TD₿: The Case for Privacy by David D. Friedman
TL;DR Neither the government nor your neighbor can punish your thoughts, because neither can read your mind. That's why thoughts are free and privacy is paramount.
Hey Bitcoiners,
This week has been all about regulation. As the smoke begins to clear in the wake of the FTX collapse, regulators and politicians are scrambling to point fingers at who is to blame for this colossal fraud.
During the congressional hearings this week, many opinions were thrown around. There were some good points made like these ones by U.S. Representative Tom Emmer.
Representative Emmer argued that this was not a failure of the technology, but rather a failure of centralization. He also made the point this permissionless technology aligns with American values. Bravo! 👏
On the flip side, we had witnesses like Kevin O’Leary, who revealed to the world, under oath, how much of a clown he is when he blamed FTX’s collapse on Binance.
Which begs the question, why was Kevin O’Leary testifying when it’s known that he was a paid shill for FTX after receiving $15 million from SBF? Seems like a conflict of interest to me.
Furthermore, the quality of the witnesses who testified was appalling overall. We had Kevin O’Leary, an actor from The OC, and a professor who demonstrated a basic misunderstanding of the technology, all testify in this hearing.
What is going on here!? Why are these individuals being called to testify and are considered experts on the topic at hand!? I digress…
Yet, the worst thing by far to come out of DC this week came from none other than Elizabeth Warren when she proposed a bipartisan bill called the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act.
This act is as dangerous as it is unconstitutional. It would have wide-ranging impacts on not just the Bitcoin industry, but freedom and privacy in the digital age. It infringes on the First Amendment, and it highlights that these politicians have no knowledge of the technology that they are attempting to regulate.
This bill is advocating for all validating nodes and “unhosted wallets” to be subject to AML/KYC laws like a bank. You honestly just have to laugh at the incompetence on display here. This bill is totally unenforceable. How do you stop someone from interacting with open-source software or creating a seed phrase with 12 words?
Swan CTO Yan Pritzker had a nice tweet on the ridiculousness of this:
So did Gigi:
This gets back to two ideas 1) communication using programming languages is protected by the First Amendment, and 2) privacy gives each of us more control over our lives which is likely to lead to a more free world.
David D. Friedman wrote an essay titled “The Case for Privacy” that I believe everyone should read given our current environment. (01/01/2005)
Privacy is an individual’s control over other people's access to information about them. As Friedman writes, “Neither my government nor my neighbor can punish my thoughts, because neither can read my mind. That is why thoughts are free.” This is why privacy is a fundamental human right and why it’s paramount for a free society.
It’s important to remind everyone that this is just a bill. Bills rarely get passed into law, and this bill is unlikely to be passed because there are legit arguments that it violates the Constitution.
But it is beyond concerning that our politicians seem hellbent on taking every bit of privacy away from everyday Americans who are just trying live free, in the land of the free.
Tick tock next block,
Sam Callahan
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Quote of the Day
“Imagine being such an incompetent politician that you think the reason a bunch of insolvent crypto exchanges blew up was because of "self-hosted wallets" and Bitcoin privacy." - Guy Swann, Host of Bitcoin Audible and all-around mensch
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Friday — Come hang out at the PlebLab at its Ugly Sweater Contest from 5:30-7:00 pm in Austin, TX. The Pleb Broadcasting Service is a weekly live gathering for bitcoiners to come talk about what they are working on. This sounds like fun!
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Meme of the Day
This article was read on "Reading Bitcoin Podcast" with attribution! ;)
https://readingbitcoin.substack.com/p/rb005-the-case-for-privacy-by-david#details