TD₿: Bitcoin as Free Speech by Naval Ravikant

TL;DR Bitcoin is code and code is considered a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Hey Bitcoiners, 

I’m still fired up about this news of OFAC adding Tornado.cash to the U.S. sanctions list, a piece of code. This morning the plot thickened when a developer of the Tornado.cash code was arrested in Amsterdam.

Think about that for a second…this developer is guilty of nothing more than writing some software. He wrote code that created a neutral tool that gave individuals, both good and bad, the ability to protect their identities and preserve their privacy when sending transactions, and now he is sitting in a cell for it.

I think it’s safe to say that he didn’t help create this tool specifically for criminals and terrorists to use. He created this tool because he valued his online privacy and thought (correctly) that other people valued theirs as well. Because of this, he built Tornado.cash as a privacy-enhancing tool.

These recent developments are a blatant attack on the rights and liberties of individuals everywhere. Privacy is a fundamental human right, and code is just language. These actions are a violation of the First Amendment, full stop.

I believe we are entering a period where authorities will wage a war on code. Given that when it comes down to it, Bitcoin is just code and thus a form of speech, we should presume that it will only be a matter of time before Bitcoin will come under attack as well.

In this short video, investor and entrepreneur Naval explains how Bitcoin represents the idea that money and speech are essentially the same thing. (03/11/2015)

The battle for privacy in the digital age has been an ongoing war since the 1990s when cryptographers fought against the U.S. government in the “Crypto Wars” to allow everyday people access to encryption tools.

We have entered the next stage in the war on privacy, and it’s up to each and every person to make their voices heard and denounce actions like this that threaten the freedoms of every individual that uses the Internet today.

Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten

PS - Make sure to grab tickets to the best Bitcoin conference on the West Coast! Join me and many other Bitcoiners at Pacific Bitcoin 2022 from November 10th-11th. 🌴

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“Cypherpunks write code.” - Eric Hughes, Mathematician, Computer Programmer, and Cypherpunk

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