Bitcoin Forum

I started to watch this Edward Snowden interview with Joe Rogan and apparently Snowden is trying to publish a book.
The government hit both him and the publisher with a lawsuit and is trying to take away any money they can get their dirty corrupt little hands on. And according to Snowden's speculation that's their way to warn others like Snowden.


Here's the relevant point on the video.

https://youtu.be/efs3QRr8LWw?t=116

This is one of the things that hooked me on bitcoin, the idea that we should have a currency that is not controlled by anyone, especially our increasingly corrupt governments.
Perhaps if they had less control they'd be less corrupt as well.

Just think of all the people that aren't allowed to use a bank, for one reason or the other, and that if the government decides you should be one of them how valuable the existence of bitcoin will be to you.

It gives us the capability to safely store any amount of wealth we may have and to make a payment to anyone else willing to accept it.

Perhaps.
To add up, privacy is better because of the way they just take away money from your bank account without any permission.
Let us take the Pursuit of Happyness as an example.
Will Smith have a parking ticket and just cannot pay for it because it is for their food and shelter of his son.

Even with your difficult way of living they could just take it away without even knowing what is the reason behind why you cannot pay.
It ain't fair but you will have to abide or just swallow what they did and get over it.
That should not be the life is specially with those BS banks who didn't even give a damn as long as they are on the government side.

Of course it is.  There's no other reason why the gov't would try to stop him from publishing anything.  They will try to silence him with all means at their disposal, and those are considerable.  It's a frightening situation in my eyes, and I agree with you about the level of corruption these days.

Same here, and even if the gov't tried to stop citizens from using bitcoin, they couldn't really do it.  I think that's the main reason why they haven't tried it...yet.  They might attempt it in the future, but before that happens I hope we get another financial crisis that shows how important bitcoin can be.  I know such a thing is coming anyway, so the sooner the better.

Yes! Spot on! Bitcoin is a very effective tool to bypass the government censorship in financial matters! That is the main reason why majority of the governments are resisting bitcoin and other cryptos to be adopted in the mainstream economy.

Because every governments know that if bitcoin is legalized in their economy, there's no way for them to know who is holding how much wealth and the source of their wealth unless that person comes to the front and declare that! So it effectively shifts the power to the hand of a common man! Nationalist and fascist politics wouldn't allow that!

That's a fair point. It's an important point about Bitcoin, something people probably cherished in the early days and yet forgotten nowadays. Since Bitcoin got popular, people have been focused on profits, price fluctuations and regulations, whereas the really great things are Bitcoin's independence from the governments and its decentralization. Come to think of it, though, if Bitcoin does not get much adoption, then it would not help people like Snowden to put their money in this thing because they would not be able to purchase stuff with it. To do that, they'd still need government-controlled fiat. So thinking about volatility and regulations makes sense, it's a part of the way of reaching the same goal of Bitcoin becoming an actual independent form of money.

It's the reason why bitcoin got to the place it is right now, why it reached so many people and privacy enthusiasts, but this is also the reason why development and adoption has almost plateaued and it's hard for it become more popular, since no country wants to fully intergrate it.

We see a lot of this censorship nowadays, possibly more then ever due to the large amount of companies and governments and just having access to another payment method won't change companies trying to silence people in this case, and other cases for example.

Bitcoin was created and designed for this. But there is a gotcha, you can tell them if you want. Not that i advocate that, but it might ease some people for a transitional period.

Some people don't think so much about hiding from the government, but from criminals who might learn they are rich and extort, kidnap, etc. There are many countries where this is a problem, and the corrupt governments often leak this data to the crooks.

I would add to your speech of nationalist and fascist, also socialist; as they are all into full State control of the economy and lives of people. You could also infer that as long as there is a State, there will be meddling, even liberal States.

The smaller the State, the better. How about no State? That is the question.

Mainstream economy is dominated by the Chicago school of economy, this is wrong, and the world will never cease to have bubbles and pops as long as they ignore the Austrian school of economy (https://www.mises.org), you know, THE ONE that advocates deflationary money AND to end fractional reserve banking, among other things...

Sorry OP, but how does someone getting censored and sued over expressing their views affect/relate to bitcoin that much? Of course with crypto-currencies the governments wouldn't be able to control our money, but you are talking about a lawsuit here.

This will still happen in the crypto scene, there are companies that operate that will definelty threaten lawsuits and do extremely dodgy shit to silence people and protect their money or image.

