or that; or whether he will join any.

If he chooses to depend, for the protection of his own rights, solely upon himself, and upon such voluntary assistance as other persons may freely offer to him when the necessity for it arises, he has a perfect right to do so. And this course would be a reasonably safe one for him to follow, so long as he himself should manifest the ordinary readiness of mankind, in like cases, to go to the assistance and defense of injured persons; and should also himself “live honestly, hurt no one, and give to every one his due.” For such a man is reasonably sure of always giving friends and defenders enough in case of need, whether he shall have joined any association, or not.

Certainly, no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire. Nor can any man be reasonably or rightfully expected to join, or support, any association whose plans, or method of proceeding, he does not approve, as likely to accomplish its professed purpose of maintaining justice, and at the same time, itself avoid doing injustice. To join, or support, one that would, in his opinion, be inefficient, would be absurd. To join or support one that, in his opinion, would itself do injustice, would be criminal. He must, therefore, be left at the same liberty to join, or not to join, an association for this purpose, as for any other, according as his own interest, discretion, or conscience shall dictate.

An association for mutual protection against injustice is like an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck. And there is no more right or reason in compelling any man to join or support one of these associations, against his will, his judgment, or his conscience than there is in compelling him to join or support any other, whose benefits (if it offer any) he does not want, or whose purposes or methods he does not approve.

Section IV.

No objection can be made to these voluntary associations upon the ground that they would lack that knowledge of justice, as a science, which would be necessary to enable them to maintain justice, and themselves avoid doing injustice. Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, easily understood by common minds. Those who desire to know what it is, in any particular case, seldom have to go far to find it. It is true, it must be learned, like any other science. But it is also true that it is very easily learned.

Although as illimitable in its applications as the infinite relations and dealings of men with each other, it is, nevertheless, made up of a few simple elementary principles, of the truth and justice of which every ordinary mind has an almost intuitive perception. And almost all men have the same perceptions of what constitutes justice, or of what justice requires when they understand alike the facts from which their inferences are to be drawn.

Men living in contact with each other, and having intercourse together, cannot avoid learning natural law, to a very great extent, even if they would. The dealings of men with men, their separate possessions and their individual wants, and the disposition of every man to demand, and insist upon, whatever he believes to be his due, and to resent and resist all invasions of what he believes to be his rights, are continually forcing upon their minds the questions, Is this act just? or is it unjust? Is this thing mine? or is it his? And these are questions of natural law; questions which, in regard to the great mass of cases, are answered alike by the human mind everywhere.

Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus, they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs.

These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five [equals] ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself.

To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.

What do you think about Natural Law? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments below.

The post Lysander Spooner: Natural Law – The Science of Justice appeared first on Bitcoin News.

How the Human Rights Foundation and Casa Hope to Improve Bitcoin Sovereignty Around the World

15/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

Perhaps the most important quality of Bitcoin is its ability to provide financial freedom and sovereignty from third party authorities like central banks and governments. In parts of the world, this means the chance to opt out from inherently inflationary and reckless economic policy. In others, it means that Bitcoin can serve as a lifeline from fundamentally broken societies and oppressive regimes.

As a nonprofit protecting basic freedoms and privileges for people around the world, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has been promoting these benefits of Bitcoin for some time, recently launching a fund to financially support Bitcoin developers focused on its privacy layers. Now, the group is teaming up with Bitcoin custody solution provider Casa to spread the original cryptocurrency in the places it is needed most.

Casa announced today that it will be participating in HRF workshops to help nonprofits and activists around the world better utilize the original cryptocurrency.

“Non-profit organizations such as independent media outlets, environmental groups, anti-corruption activists and pro-democracy movements face many financial difficulties when working in societies ruled by repressive regimes,” according to a press release on the partnership from Casa. “Not only can activists and NGOs find it very difficult to access traditional banking services, but governments and banks can freeze their accounts or block access to their funds.”

Casa offers premium bitcoin security and sovereignty products that leverage measures like multisig, hardware wallets and risk diversification to secure bitcoin, while emphasizing that users should control their own private keys. In the release, Casa noted that its expertise in this space will be critical for those who hope to leverage BTC and opt out of government-controlled financial systems in certain regions.

“Bitcoin has enormous potential to help activists raise funds to fight human rights abuses in difficult political environments, but storing it in a safe yet accessible way has always been a challenge,” said Alex Galdstein, the chief strategy office for HRF, per the release. “With software like Casa, organizations can keep their bitcoin secure while maintaining full control, without the risk of losing funds due to a mistake. It’s critical that activists control the private keys to their bitcoin, so they can always get their funds to where it’s needed, when it’s needed.”

Casa also announced that it will be helping HRF manage its bitcoin-based donations and the grants it will be awarding through its recent Bitcoin development fund.

The partnership could make significant process in proving that, when managed correctly, bitcoin is the best form of free money ever created.

“As long as it’s protected within a highly-secure self-custody solution, Bitcoin enables activists to receive and spend funds in a way that governments and corporations can’t control,” said Casa CEO Nick Neuman, according to the release. “Bitcoin also provides significantly more freedom for moving funds around the world and, since it’s not subject to the fees and friction of international transfers, more money is available more quickly to fund projects that make a real difference.”

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John Perry Barlow: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

04/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

The following letter was published publicly on the internet on February 8, 1996. John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and wrote the letter of declaration in response to the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996. Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” is reprinted here on Bitcoin.com for historical preservation. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy, or quality within the historical article.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy, and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

John Perry Barlow, February 8, 1996

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