Bitcoin's freedom is Absolute!

[Agbe]

...He also made us know that bitcoin is an alternative currency to fiat. This will mean that there is no limitation with bitcoin.

If bitcoin is made as an alternative currency to the Fiat currency from your point of view, then there is a limitation in it which is also contrary to your point. Like if I want to buy shirt in my locality I can't use bitcoin to buy the clothes so I have to sell the bitcoin first before I can use the Fiat money to pay for shirt. And that is a big limitation of bitcoin. Bitcoin is an alternative coin, and that means bitcoin did not come to take over Fiat currency but it came to support it and make it stronger. The only thing is that bitcoin removed the third party control. Everyone control their funds. So if you have 1 BTC for 10 years, your 1 BTC is still intact. But in Fiat banks it you have 1 million, it will reduce within 1 year because their service maintenance fees, electronic maintenance levy, card maintenance levy, SMS levy, USSD levy and Internet Maintenance levy etc. Because of all these levies and fees, BTC comes the best of all.

[1714689986]

1714689986

[justdimin]

If bitcoin is made as an alternative currency to the Fiat currency from your point of view, then there is a limitation in it which is also contrary to your point. Like if I want to buy shirt in my locality I can't use bitcoin to buy the clothes so I have to sell the bitcoin first before I can use the Fiat money to pay for shirt. And that is a big limitation of bitcoin. Bitcoin is an alternative coin, and that means bitcoin did not come to take over Fiat currency but it came to support it and make it stronger. The only thing is that bitcoin removed the third party control. Everyone control their funds. So if you have 1 BTC for 10 years, your 1 BTC is still intact. But in Fiat banks it you have 1 million, it will reduce within 1 year because their service maintenance fees, electronic maintenance levy, card maintenance levy, SMS levy, USSD levy and Internet Maintenance levy etc. Because of all these levies and fees, BTC comes the best of all.

The sad thing about the current situation is that people do not really keep their coins, they give it to others and that creates all these trouble. The latest one was once again an exchange, FTX, where people trusted their coins to them and they lost it and now people do not have their funds, while bitcoin itself is decentralized and gives you freedom, if you give up that freedom and give others your money, then you should not be shocked to learn that they used your money for bad stuff and lost it.

This is why bitcoin is not just a tech, but it is an idea and the tech part may have been understood but the idea behind it is still not fully comprehended.

[Frankolala]

Hmm..Freedom makes you do whatever you want to do but it doesn't guarantee your safety when you disregard the purpose of freedom. Satoshi created Bitcoin to make people have financial freedom but not freedom to go against Bitcoin concept. Giving someone your private keys is not freedom because you will leave to learn a hard lesson from that action.

Bitcoin is decentralized and we should ensure that it remains decentralized, so that the purpose of bitcoin and its benefits can be achieved instead of the opposite of it.
1. If you keep your bitcoin in a centralized system, you have given your bitcoin freedom.
2. If you give your password to whoever you want to ,you have given your bitcoin freedom.
3. If you are ignorant about listening on tips on how to keep your bitcoin secured,you have given your bitcoin freedom.

[Davidvictorson]

Wikipedia defines freedom as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Totally agree with the OP - being free to choose how and in what matter you do what you want with your bitcoin without restriction is what freedom it. Sadly, most persons have made themselves the custodian or gatekeepers of freedom in relation to bitcoin which is not suppose to be. Live and let live.

[Ucy]

Of course, you are free to do whatever you want with your bitcoin, as long as you not creating problems for others and probably for your self with the freedom.  By the way, Satoshi created Bitcoin for people who want to escape the fiat currency and banking systems ruin/corrupted by people who misused their freedom . He didn't create Bitcoin to be misused or abused too... He likely anticipated such abusers/misusers and made sure they do not somehow hijack Bitcoin system and corrupt it for others like fiat currency systems are being corrupted. You can rightly say he created bitcoin to be fool-proof system based on pretty solid principles like privacy/anonymity, transparency, immutability, decentralization, fair-rules, etc.
There will definitely be punishment for those use their freedom in Bitcoin space to harm others . They could be jailed, be fined, sent to mental hospital, even be enslaved, etc. Beside, Bitcoin is more suitable for the Free not slaves, because it's a expected they will be responsible enough to use Bitcoin right without misusing or abusing it and creating problems for society.



