Bitcoin Forum

...And another reason why Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is so important.

Larry Brandt, a guy who spends a lot of time and money running Tor nodes, has had his Paypal account shut down without opportunity for appeal and they won't even give a specific answer as to why this has happened! :o :-\

"Financial Censorship" is a very real issue. Refer: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/paypal-shuts-down-long-time-tor-supporter-no-recourse

Sound familiar? It sounds like a lot of the posts in the "scam accusation" thread regarding various centralised service providers (gambling sites and exchanges etc). At least Larry has the chance of getting his funds back after 180 days ::)

Remember, "not your keys, not your coins".

Paypal is always going to Paypal. Good UI, poor execution and ethics.

There were centralized services. And they're bad. Financial censorship is a very real issue. Such is the reason why Bitcoin is so important. And then what followed were centralized exchanges, custodial wallets, KYC, and so on forth. It makes me wonder whether we really wanted to do away with those centralized services in the first place. Or are we still at the mercy of central authorities? Or perhaps most of us are still indifferent to it for as long as it is not affecting us? You are censored, I'm not, no problem at all.

Yeah, another lessons to learn here about this centralised services that we have right now.

Good thing to note though that Larry Brandt will continue to support Tor nodes, but Paypal should be transparent at least to tell the reasons behind Larry's account being shutdown. Of course we will speculate that because he is running A Tor node, and he uses Paypal to pay the hosting company for his rental services, his account suddenly restricted or there could be entities behind that forces Paypal to do so.

Comes as no surprise, really. PayPal has long been supportive of the government and are otherwise quite complicit with whatever the government wants to do. While it is true that centralized services exposed you to risks like this, especially when their operation hinges on the government regulations, it doesn't mean all are bad.

There are still services which are far more transparent and are willing to challenge the government for the sake of their user. Anything to do with financial systems will always be under government influence, unfortunately. Except Bitcoin of course ;), not most exchanges though.

I know that there a lot of people depending on PayPal to get paid regularly with their job and business - and tin this case PayPal is really playing an important, pivotal role for many lives. However, there is always the dark side to anything. PayPal is known to be a sort of "dictatorship" and we can see so many complaints on this payment network. I think that PayPal has been acting this way because primarily they do not have an equal competitor in the first place, so they feel that they can just do anything they want, when they want. Centralized platforms are always subject to people manning them and that is why decentralized options are always important.

This should be more important for all those people who got excited when the news about "Paypal letting its users buy bitcoin" came out and we realized that they also don't let any of their users withdraw those bitcoins and essentially they wanted to turn into a custodial wallet and be in full control of the users' bitcoins just like they are in full control of their USD.

all centralized services are terrible because they are in control and never try to understand their users. every policy is sometimes detrimental and users can not object to it. cases of account freezing, or the like always happen. Such problems are not new in paypal. some of my friends also experienced the same thing and their account was suspended for no reason.

that's why crypto is the solution to the problems that already exist. we must support decentralization.

Well, if we want to stop these centralized services from taking over, we better do something right now because they are slowly takiing advantage of decentralized market and trying to make it a centralized one and I don't think that you will disagree with that because it is true. Make another revolutionary platform that will keep the centralized institutions at bay is one thing that we can consider, anything to .ake these central invasion a bit hard for them.

Another reminder that even those who have contributed so much to the way we can protect our privacy are even vulnerable,,, Snowden who helped leak so much to the world, and many others who get frozen. We see in the movies bank accounts and credit cards all blocked, this is what happens in real life too.

Remember when they tried to sanction Bitcoin addresses?:)

Can you imagine if you couldn't access your money:

* because you are black? white? male? female? gay? straight? religious? atheist? young? old?
* because you were republican/democrat/socialist/libertarian?
* because you didn't follow a random guideline properly (like you were closer than 2 meters/6 feet to someone)?

Luckily these aren't currently the case, but society can change quickly, and these should be prevented from happening.

This has been a really common problem for PayPal users for a while now. What's worse? They lock up your money for 180 days. Like, imagine those unfortunate people that use PayPal for their livelihood. Suddenly you go bankrupt just because a service you're using decides to fuck you over even if you didn't do anything illegal.

Just take a look at PayPal subreddit[1], you literally get the same complaints almost every single day. It's stupid as heck and very unfortunate how this one company has so much power over online businesses.

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[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/paypal/search?q=permanently%20limited&restrict_sr=1

I bought a gift card code that wasn't working via Paypal.
I filed a dispute and I escalated to a claim,providing all the necessary screenshots as an evidence.
I lost the claim,because digital items aren't under buyer protection anymore.
This means that you can buy some corrupted pdf file from a scammer and you won't get your money back,even if you provide all the evidence that the file is corrupted.
Paypal got from bad to worse in the last 7-8 years.
Some crypto casinos and crypto exchange platforms aren't any better than Paypal.

