Opinion - The HK protesters should take advantage of Bitcoin

[DiamondCardz]

I've been following the HK protests with a fair amount of interest and monitoring the situation fairly closely. With the fairly horrific crackdown and brutality that the protesters have been experiencing at the hands of the HK police, I think it's time they change up their tactics. I believe that Bitcoin could strongly benefit their cause if used correctly.

First of all, I'm sure that all money being distributed which is related to the protests right now is probably being exchanged cash-in-hand. I have pretty severe doubts that the protesters are going to be use Chinese-controlled methods of digital payment in order to spread out their money to afford gas masks and the like. Cash-in-hand payments are obviously a pretty big logistical issue and the use of cryptocurrency and tumblers would help enable them to not only distribute their resources more effectively but also keep it anonymous at the same time.

Secondly, I have no doubts at all that HK protesters could crowdfund a large quantity of money if the protest leaders simply organised an open Bitcoin wallet in which to pool resources and distribute to protesters who need it the most, especially for things such as legal and medical fees. Many in the cryptocurrency community are sympathetic to their aims - after all, freedom is a tenet that many in our community hold highly - and I'm sure many which happily chip in some bits to help support their cause.

Thirdly, I am sure that Bitcoin would be an infinitely more secure method of keeping their resources safe than whatever they are using right now. Protest leaders could band together and form multi-signature addresses for keeping resources secure, while only requiring a majority of the original leaders to sign off rather than all in order to prevent arrests from locking the resources away. This would build accountability and security into their cause.

To take their protest to the next level, they really do need to organise a safe method of funding. The HK police is ruthless in its use of weaponry and so it is important that the protesters are able to afford the protective equipment they need. I believe that Bitcoin is the only real way they can do that right now.

Feel free to let me know your opinions!

[Kyraishi]

Great post - I've also been following what has happened to them in the past couple of weeks, especially with the police brutality and it sounds horrible as well.

I do think this has already happened before - the Hong Kong Press has been using bitpay as a payment processor to accept payments from other people and they've only recently fired them due to slow services.

It is definetly a much safer way for people to keep their money, even with the moving markets.

[Eugenar]

Great post - I've also been following what has happened to them in the past couple of weeks, especially with the police brutality and it sounds horrible as well.

I do think this has already happened before - the Hong Kong Press has been using bitpay as a payment processor to accept payments from other people and they've only recently fired them due to slow services.

It is definetly a much safer way for people to keep their money, even with the moving markets.

And in addition, it is not just the security of the funds that needs to be focused, if they will use bitcoin, it will maintain their anonymity, and at the same time provide extra fund whenever in case  the market is bullish. So far, transaction of bitcoin is fast enough to supply them with their needs compared to other payment processor that is widely know in their country. If they are going to take advantage of it, their time will be efficient and their plan will be effective.

[franky1]

this topic has already been addressed before. so lets clarify
1. bitcoin will NOT stop a protestor getting pepper sprayed or arrested.
2. if police see you in the protest causing a riot, damaging property bitcoin wont defend you
3. if you dont want to b identified a bitcoin wallet wont hide your face.
4. if arrested, do not ask the police for your only phonecall to be a bitcoin mixer. they will not help you in court

the only way to avoid trouble is
1. wear a face mask. or run if you se police eyeballing you. dont just stand there holding your phone wallet app like its a sherriffs badge
2. stay off the streets and i promise you no police will see you on the streets
3. a phone wallet app does not make you invisible in real life
4. phone a lawyer and tell them exactly what occured honestly then they can defend you best

people do not get arrested for just buying a placard. btc wont save you by hiding the purchase.
police just need to see someone in the crowd causing trouble

these protests are done by organisers mainly wanting to sell placards and facemasks.
its great business for them. they get thousands of customer to hand them money

these individual 'customers' dont need thousands each and its impossible to divvy up funds to individuals
what ends up happening is that the donation manager just keeps the funds himself and then maybe
just maybe hands out free placards. but most of the time just uses it to make more quicker to then sell to customers to make himself richer.

yep, when you see a image of HK where strangely enough, more that 2 people have the same placard. then thats a sign(pun) a business is involved and making money from the protest.
much like a burger van does at a music festival or a balloon guy does at a parade/procession.

[CryptoBry]

I have no doubts at all that HK protesters could crowdfund a large quantity of money if the protest leaders simply organized an open Bitcoin wallet in which to pool resources and distribute to protesters who need it the most, especially for things such as legal and medical fees. Many in the cryptocurrency community are sympathetic to their aims - after all, freedom is a tenet that many in our community hold highly - and I'm sure many which happily chip in some bits to help support their cause.

