Bitcoin Forum

The latest attack by one crazy individual and some money that was invested in the Ponzi scheme, Bitconnect, now automatically ties many people in the Crypto currency community to Right wing extremists.  ::)  <If you believe all the crap that are posted on the Internet now>  ::) ::)

The book, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism by the author David Golumbia are one of these examples that are frequently quoted.  ::)

Bitcoin’s early origin in right-libertarian Anarcho-capitalism is also used as a tool to blemish it's reputation. A lot of other people have since then, started to use Bitcoin and most of them do not even support these political groups.  ::)

How many people in your circle of friends and family are into Right-Wing Extremism?  ::) :P  <I know 1000s of people who has no political connection to these extremist groups>  ;)

Let's not label a whole group of people, if a small minority of them use the technology for their extremist agendas.  >:(  <The shooter used cash and credit cards too, so we should automatically label all cash and credit card users as Right-Wing Extremism too?>  ::)

We are not extremist but believe in a concept and working technology that will change the way we view our lives in an interconnected world. These people labelling supporters and users of bitcoin as extremists should have started the movement with the inception of the internet giving birth to communication freedom. Right now bitcoin offers financial freedom and this is going to change the way globalisation works to the demerit of big enterprises that have always taken advantage of masses.
Worse still this movement will be picked by the young who are born in an era when communication is at zero cost (or near zero) and start using financial products and services pegged on bitcoin thus bypassing traditional entities. This is when they will think a generation of "extremists" exist but it will be too late because I don't think the generation will be worried about establishment concerns.

I'm a socially liberal lefty snowflake, heh.  They couldn't be more wrong about me.  Away from Bitcoin, I'm pro-immigration, I support social welfare, I believe in a taxpayer-funded health service, I fight for equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexual persuasion.  

It's easy for someone to attempt to tar everyone with the same brush, but it's difficult to make it stick.  

It's sad to see that fact, every time there is a negative action, and the perpetrator has or uses bitcoin, for the means of crime. What is seen by the public is bitcoin, does not see what the motives of the perpetrators. Bitcoin is always a scapegoat

Is there an article in particular you're talking about? I've seen a couple small blurbs about the shooter's investment in Bitconnect but I haven't noticed this narrative about Bitcoin and right-wing extremism in connection with the Christchurch shooting.

This is really ridiculous. Another bad attempt to discredit Bitcoin users. But I without give much attention to such pamflets, they will appear all the time. Puting labels on people without any reasonable explanation is just stupid. And since Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies promote totaly different concept itself, like freedom and decentralization this theory about right wing extremists makes even more lack of common sense.

Yes, bitcoin is like a gun, which we can use for good or bad things. It depends on the person, but unfortunately, when bitcoin is used for bad things, people judge bitcoin to be bad and not the person who did it. People still think that bitcoin is a way for terrorists to carry out their operations because the law is difficult to track.

So, I think if we can use bitcoin (which I'm sure we can), we will bring bitcoin to the good, so people don't think that bitcoin is bad. They will open their eyes to see the reality of bitcoin, and they don't talk about the bad things that bitcoin can do.

It is difficult, and yes it is difficult especially to explain to the public that bitcoin is not a tool to commit crime because they have read statements from other people that saying bitcoin is a bad thing they should not use.

Kakmakr, I must confess I have no idea what you're talking about... where I am actually there are a least 2 local incidents (actually disproven to be terror related but until today people here plus the radio still call the perpetrators a terrorist).

All I can say that, Bitcoiners have been labelled everything on this green earth. I've dealt with the weird looks.

Even if the rumours were about Bitcoin and not Bitconnect, early adopters of the internet were equally notorious. It's perfectly natural that new tech's first adopters are... extremists.

Contextually inaccurate but I actually thought the Bitcoin white paper had some pretty extreme views;)

No more than a small minded man-the who writes that article is such a dork. He clearly puts himself among of the dumbest people around the world labeling us right-wing extremist. That kind of person lacks attention or rather writing stupid journalism that only confused and put simple minded people into doubts and fears towards crytpo currencies.

We are *financial right wing extremists*

The money to end all banks

My political view is somewhat swayed over to the right, and I believe that there are some occasions in which government interference should be absent and that the society themselves should be the primary movers of the community, and not the government. While I see myself as a rightist, I still also believe that the government is vital in making things happen in which the society alone cannot stand alone properly e.g. universal healthcare and other government-funded activities and programs.


This is true. Most of the time, pioneers have become extremists since their beliefs, ideals and what they're doing somewhat deviates from the societal norm. Nowadays, people and governments are slowly accepting the concept and idea of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, so the term 'extremist' especially 'right-wing extremist' do not apply to a bitcoiner anymore--not that it ever applied to every bitcoiner since the conception of the white paper, except Satoshi, perhaps.

