Bitcoin protects privacy and fights oppression!
Monitoring people has always been one of the pillars of the power of authoritarian regimes throughout history. The emergence of the Internet at the end of the 20th century, despite all its advantages, came to the aid of dominant systems and created an unprecedented repository of personal information of individuals and organizations that are stored in centralized servers around the world.
Over the years, the dangers of Internet surveillance services have made many ordinary people think of a solution; As a result, some have supported government enforcement as much as possible, while others have considered technology-based defense tools such as email or encrypted messaging platforms. It is no exaggeration to say that individual freedoms cannot last long without privacy. Thus, the battle for privacy in the current digital age has reached its latest and possibly most important stage with the rise of national digital currencies (CBDC).
In this article, using an article published in early 2022 on the CoinDesk website, we try to highlight the distinction between national digital currencies and decentralized digital currencies, and better demonstrate Bitcoin’s ability to protect people’s privacy against controlling and repressive regimes. to give What makes national digital currencies problematic is the amount of hegemonic power and influence that governments can gain by abusing features like the transparency and immutability of blockchain data on the web. One of the best ways to deal with such actions is to resort to decentralized digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
National digital currencies good or bad?!
National digital currencies are governments’ attempts to use blockchain’s regulatory capabilities in line with their own interests. In fact, governments are trying to use the blockchain’s transparency feature along with goals such as storing and transferring value, but with control over the user community through government oversight.
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National digital currencies have many advantages compared to the traditional financial system; But along with the promise of increased access and financial efficiency, they expose citizens to a level of potential surveillance that was unimaginable in the past. An authoritarian government running a national digital currency can use it to fully monitor every transaction anywhere on Earth. Also, if this government wants, it can freeze people’s property or take away their property. Even the possibility of forcing people to pay compulsory fees is easily available to governments using national digital currencies.
The prospect of government-owned currencies, such as the digital yuan currently being launched in China, shows why a technology like Bitcoin may in the future be people’s only safe insurance against financial repression in autocracies and even democracies like the United States. Evidence of this claim can be considered the disclosure of Edward Snowden, a former colleague of the American National Security Agency (NSA). As you are more or less aware, he also produced documents in incredible detail about the US government’s power to monitor and control people’s lives by hacking into the World Wide Web.
Decentralized currencies like Bitcoin are a potential safe haven against government overreach in a world built on national digital currencies.
Behind the scenes, according to Snowden’s documents, the US National Security Agency’s influence and power was so vast that it could collect basically any private message or metadata it wanted from devices around the world. This issue also affected the American citizens who never doubted the power that their government has over their personal lives. Monitoring people’s privacy can ruin the lives of innocent citizens who get caught in a digital network.
National digital currencies have the potential to intensify the regulatory power of the Internet. Just as Web 2 revolutionized how information is created and disseminated, Web 3 is doing the same to create and distribute economic value. On the other hand, governments will also try to monitor this matter as closely as possible; As they have increased their control over the internet.
Evidence for this claim can be the perspective of the government in a country like China, which has the comprehensive ability to monitor and manipulate the information that its citizens see, and at the same time, it also seriously pursues the issue of creating and issuing a national digital currency. Such a system could monitor even the smallest economic activities of the people and usher us into a whole new world of repression.
Currently, many countries in the world, including the United States, are following China’s path with digital dollars in terms of developing their national digital currency projects. Americans probably expect that the US government, in good faith in the way such a currency is managed, will try to pass and enforce special regulations to protect their privacy and freedom; But as Snowden’s documents have already shown, these assumptions are not so true.
Politics can help protect people’s rights; But it is not enough. Just as encrypted messaging and email platforms help people defend their privacy against regulatory abuses, decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin could be a safe haven against excessive government intrusion in a future world built on national digital currencies.
The current debate over the future role of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rarely considers the issue of privacy in the digital age. Critics often accuse Bitcoin of being unusable or an ideal tool to cover up the illegal activities of criminals and terrorists; But we should not forget that similar accusations were often made against encrypted emails in the past. Although privacy is sometimes abused by criminals, it is this privacy that allows most law-abiding citizens to maintain their civil liberties.
Read more: How to find freedom in a world without freedom?
Given that laws have failed to help protect privacy in democracies like the United States, it does not make much sense to rely solely on law to protect privacy. In addition, in non-democratic countries, it is difficult to even imagine such a vision of benevolent governance; Hence, it is not difficult to imagine a future where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the only safe haven for people fleeing government abuses.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church warned of the expanding US intelligence surveillance regime, describing a similar era of espionage that involved wiretapping and physical disruption of communications lines. He said:
The surveillance power of the government and its security agencies can be exercised over the American people at any time, and no American’s privacy will be spared. This monitoring capability includes everything; From phone conversations to telegrams. Simply put, there will be nowhere to hide.
Church went on to explain what this trend means for democracy. He added:
If a dictatorship were to take power in the United States, that person could use surveillance for extreme domination and repression, and there would be no way to fight back.
The US government now has more surveillance power than Senator Church could even imagine at the time. This power is on the verge of becoming stronger with the increasing penetration and acceptance of digital currencies. Government-backed cryptocurrencies will be the next battleground in the battle over privacy, and every weapon must be used to defend against potential abuse.
Let’s not forget that Bitcoin is not exempt from criticism; But due to its decentralized protocol, it can be one of the important tools to resist censorship and suppress extensive financial monitoring in the future. Americans who know their liberties are undermined by surveillance and social control regimes in the United States and abroad are mostly familiar with the potential features of censorship-resistant currencies.
In sum, neither Bitcoin nor cryptocurrencies can be a substitute for political action; But they offer a practical way to protect the most vulnerable in the digital age. In the modern financial system based on blockchain, decentralized digital currencies are the efficient tools we will need to fight against the power-seeking governments.
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In this article, by looking at examples of privacy violations at the hands of governments, we found out how the centralization of digital currencies can work in tandem with increasing the power of autocratic governments and even more democratic governments. Also, we pointed out how decentralized digital currencies such as Bitcoin can be blue on this fire and maintain the privacy of users to an optimal extent.
Various issues regarding the supply of national digital currencies by governments can be controversial; From the issue of checking the identity of users before entering the network to how to process and store and finally delete the created data. In the meantime, what is overshadowed the most is the level of protection of people’s privacy that due to the placement of data in a centralized network, even the small transactions of users do not remain hidden from the eyes of regulatory bodies.
In such a situation, the widespread adoption of decentralized digital currencies such as Bitcoin, which are exclusively designed as peer-to-peer payment systems, can be a safer haven to fight back against censorship and crackdowns by government surveillance apparatuses. In particular, businesses and retailers’ support of decentralized digital currencies could diminish the role of national digital currencies in ordinary people’s transactions.