This is a good idea that should have been done by protest organizers. However, I am not so sure how tight is the organization behind these waves of protests in Hong Kong as it seems to me that there were actions that just came spontaneous and not really that very organized. Anyway, anybody from the protesters can start a crowdfunding appeal using Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrencies in the market so they can accept financial support not just coming from within Hong Kong but also outside, though I am sure this can also be a hot area of concern as the mainland China may interpret it as an unnecessary meddling in their own affairs. China has been watching closely everything happening in Hong Kong as the government does not wish the same rebellious spirit spreading to other territories under its control.

I for one can donate a little for this cause. Still, I am wishing that both sides can sit down and spend talking to each other peacefully as there is no other solution to this problem but an honest-to-goodness negotiation. The strings of protests have been a big bane to the economy of the territory and all Hong Kong residents including those protesting are going to be affected.

[Mandoy]

Thats a good point. The hongkong protesters should all buy bitcoin and will no longer use hongkong dollars. Insted of using banks they should shift to bitcoin so that their funds could not be freezed by the government. Also if they will no longer use their own currency but cryptocurrency it will have an economic effect that will be felt by the whole country.

[franky1]

as for discussion about moving away from using HKD and using BTC
1. where are you going to buy toilet paper and cans of baked beans from. governments cant brute force a private key but they can shut down a retailer(tax evasion, breach of minimum wage laws, + more)
2. converting HKD to btc just ends up with btc holders charging premium prices for profit. thus if 8hkd got you a loaf of bread.
   buying 8hkd of btc and then finding someone to swap it for bread they will ask for double the amount.
3. if people decided not to use hkd. its not the banks that will suffer, but retailers and employers/employees of all businesses
    governments will just make it even more stricter for businesses to accept government money and pay staff in government money.
    the best you can hope for is the government give each towns bank branches a altcoin node for a government blockchain where its clear that no inflation can occur. and yes before you reply.. governments would prefer to have a currency of their own backing, not some open currency like bitcoin. they have no control of bitcoin so wont be using it as their national reserve currency. sorry. reality sucks. (this coming from someone that wishes that fiats debt money business model dies)

the real reason fiat money lost its gold backed status was because governments lost control of its supply/ability to hoard gold. so dont expect governments to use btc

[blckhawk]

It's a bad way to increase the market, seeing people being hurt, but it works. Bitcoin wallet could be used to fund their protests, away from tracking of the Chinese government with their banks, making the organizers more anonymous with their purchases. To add up, I think people in Hong Kong, in general, would look into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an alternative place to store their funds even before the Chinese government start to implement their rules on Hong Kong's territory. However, the risk are there: (1) They could have a hard time cashing it out again, or (2) the risk of losing more money due to volatility is high.

[DiamondCardz]

Franky - I'm not saying that BTC is going to stop them from getting pepper sprayed. But use of some of the underlying technology in the protocol like multisig transactions could help them to organise resources for the protests with less risk than whatever they're doing right now. There's many parts that go into making their protests successful and if this ends up being something that goes on for years then they will definitely need international sources of funding and anonymity.

[Lucius]

To take their protest to the next level, they really do need to organise a safe method of funding. The HK police is ruthless in its use of weaponry and so it is important that the protesters are able to afford the protective equipment they need. I believe that Bitcoin is the only real way they can do that right now.

So you think they should to raise money in Bitcoin to buy better protective gear so they could continue to confront the police in a safer way? That doesn't sound right to me, because in this way the protests will only continue to prolong, and the police will use even more force if they have someone other than just a civilian against them.

Don't get me wrong, I support the protests of people in Hong Kong, but personally I don't think they have a chance against China which will not allow itself to show weakness and loss of control. The Communist Party is ruthless, there is no doubt about it, therefore I do not see how these protests could be raised to the next level without the Chinese military itself intervening.

[crzy]

Bitcoin can be use to ruin the value of their own currency and maybe help them to win on this battle. I personally experience the intensity of the protester and the police and I can say that Hongkong is facing a big crisis. Though i don’t think BTC can directly help them because they are still working during weekdays and get their fiat money, they needed a huge fund to survive on this battle and someone should initiate.

[hatshepsut93]

Don't get me wrong, I support the protests of people in Hong Kong, but personally I don't think they have a chance against China which will not allow itself to show weakness and loss of control. The Communist Party is ruthless, there is no doubt about it, therefore I do not see how these protests could be raised to the next level without the Chinese military itself intervening.

The only way protestors can win is if Western powers will threaten China enough to make it leave Hong Kong alone and go back to status quo. But the West would never do anything that can hurt their economy, this has been proven many times already in the past years. So, in the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin can't tip the scales. Maybe if it's adoption was much higher, it could influence events on a macro scale, but unfortunately it's just not the case. Recently some HK protestors announced a bank run, and nothing big came out of it.