When governments find groups uncontrollable it gets termed with several terms. At present the cryptocurrency community is one that can't be controlled by governments. This is the reason why they are termed as right wing extremists. This mentality is found all around the world. To eliminate these corrupt people technology is a must and blockchain will do it in the future.

the book was released in 2016 and from what I see it had no impact on the crypto world. and it seems to me that at many points he was wrong. so I think it's something that we do not need to take seriously what he says. Anyone who wants to know more about what the book says can read a summary in this link that I found

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2017.1322997

Duh, people calling other people names and labels are a bunch of weird.  The people I knew who adopted Bitcoin much earlier than me were indifferent or at least they simply don't give a damn about politics, much less about which political group they belong. If there was a label proper to them it would be techy nerds. They were even neutral in terms of banks and fiat and monetary system. They just loved the idea of something new or radical. They simply embraced innovation at its finest, which Bitcoin was.

It seems everyone else is far-right these days. I guess wanting to take charge and full responsibility of your finances coz gov't is not trustworthy is far-right.  :-\


If Bitcoin's goals are achieved then yes, that's a significant amount of power the government is losing. As for Americans, they also have the right the arm themselves. Bitcoins and guns might make them even harder to control.

This is nothing new as many people who do not want bitcoin to grow spread such negative news about bitcoins. Extremists and criminals can use dollar also so how come bitcoin is assumed as bad if the criminals use it.

Media is doing the same thing with guns.  They find people using guns/bitcoin for evil purposes then label the whole thing as evil.  These things are simply tools while humans are the operators with intent.

People stand to lose a lot of money that are invested in traditional finance like credit card companies if crypto becomes truly successful. 

I don't really know anyone any more. Most of the people I used to know were gay, broke, communists, mentally ill, fucksticks and shit heels. They had so many other issues that right wing extremism leading to mass murder would be one of their lesser problems.

former liberal democratic governments all around the world are building police state (total surveillance style) monitoring systems while at the same time embracing right wing populous politiks! People have a right to be concerned. However if you think big brother is watching you then you are labelled an extremist and right wing nut job lol

the totalitarian technocratic plutocracy that surrounds itself with power has always used the monetary system to enslave the masses...
bitcoin is going to put an end to that  ;) ;) ;) ;)   

Technically, cryptocurrencies were invented to become an independent and private mean of payment not controlled by the government, and relying upon the trust of two parties.
Truly a libertarian idea to be honest.
But libertarianism itself has not much in common with right-wing extremism. Maybe just some meme pool on the internet and dislike for socialism.

You're late to the party, the book was released 3 years ago.
And I must add that it did this during a bear market.


those two things might look the same at first glance for somebody that is not familiar with the terms but are two different beast


It comes to defining what right-wing extremism means.
If we take only the anti-communist and nationalism part I have probably ten times more fiends that can be classified like this than ones using cryptos  ;D ;D

Bottom line, who's this guy anyway?

I think it's rather wrong even if we look at ideological bitcoiners. The idea of freedom from authorities is leftist, the idea of equality (which can be derived from decentralization, I guess) is laos leftist. The only right-wing thing here is, I guess, free economic system where those who are the best get the best revenue (oh, and private property thing).
In any case, it's far from extremism. And in any case lots of different kinds of people use money in general, so it's indeed ridiculous to label the users of one of the kinds of money by some of its users with certain ideas.

It is simply unfair to label an entire user base of a currency something based on what a select few are.

It's like saying that all fiat currency users are drug dealers, because a few people use cash to deal in illicit drugs. Now you see where the flaw of that argument is.

The fact is that the network can be used by anyone, regardless of what their political stance is. Bitcoin itself is completely non-political, and decentralised, and it is futile to try to assign some sort of political standing to the code that is underlying bitcoin. And I certainly don't think decentralisation through blockchain is anything political either.

Everyone at some point will be called a right wing extremist by a deranged leftist. It sucks that they get so much exposure on mainstream media, but you can't do much except ignore them.

I think the general rule of thumb is this :

If you do not follow like a sheep, you get labelled as an outsider, weirdo, rebel, extremist and whatever negative connotation they can think of at the time. Let's not forget that early users of the internet were labelled as porn addicts and pedophiles and money launderers, so the same thing is happening with Bitcoin users now.  >:(

My message to all of you are not to be swayed by the ignorance of the sheep and to ignore the labels that are placed by stupid people.  ;)

Surprisingly there isn't a coin dedicated to extremist values like a nazicoin so I guess they are using bitcoin and a mixer or something like Monero instead. Most use fiat anyways

Sometimes i wonder why if some people abusing bitcoin and people generally considers bitcoin users was bad but me bitcoin users and i'm obviously not an extremists and it is too cruel if people considers bitcoin users such as that but indeed bitcoin just like weapons which is it could bad in the wrong hand but it could be change to usefull if in the right hand so in this case depend on the people themself that what is their purposse when decide to use bitcoin

Woah, that's a lot of emojis you have there in your post ;)

I don't understand how you could even put all Bitcoiners into one particular political group, I've seen some very diverse people use Bitcoin.
Sure there's right-wingers who tend to use it, just because they get banned on other platforms, but that's the beauty of Bitcoin.

