la liberté avant tout
Biden is waging war on financial privacy, and not everyone is happy. The last several weeks have weighed heavily on those in Bitcoin who use privacy tools and software. Between the ceremonious arrests across two continents, Justice Department press releases, FBI warnings, and souring mood in Washington, many popular services for both sovereign and private…
Should regulations aimed at halting the financial activity of alleged criminals and terrorists be vastly expanded to include cryptocurrencies and firms that use them? Could this potentially harm entrepreneurial spirit and consumer freedom to deal in digital assets? Those were the questions asked this week in Washington as officials from the Treasury Department seek new…
While I was in Washington, D.C., I spoke to freedom maximalist and “Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff” author Matt Kibbe about online privacy and the Internet, the Kids Online Safety Act, Bitcoin and its enemies, central bank digital currencies, and the weaponization of the FTC. It was published on the Kibbe On…
Elizabeth Warren and other critics seized on the October 7 Hamas attacks to crack down on Bitcoin. But the terrorists use cash, not crypto. In war, the Greek poet Aeschylus said, the first casualty is truth. In the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been plenty of opportunities for lies to achieve political ends….
Latin America is a messy, culturally-rich, and prickly place. Though it is blessed with bountiful resources in its sprawling jungles, deserts, and jagged mountains, it has for most of its history been caught in the oscillating winds of colonial powers and external forces. While the 19th century saw the withering influence of Spanish colonialism against…
CCC Deputy Yaël Ossowski is invited on the Steve Gruber Show to discuss the launch of the central bank digital currency in Russia, similar plans in the US, and why CBDCs would be harmful to both individual freedom and financial privacy. Also, why real cryptocurrency innovations like Bitcoin render these plans moot. https://stevegruber.podbean.com/e/yael-ossowski-putin-s-new-digital-currency-launched-tuesday/ August 2,…
At BTC Prague in June 2023, I moderated a panel with Marek Palatinus of Satoshi Labs, Anna of Hodl Hodl, and cyberpunk author Juraj Bednar on peer-to-peer Bitcoin practices and no-KYC practices.
The modern Kennedy has some pretty whacko authoritarian anti-prosperity ideas, but he somehow gets why Bitcoin matters. Historically, we all know cypherpunk Bitcoin, nerd Bitcoin, lambo Bitcoin, and finance Bitcoin. Now, we’re in the age of political Bitcoin. At this early juncture in the 2024 US Presidential campaign, we’ve already had three candidates explicitly mention…
The razor-thin balance between seeking mass adoption of Bitcoin and keeping it a tool of sovereignty is now playing out among hardware wallet producers. Conjuring complicated threat scenarios and thought experiments of hypothetical attacks on your Bitcoin stack: that’s just a typical Tuesday for today’s generation of Bitcoiners. Whether it’s about reverse shotgun KYC, malicious…
Had a great time discussing my own Bitcoin origin story with the fellows from Rabbit Hole Stories in the UK. check it!