More on the Bitcoin and freedom, I believe it's better to restrict this freedom to individuals rather than companies or businesses who could use it to encourage Bitcoin users to be irresponsible and reckless due to greed or foolishness by encouraging more them to use Bitcoin wrongly thereby creating massive problems for the Bitcoin/crypto space.  This is why it's important to emphasize more on decentralized and non-custodial companies/businesses, to prevent fools that could use their "freedom" and ruin it all for thousands/millions of people who probably don't know what they are doing

[stompix]

Hmm..Freedom makes you do whatever you want to do but it doesn't guarantee your safety when you disregard the purpose of freedom.

So does smoking, drinking, driving, and eating unhealthy. So, we should make a committee and decide that people should not be allowed to do anything that might be harmful to them and might have consequences?

We had another topic where someone was criticizing banks for not allowing him to deposits to a crypto exchange, by the same "protectionism" banks did a good thing since they didn't allow you to deposit money on an unlicensed exchange that requires you KYC and might run with you coins and sell your data!
Your keys, your coins, your decision, it might be stupid, in some cases it's really stupid but you can't force anyone to stop doing it.
If someone wants to trade his bitcoins for shitcoincash, should there be a law against it?  

There will definitely be punishment for those use their freedom in Bitcoin space to harm others . They could be jailed, be fined, sent to mental hospital, even be enslaved, etc.

Hello, Sadolf Nakatler!
And here we go across the thin line where you suddenly want to turn people into slaves because they are not playing along with your view. At first is for punishment for criminals, then for the ones with a different opinion, then for the ones that don't do every single thing you ask them to. As always, from freedom advocates to tyrannically despotism it's just one tiny step, usually because somebody thinks he is smarter than the rest of the world and everyone else is dumb so he must follow his rule.

Being on bitcointalk and reading how we need to turn bad guys into slaves and send them to mental hospitals sure seems unreal.

[isaac_clarke22]

~

I had never perceived people using centralized exchanges or even complying with KYC or even using custodial wallet as anti-Bitcoin. Sure, they might not be the one in full control of their assets or whatever coins they are holding, but I am pretty sure they are using it over fiat for a reason obviously.
It is your responsibility in the end on what will happen to your assets anyway, let alone that you invested your money to whatever coin is out there in CMC that you first saw. The only thing you should not do after that is blame other people for whatever stupidity you ended up with due to your obvious negligence.

[Adbitco]

My point is, no one should detect for anyone how to enjoy the freedom. You can only advice or teach, stop seeing people using exchanges or doing kyc as anti bitcoin.

Maybe you misquoting the whole phrase here, generally people around the forum is not trying to limits anyone from enjoying the freedom or even standing as anti bitcoin, what i only noticed is that "counseling" is most important key in this forum which i know people are standing to be, as a beginner they should be guided thoroughly to know what is good and not otherwise they could fall prey possibly all funds might be stolen. Lemme ask you, what would you enjoy or benefits seeing your fellow forum users or probably same rank with you complaining about his stolen funds from his wallets or exchange account what would you take them as?
After spending many years here reading / research and you noticed such thing happened to them, would you be happy at that point?
The answer is "No" because what i think is actually happening is "counseling" so that they could know how to enjoy their freedom not by the other way round sir.

Yes it is true, Freedom is Freedom.

Thank you

[DooMAD]

Yes, you possess the "freedom" to remain financially enslaved to middlemen who profit from everything you do.  Entirely your prerogative.  They can charge you fees, sell your financially sensitive personal information to whoever they like and, sooner or later, lose all the BTC you've handed to them, as tends to occur quite frequently.  And then you'll have the freedom to whine about it as though it were someone else's fault.  All of that is certainly a choice you could make.  You're also free to squander every other opportunity available to you in life.  Would be a bit of a waste, though.  