Bitcoin gives us freedom from the banks and centralized financial insitutions that control us, but it can't do that much.

Bitcoin effectively removes most of the constraints you get from centralized financial institutions such as banks. The only thing I can think of that could be a limitation to having bitcoin transactions is lack of computer literacy, or lack of available technology. Aside from that, bitcoin is a free platform, free from governing institutions that manipulate and control prices, impose tax and additional fees for transactions. We can also get privacy if we didn't provide KYC, but remains transparent because every transactions are searchable in the blockchain.

No matter what we do in our financial status, government will try to always find a way to be in touch with our assets. This is their nature, though, I am not saying that all government officials are greedy and corrupt, but sometimes what the government is doing is also the best for order and regulation. I am pro to decentralization, at the same time, I also want the entire nation have some funds to use that's why we need to try and understand the government.

well, the whole point of the state is that they take control, but the idea was always that it was limited. As it's turned out, the only things limiting state control are resources, tools, and how well they can cheat and lie to convince people they need more control ::)

I'd add that fascism is really the same thing as corporatism, or this new buzzword "neo-liberalism" which gets right to the heart of the problem. "Neo-liberalism" is pure Orwellian double-speak, it's like they're trying to say the liberal ideas are the problem, "because that's what the western world has been serving up for 200 years"

that's bullshit. liberalism puts normal people in charge of their lives, not governments, unaccountable corporations or too-big-to-fail institutions. That's all the opposite of capitalism and liberalism. The Western world is built on soft-fascism, and the illusion of liberal capitalism, the real fascists (that won the World Wars) have told all manner of lies to obtain, keep and extend their power and control.

You can't make rules that make it easy for the rich to bully and deceive and also tell me capital runs the show. But the fact that people can be convinced this is liberal capitalism proves they don't deserve it until they really understand it. The people who disguised fascism as capitalism, after millions fought and died thinking they were going against it, those people really do understand it, that's why their lies are so clever and effective, because they're afraid they'd lose an open and honest competition.



Same thing here. People assume Chicago School economics is laissez-faire liberal capitalism, when it's actually just carefully disguised state/corporate power, i.e. fascism. And it's so smart, people with "Randian" or "Libertarian" credentials will try and sell you Chicago School stuff as if it's all basically connected, partly because the ideas are superficially similar.

Bitcoin is designed to put power back to the hands of the people. However, we know that Bitcoin and related infrastructure are getting centralized from mining to exchanges and this is a great irony that the industry should have look seriously. We always look at Bitcoin as an anti-government force especially in the face with the fact that there will always be corruption in there (to be fair there is corruption everywhere) so that we can be promoting more transparency and more accountability. I don't believe that Bitcoin is meant to topple the government no far from that and that a good government has nothing to be afraid with Bitcoin in the first place. Just look at how Japan has been embracing Bitcoin...it is working good and according to what I read Bitcoin has been contributing something significant to their overall economy and I still have to see a political leader toppled in Japan because people are hodling Bitcoin. 

It's not dirty corrupt government, it is a legal lawsuit because they didn't submit the book to government agencies for pre-publication review, just simply like that. Hence, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against him and his publisher.
Well, he might be right about the book, but he can't avoid the government.
If there is a way around it, he should leave the country and sell the book through the internet and get paid in bitcoin.

They would not have accepted it for publication even if they had applied for. That's why we need crypto and a decentralized internet.
It's really sad to see there's not ethics left in the world. Almost all of government believes doing wrong themselves is good while if they are exposed, it would become a national threat. In reality, bringing up truth never makes a nation insecure, it's just the insecurity of corrupt politicians and scammers businessmen that makes laws to make their crime valid.

Edward Snowden has been one of the most prominent figures/whistleblowers in contemporary times, though I somewhat believe that the dude is outright delusional at times. Even though that’s the case, his interview with Joe Rogan just summed up everything that’s fucked up with the government. Sans the effects of cannabis during the interview, I know for a fact that what he stated during that time were true, and crypto being a probable avenue for his finances just furthers the idea of having crypto as a means to prevent anyone from freezing and cutting off your money supply. The power of the elites and the governments is incomprehensible, but at least we have a tool to mask ourselves with their financial oppression: cryptos.