[electronicash]

although we see the HK protest isn't going anywhere, i will support all for BTC.
it'd be cool to see international news that BTC funded the protest and such at least we'd see a big promotions for BTC. its also possible that the Kurdish will do the same, the trend on social media spread faster and when they know they could get funds to help the crusade go on, win-win for crypto.

[dothebeats]

The HK protests is the least covered important event in the world currently. Most of them are fighting for their autonomy against Mainland China which is spearheading the ELAB movement. There really is no reason for them to use bitcoin at all knowing that no forms of currency are being banned on HK currently, but they can boycott CNY and HKD if they want and use anything else. This political outrage happening there should not be capitalized upon by those who are only wishing to get more profits and not really care for the welfare of those who are in HK.

[Artemis3]

Thats a good point. The hongkong protesters should all buy bitcoin and will no longer use hongkong dollars. Insted of using banks they should shift to bitcoin so that their funds could not be freezed by the government. Also if they will no longer use their own currency but cryptocurrency it will have an economic effect that will be felt by the whole country.

The HKD is one of the few fiat currencies in the world not controlled by the State, instead its controlled by 4 large private banks. Until the central government of China decides to end their "autonomy", which seems to be the case here...

As heroic as they may look, i don't think they have the slightest chance against the behemoth they are fighting. The day the UK left, that was the end of HK as separate entity, this was bound to happen and the protesters are even giving the central government the perfect excuse for more State intervention.

Think of what would happen in the USA if a State wanted to leave the union. Remember those Texans that wanted to leave? Or that California Republic thing?

Who is going to step up the plate and defend those protesters? Trump?

Bitcoin is not going to do much for them, their struggle is on a different level. If they do gain independence (which i seriously doubt), they could pick bitcoin as national currency and adopt Austrian economics but i doubt such an utopian place will be allowed anywhere on this planet (yet).

Hong Kong is not new to electronic money, they have been using a form of refillable prepaid card since the 90ies, originally for transport but also widely accepted in convenience stores etc. This (Octopus) system is also integrated into smartphones nowdays IIRC.

If anything, the place is too advanced for something central (backwards) China to accept, they have to force it into submission, which is what the protest is about. But they are few, and the behemoth is the largest military in the world.

[Carlton Banks]

First of all, I'm sure that all money being distributed which is related to the protests right now is probably being exchanged cash-in-hand. I have pretty severe doubts that the protesters are going to be use Chinese-controlled methods of digital payment in order to spread out their money to afford gas masks and the like. Cash-in-hand payments are obviously a pretty big logistical issue and the use of cryptocurrency and tumblers would help enable them to not only distribute their resources more effectively but also keep it anonymous at the same time.

This could work in the long-term, but in the short-term I don't think reality supports this idea well.

Most people will be using their phones as wallets, or at the least they will use phones to send transactions and keep their wallets on paper or dedicated hardware wallets (I expect the majority would use a complete phone wallet)

Both phone OS's and the lite-wallets that run on phones are designed in a pretty anti-privacy way. That would make it easier for the Chinese/HK govs to target HK protestors. In future, more people will use more open phone platforms (like the Librem 5 phone or the Pine Phone) for which security and privacy are under user control (and even then, people really must be quite professional in their computer science knowledge to maintain secuirty/privacy). Until that time (which is realistically months/years away), cash is better.

Secondly, I have no doubts at all that HK protesters could crowdfund a large quantity of money if the protest leaders simply organised an open Bitcoin wallet in which to pool resources and distribute to protesters who need it the most, especially for things such as legal and medical fees. Many in the cryptocurrency community are sympathetic to their aims - after all, freedom is a tenet that many in our community hold highly - and I'm sure many which happily chip in some bits to help support their cause.

this I agree with

Thirdly, I am sure that Bitcoin would be an infinitely more secure method of keeping their resources safe than whatever they are using right now. Protest leaders could band together and form multi-signature addresses for keeping resources secure, while only requiring a majority of the original leaders to sign off rather than all in order to prevent arrests from locking the resources away. This would build accountability and security into their cause.

and this


Maybe a good idea would be if the organisers provide multiple different addresses, with different combinations of parties that can sign. That way those organisers can distribute trust amongst each other in a more shallow formation, making it even harder to detain certain people strategically to cut money off from the people on the ground. And anyone donating can also use that system to avoid giving money to any organiser that seems suspicious or just doesn't behave according to the donators own standards.