Maybe learn to properly leverage the tools you've been given and you might discover even greater freedom than you envisioned?

[Darker45]

How do you define freedom, then?

It's not as if our choices aren't influenced to a certain degree by external factors. No single decision is made in a vacuum. There are always circumstances surrounding each and every decision that we make. There's nothing absolute in this world.

People submitting KYC; are they absolutely free in choosing to do that? People leaving funds in centralized exchanges; do they know its implications and risks? Are they completely informed of all the possibilities arising from it? People who repeatedly use their addresses; are they aware of what it means? Those who share private keys; are they acting absolutely free or they're simply ignorant?

[ChiBitCTy]

Yeah this is pretty well said and I agree with your over all point here. The way I take it, anyhow for example ..just because this person prefers this type of regulation, or this aspect of bitcoin over something maybe a “traditionalist”  is against, doesn’t make them any lesser of utilizing bitcoins freedom, it’s just its in their own way.  Or perhaps I’m just overthinking this, and not sure that even makes sense lol.

[Minor Miner]

If bitcoin is made as an alternative currency to the Fiat currency from your point of view, then there is a limitation in it which is also contrary to your point. Like if I want to buy shirt in my locality I can't use bitcoin to buy the clothes so I have to sell the bitcoin first before I can use the Fiat money to pay for shirt. And that is a big limitation of bitcoin. Bitcoin is an alternative coin, and that means bitcoin did not come to take over Fiat currency but it came to support it and make it stronger. The only thing is that bitcoin removed the third party control. Everyone control their funds. So if you have 1 BTC for 10 years, your 1 BTC is still intact. But in Fiat banks it you have 1 million, it will reduce within 1 year because their service maintenance fees, electronic maintenance levy, card maintenance levy, SMS levy, USSD levy and Internet Maintenance levy etc. Because of all these levies and fees, BTC comes the best of all.

The sad thing about the current situation is that people do not really keep their coins, they give it to others and that creates all these trouble. The latest one was once again an exchange, FTX, where people trusted their coins to them and they lost it and now people do not have their funds, while bitcoin itself is decentralized and gives you freedom, if you give up that freedom and give others your money, then you should not be shocked to learn that they used your money for bad stuff and lost it.

This is why bitcoin is not just a tech, but it is an idea and the tech part may have been understood but the idea behind it is still not fully comprehended.

Exchanges are not like banks, although both are centralized, you cannot compare the safety of the two. Leaving money on an exchange is too risky but with a bank, our money is much safer.

Bitcoin is decentralized, it gives us freedom and self-determination to protect our assets but putting all your assets in bitcoin does not guarantee our security. Given bitcoin's volatility, it's still a good investment, but not a reliable place to store money. If you convert all your money to bitcoins at the beginning of the year your asset value will drop more than 75% right now, but if you deposit it in the bank, you will lose only a few % of its value. Both have their own benefits, so why not combine but compare and choose only one when we can use both?

[The Cryptovator]

Bitcoin was developed as a peer-to-peer electronic currency. This means that the transaction will be borderless, with no involvement from a third party. So, Bitcoin facilitates financial freedom. We can do whatever we want with our Bitcoin, and no one will ask or track you if you keep your privacy. No one can tell how much you won unless your addresses are public. Of course, you must use non-custodial wallets for this. If you use third-party wallets, they have access to all of your coins.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Exchanges are not like banks, although both are centralized, you cannot compare the safety of the two. Leaving money on an exchange is too risky but with a bank, our money is much safer.

Both are centralized by central banks and centralized exchanges but it is like difference between fiat currency and stable coin. Fiat currency is safer than stable coin if we compare USD and USDT or other stable coins want to peg with USD. At least the US government won't let USD loses its value too much in a few hours or few days like how UST stablecoin de-pegged and lost most of its value.

People have freedom and they are free to pick either fiat currencies or stable coins or Bitcoin.