AML-KYC in 3 categories.
usually if you have been flagged for doing something naughty. the service has to allow the transaction to continue and inform authorities but say nothing about it. and only freeze account without explanation if the authorities have sent a court order to freeze and seize funds

a service can have its own internal policy to just not want to service a customer they do not like. but this requires allowing a method for the customer to redeem their funds personally. even while not being allowed to use the service to pass it forward.(close account withdrawal while banned from making payments)

however, if the service is not really a well know regulated service/institution. it could be the service is scamming the user if there is no redeem option.

..
so with that said. if its froze. by a known regulated service(paypal) but not offering a redeem/withdrawal option. then its froze due to authority request to freeze.. meaning mega naughty boy.

Excerpt from the article:


Wish the "Uncensored Internet" means having access to the Truth and contents that are good/safe for consumers and society. And you should be able to handle the Truth and use it for society good.
I was reading through the article to understand the real reason for the censorship, and whether it's justified...didn't see much
By the way, I wonder if he is considering using other services that could offer him transparency, censorship resistant and control over his fund?



 People need to be careful how much they put into the accounts of people/business that can easily run away with customers funds. Probably safer to try businesses that use mutisig to secure customers funds. If they must be used , they should be those with good track record and trustworthy admins.
Don't take big risk or gamble on exchanges or even betting sites

That's pretty shitty of the company to made you got to settle court just for a gift card that they could've given to you in a matter of seconds, seems to me that PayPal are getting comfortable fucking over their customers knowing that they have the money for a drawn out battle in court. That's why I don't trust these payment services to buy my crypto in their platform because I know that they will do something from it.

Just imagine if same thing starts to happen in near future with ''digital wallets'' that are staring to roll out in EU, and they hold your identity, money, access to internet, private and public websites.
If you are not good obedient citizen they just turn the switch OFF for your digital wallet and you are can't access anything anymore, and we are doing this in the middle of so called russian cyber attacks by hackers who attack oil and meat industry....  ::)
They say this wallet is not compulsory for now but I am sure they will enforce it future with their release of their digital euro CBDC.

https://archive.ph/q9pcs

I can just imagine frustration on their faces when they realize there is no way to shut down your Bitcoin address and there is no account to close :)

Centralizing a decentralized system sounds fun right. They taking their own benefit for their own purpose facilitated by the decentralized systems. I guess it's a sign people really not taking a self-custody part seriously.

I really hope the cryptocurrencies service are providing and maximizing Bitcoin and decentralized systems capability without sacrificing users' experience to use their service.

Yeah, the whole be your own bank thing is going to pieces, when this so-called mainstream hit we saw more and more people using centralized exchanges, depositing their coins on centralized wallets even lying to themselves they are using a bitcoin card when they are actually using a visa card with another 3rd party solution behind it. I have a feeling everyone says "not your keys not your coins" then suddenly checks his finance account to see if his coins are still there, as far as I can see we have just exchanged banks with another type of banks, people rush to deposit their coins for staking or of interest in platforms that are ten times shadier than banks but, nothing you can do about it anymore.

Probably the percentage of bitcoin owners that still holds their coins in their own wallet and cold storage is decreasing day by day, that aspect of censorship-resistant transactions is getting ignored, people are just interested in %$, we probably need another serious shake-out but I wonder if it's not late or that the damage won't have any other repercussions.

But in the end, there is nothing we can do, for most people convenience is the key, that's why Bisq has 30 BTCvolume and Binance 100k BTC


Hmm, not really the best argument against PayPal, if you would have bought it with bitcoin the results would have been the same.

What about Google?
Isn't Google a centralized company? Of course yes, Google is a centralized company for data issues.
Yes, we know that now Google plays an important role on the Internet thanks to its dedication in serving Internet users ranging from free Google Drive hosting facilities, free document creation, helping search data on the internet with search engines, assisting in holding online meetings during a pandemic, and many more.

This is evident, that Google really cares about its consumers and continues to provide the best service for its consumers.
Judging a centralized system is bad, is not a reasonable excuse.

Even in cryptocurrencies, with the choice to choose Binance and EtherDelta or IDEX, I think it's a choice for users to make, not to be judged and disrespected for the business in it.

Even though in 6 months he got his money back. but still his plans have definitely changed from what was planned, btw from of the many centralized services I think paypal for me is the last choice to used or don't even need to use it at all. Assets are held for long periods of time and there is nothing you can do about it and its only cause headaches, frustration and stress.

I also see that it is a complete violation of customer rights and censorship. Paypal must improve its services as soon as possible now that blockchain technology is booming and companies are looking for a solution in offering more to their customers with Paypal.
If not, there will be others, even though they are not as big as Paypal, that will displace it.

Looking for opinions on Twitter, I found the following.

https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1400487172554121218?s=19 (https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1400487172554121218?s=19)

This is insane. I don't think that it is legal to shutdown someone's account without any valid reasons to do so, unless there is one.
But honestly, let's say there was a violation made by the account holder. They should state or inform them with complete details why they had or^ they have to shutdown the account.

This is totally a violation on the side of Paypal. As a Financial Institution, they have to ensure that everything are disclosed properly. Not just that, the trust given to them is something that they have to keep.

On this part, we can tell that Paypal will soon feel the backfire of what they did.