On the other hand, there are also many people who I'd consider left-wing that make use of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has no political color, it's literally here for everyone to use, that's what makes it so enticing for a lot of people.
I mean, it just has a lot of benefits compared to the regular banking system, I don't see why that would attract only one particular group of people.

heck, a lot of people are disgruntled by the regular banking system, both on the left and on the right.

Oh no, libertarianism is being connected with right-wing extremism whether it makes any sense or not. Opponents of libertarian ideals are the suspects here, and that makes widely feted pro-ponents of libertariansm suspects too (Ron Paul etc).

Why do people who publicly identify as libertarian so consistently endorse racism or corporatism, when both those are incompatible with libertarian principles? Why indeed.

---

Here's the problem with these ideological arguments: Bitcoin is both collectivist and individualist simultaneously, so capitalists can attack Bitcoin for being socialist, and socialists can attack Bitcoin for being capitalist. They cancel each other out.

Bitcoin is:

Socialist: running the Bitcoin software enforces rules equally amongst the participants to everybody's benefit, very much a socialist concept
Capitalist: the equal enforcement of the rules enables individual rights, the right to spend your own money how and when you like

Which is great, because it proves you don't need corrupt politicians and/or institutions to administrate a transparently fair money system

Extremist values have no reason to exist outside of the scope of another coin, and even with this in mind, there have been some actual nazi projects started as a joke - or as a provocation to see whether decentralization is real, or if censorship is indeed possible. The crypto community generally does a good job at rendering them irrelevant, although sometimes at the expense of censorship, which proved the troll's point.

This is the problem when people are starting to be political and labeling other people just because they have Bitcoin or a supporter of cryptocurrency. Sure, there will always be people with extreme beliefs and convictions who can be using Bitcoin but all of these people are also using the US Dollar. Granted that Bitcoin can be utilized by people who have evil intentions but these people are also using any fiat money on their pockets and their bank accounts. Just because extremist  are using a form of money does not mean that the type of money they are using for transactions can be part of their evil design. I remember that in a study, only a small percentage of all the money laundering activities are actually conducted using Bitcoin majority of the transactions are still using the fiat money...so how we are not associating the fiat money with money laundering or the people who are into this illegal activities? BECAUSE LINKING SO IS ABSURD! The same thing with Bitcoin.

We can add that to yet another crypto jokes lists
Why Right-Wing Extremism why not Left one
There is possible to write whatever imagination will tell and publish in internet
Maybe author will accept paynents with btc or donations
Pure nonsense but freedom of speech is freedom of speech

Just take a look at the Politics & Society sub-forum. The orientation was centrist to moderate-right until a few years back, but now most of the users are those with leftist and far-leftist ideology. The moderator is also far-left, and constantly deletes any post that is even remotely to the right-wing. The media need to check their facts before generalizing more than 100 million people!!!

You will find that the left wing establishment media is quick to mislabel and broad-brush to tarnish the other side... and ignore Left-wing extremism. Not too quick on waiting for facts to come in it would seem. You mentioned a shooter, are you talking about the NZ shooter? I heard he said he's a bit left and a bit right, a self-proclaimed eco-fascist, who admired Communist China, didn't like Trump or Conservatives, and wasn't a Christian... so... not sounding very "right wing" at all. Those things I'd say are more associated with the Left. And he wanted to start racial tensions and war - which seems like something the Left has been pushing during this Presidency. They may try to cling on to him being a white nationalist, but that is not a true right wing trait and is more associated with the Left in my opinion (that would take some historical unpacking). Of course, important questions, like how did an Australian get those weapons into NZ will be ignored (maybe that's already known? I haven't kept up on the  news) and it's straight to gun prohibitions (aren't they already pretty strong over there?), despite the fact that the shooter(s) were stopped from doing a second shooting by an armed citizen... couldn't let future citizens defend themselves, right? Meanwhile, the same media will largely ignore the myriad of terror attacks that have happened since then in the Middle East and Africa, and elsewhere, church bombings, etc.

But ya, it's no surprise they want to mislabel Bitcoin as well.

Have a good day,
The Cyberius team

I think this not right to labelled in that way. I think media is the root of all of this over react to this issue there is a news and I also witness here in Ph particular in Cabanatuan Nueva Ecija,that there is an couple who are jailed because they takes peoples investment using coins.ph. Businessman,employee,police and some politicians are the victim.

It's okay to attack new money, whereas the old money otherwise the local currencies are been used to scam people all over the world through money doubling and some MLMs( Multi-Level Marketings) that have no working product. The sure truth is that some fraudulent elements will always devise ways to scamming people by capitalizing on man's lazy nature and greed.

Hmm... What if someone start saying in media that Bitcoin is re-distributing wealth to poor people, even if it is not true will it help those leftists who call BTC a right-wing currency to calm down? Just imagine Bernie Sanders promoting cryptocurrencies lol.