[Reid]

That's a human decision. It's called "free will". Satoshi just offered the technology. We have to decide at how far we are willing to take to make it secure.
We learn things, we see exchanges bankruptcy a lot of times, it scares the hell out of us if it does happen at where we are keeping our Bitcoin.
This is why having a cold wallet is the "best advice". You are not forced, you still have a choice but that's the best option for security.
It's just sad though because it was repeatedly suggested, and yet lesser people are listening.
Sure you can do what you want with Bitcoin, that's yours, you own it, but how about those going back here crying about what happened to them.
It's a risk that we should also be willing to take, no running back to mommy.

[Wexnident]

Wouldn't OPs idea of freedom only apply if no other factors would be involved? I mean I'm totally down to store my money in exchanges if exchanges weren't free to lock it and steal it, but no, we agreed when we used their services that they have the freedom to not be responsible if your funds were lost. You exercised your freedom only to lose it to another party, which kind of makes it like it's not a matter of freedom anymore but of common sense.

My point is, no one should detect for anyone how to enjoy the freedom. You can only advice or teach, stop seeing people using exchanges or doing kyc as anti bitcoin.

To use your logic, they're technically free to say to others how to enjoy their freedom

[CryptSafe]

When it gets to freedom, I think people really do not understand what it means and what it stands for. It is your choice to choose what you feel to do is right for you. Without being misunderstood, freedom is not bias. Freedom is applicable in the blockchain industry. As we all know why Satoshi invented the Bitcoin. It was for the sake of freedom Bitcoin was invented so as third party would be avoided, Government would be put off our transaction. However it is unfortunate that centralised exchange does not see that and are against the major reason blockchain was invented. Nevertheless, kyc was brought in which is entirely and totally different from the Satoshi goal but  it is left for each individual to choose whether to do it or not. The choice is yours as you have your freedom and right to make your decision.

Freedom is freedom indeed.
Freedom is priceless.
Freedom is power
Freedom is democratic.
Freedom is a choice.
Freedom is not bias.

Freedom is your right!

[Piesel]

Our entire life depends on the choice we make and how we manage the situation around us, bitcoin decentralization gave us the right to privacy but how we decide to stay private is our entire responsibility, when asking for KYC you have the right to either share it or walk away to a more decentralized platform but once you need to use centralized service you can choose to what level you want to expose your identity.

But as much as possible we should be careful with how we give up our documents to third parties for KYC purposes is risky to take for example the FTX exchange hackers may not only take money but also the may have stolen millions of user documents and using such for identity scam, this and many more is the reason why KYC is discouraged

[avikz]

My point is, no one should detect for anyone how to enjoy the freedom. You can only advice or teach, stop seeing people using exchanges or doing kyc as anti bitcoin.

I love this statement! This is super true! Freedom should not come with terms and conditions or anything attached to it! So if a bitcoin owner wants to do kyc and wants to pay taxes on the transactions and profit - that's freedom!

Shying away from taxes and regulations will only make our life worse because the entire system is centralized and connected. Bitcoin 9r cryptocurrency market is not matured to such a level where you can just live off it. If you want to fully realise the potential of the bitcoin you are holding, at some point of time you will have to integrate with the real economy!

[rby]

Yeah this is pretty well said and I agree with your over all point here. The way I take it, anyhow for example ..just because this person prefers this type of regulation, or this aspect of bitcoin over something maybe a “traditionalist”  is against, doesn’t make them any lesser of utilizing bitcoins freedom, it’s just its in their own way.  Or perhaps I’m just overthinking this, and not sure that even makes sense lol.

Lol... You are making sense mate. If I try to keep my private keys secret and safe and after 2years I cannot keep track of where I kept it, due to memory failure or other factors. Next year I force myself again and cannot and then I register with an exchange and is able not to lose fund for 5yrs. Exchange could be freedom to me.

I have seen people who took their private key to save in the bank, and belive that it is safe...lol. Something is wrong somewhere. Anyone should use bitcoin in a way that gives them their freedom, this will encourage more adoption.