For instance, I myself would not fund organisers who are:

• encouraging pro-active violence
• just marching or holding up signs

but I would fund organisers who are:

• doing a more creative street protest that is impossible to forget (that could go viral)
• providing unlicensed, high quality alternatives to government services
• helping protestors (or anyone else) to avoid government employees behaving badly towards them
• succeeding in convincing government employees to switch to their side, publicly

[Kyraishi]

Great post - I've also been following what has happened to them in the past couple of weeks, especially with the police brutality and it sounds horrible as well.

I do think this has already happened before - the Hong Kong Press has been using bitpay as a payment processor to accept payments from other people and they've only recently fired them due to slow services.

It is definetly a much safer way for people to keep their money, even with the moving markets.

And in addition, it is not just the security of the funds that needs to be focused, if they will use bitcoin, it will maintain their anonymity, and at the same time provide extra fund whenever in case  the market is bullish. So far, transaction of bitcoin is fast enough to supply them with their needs compared to other payment processor that is widely know in their country. If they are going to take advantage of it, their time will be efficient and their plan will be effective.

Security is a big issue - the biggest issue here is if they use fiat payments and the bank suddenly closes their account since they get screwed over. Bitcoin solves this problem completely.

I don't think they are looking at BTC as an investment option and really want it to go up or down. It's fairly stable in it's current state and that's good for them, they don't want to suddenly lose all their money due to a market crash.

What's going to make this interesting is what new payment processor will be taking over here.

[Casdinyard]

Security is a big issue - the biggest issue here is if they use fiat payments and the bank suddenly closes their account since they get screwed over. Bitcoin solves this problem completely.

I don't think they are looking at BTC as an investment option and really want it to go up or down. It's fairly stable in it's current state and that's good for them, they don't want to suddenly lose all their money due to a market crash.

What's going to make this interesting is what new payment processor will be taking over here.

I would agree, a good asset that can be alternative for payment instead of using banks. Though we can't say that bitcoin will take over when it comes in payment method as there will be people who will be against it because of its decentralization.

While I think HK is being open for innovation of currency so perhaps the switching isn't that hard, and the mass adoption can be obtain even little by little.

[qiwoman2]

Any form of decentralization is good to hedge your bets in a time of crisis etc. So it would be logical for people involved in any crisis demographic to grow at least a small bag of Bitcoin just in case things go more pearshaped in HK due to the rioting etc. I don't know though how far China will get involved in stopping the flow of money going out and how much of the Autonomy in HK will be affected monetarily though if everyone over there just started to buy tons of Bitcoin to hoard. I think it has to be done very subtlely and with small amounts, to make it easier for the hodlers to not get too much notice. If you do things too big and too drastically, then it may backfire on everyone involved and hodling Bitcoin over there. So my advice would be that they stealthily grow their Bitcoin bags unnoticed and unhindered.

[Kyraishi]

Security is a big issue - the biggest issue here is if they use fiat payments and the bank suddenly closes their account since they get screwed over. Bitcoin solves this problem completely.

I don't think they are looking at BTC as an investment option and really want it to go up or down. It's fairly stable in it's current state and that's good for them, they don't want to suddenly lose all their money due to a market crash.

What's going to make this interesting is what new payment processor will be taking over here.

I would agree, a good asset that can be alternative for payment instead of using banks. Though we can't say that bitcoin will take over when it comes in payment method as there will be people who will be against it because of its decentralization.

While I think HK is being open for innovation of currency so perhaps the switching isn't that hard, and the mass adoption can be obtain even little by little.

I wouldn't classify Bitcoin as a payment method just yet for the Hong Kong protesters. I doubt they are really going to be using Bitcoin to purchase equipment they need.

It's more an way for them to recieve payments and hold them without risk of their funds being siezed or lost. The Chinese government definetly won't be able to hack their wallets.

Any form of decentralization is good to hedge your bets in a time of crisis etc. So it would be logical for people involved in any crisis demographic to grow at least a small bag of Bitcoin just in case things go more pearshaped in HK due to the rioting etc. I don't know though how far China will get involved in stopping the flow of money going out and how much of the Autonomy in HK will be affected monetarily though if everyone over there just started to buy tons of Bitcoin to hoard. I think it has to be done very subtlely and with small amounts, to make it easier for the hodlers to not get too much notice. If you do things too big and too drastically, then it may backfire on everyone involved and hodling Bitcoin over there. So my advice would be that they stealthily grow their Bitcoin bags unnoticed and unhindered.

I agree - we've seen volume over the last couple of weeks slowly increase for crypto-currencies and it does seem a lot of people there are getting another form of financial security. I do think China knows about these moves and it'll be interesting to see what they do to combat the recent bitcoin purchases.