I do not think that if bitcoin becomes more popular it will be able to protect us from financial censorship

The mass people's conception about Bitcoin is more than a currency, most of them haven't any clear knowledge about this one, many people don't like the government rules and regulation regarding the monetary system, they want to hold their money rather than saving and investment in the conventional bank, they think their money will move according to their will because some of the government rules are not perfect even worst for the people's interest, that's why Bitcoin is the platform where anyone can hold their money by convert into Bitcoin, in here, no policy, no rules, and no accountability, that's why Bitcoin is very important for those people who hate the conventional monetary system.

When talking about financial privacy issues every human being wants to be protected by these rights. And the government cannot realize
that desire, because the government wants every citizen to do financial cencorship to prevent crime. Maybe according to some reasons
that doesn't seem to make much sense, this is just a subtle way the government controls its citizens' finances. That way not everyone is
comfortable related to financial censorship. So from the presence of bitcoin financial censorship problems can be overcome because of
bitcoin decentralization which means that our finances by buying bitcoin are protected by privacy and no party can control including the
government.

I might sound a little bit on the other side now but really, the control we all talk about and how bad it is from the government angle to be sincere is only applicable to those who are persons of interest. In as much as we feel that we should all have our control, but really how do you protect yourself from people you don't know are planning an attack against where you school, work, the football pitch you went to watch game or the playground your kids are. All of these are what men are capable of doing should there not be anyone who is overseeing some transactions which makes financing such venture becomes extremely difficult and would be a free for all should government decides to grant that financial autonomy we all crave for. If you carry out your activities within the ambit of the law, I believe you won't be concerned about whether government is coming after you or not.

The foremost reason Satoshi created bitcoin was that we should be able to control our money and not the banks and the governments.
But still there are people who criticize bitcoin since people use it for wrong purposes.
They don't understand that even when bitcoin was not created, all those criminal activities were still being carried out.
People just want to put the blame on others while not accepting what the truth is.
Bitcoin is revolutionary but it needs support from people like us who value it's true potential.

Crypto is good way against censorship is general, especially privacy ones. Whats why govs dont like it

The more the government display their authoritarian attitude the more they help many people to understand and welcome the idea of btc, a digital currency that gives you total control of your funds, do transactions without any hiccups, it is just a matter of time before people start seeing the bigger picture.

That's a bad theory about Bitcoin and that's one of the reason why Bitcoin can't be easily accepted by govt.

He is right, Bitcoin gives us an option to fully control our money. It's basically a freedom for everyone but doesn't always mean to do a bad thing like what you mentioned.



As it's a freedom, so everyone could choose an option not to disclose their wealth or transactions. What if it is the corrupt govt who does that? What if they want every of their transaction to be anonymized? Does it make any difference?

The government can do that now, through the flawed over-classification of information. However if the government used bitcoin it'd be easier to track what they're doing. The problem with centralized power is that there's 7 billion of us and only a handful of power players in every government.

However, if in a far off future government gives up in fiat and goes fully bitcoin, we could have laws where public money gets tracked in the blockchain (tax money and such) until it leaves public control. Hell, if you paid taxes in bitcoin you can track that money for a while. Transactions in bitcoin leave some traces and government wrongdoing is more likely to be discovered in this way.

However if they didn't control our money in the way they do now, I don't think they'd be corrupt enough to matter, everything else being equal.

The biggest censorship is the trade restrictions imposed by a government to its citizens or another country imposing their restrictions to another country and with crypto anyone can overcome those, the fate of privacy coins is to be seen when regulations are forced upon the exchanges, i doubt any government will allow any exchanges to trade these privacy coins.

Crypto is beyond everything no censorship and no central authority crypto gives it all to people to hands

That is why Bitcoin provides many solutions that almost all of its concepts conflict with overly binding governments. With bitcoin we are truly financially independent without any interference from the government that oversees, of course, with a record of all the risks we bear, there is no guarantee. No matter how risky it is, as long as we are committed to learning and maintaining it to the maximum, we will enjoy the solution well. One of the things that stands out the most is its effectiveness, multi-function, imagine with one thing you have the opportunity to invest, trade, and conduct various other economic transactions with just one product: cryptocurrency.

That's what the corrupt officials of Venezuela do, or at least some of them.

As a decentralized system, we have to accept that others use it in different ways, even those we don't like.

That's what bitcoin's all about, isn't it?

Indeed. Greediness is always a part of human. And the more access the government has with our money, the more they will get tempt corrupting our money. They should really give us a freedom at some point with our own funds and assets. And that freedom is through bitcoin. A decentralized currency where we're responsible for our own and no government can control it.