At the end of last year, Alex Gladstein wrote a good piece in Time Magazine about why bitcoin can contribute to freedom. The article tells the fate of Venezuelan refugees who enter Colombia after seeing how their own money, the bolívar, became less valuable than toilet paper.
Gladstein works for the Human Rights Foundation and he analyzes how hyperinflation and authoritarian governments force citizens into radical alternatives.
Protect yourself against the vagaries of the government
He wrote in the Times Magazine article in 2018:
“Venezuela is not the only place where people can use Bitcoin as an escape valve. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe printed endless amounts of cash and inflation, the savings of his citizens into nothing, but his successors can’t print more bitcoin.
In China, Xi Jinping can track all of your transactions on Alipay and WePay, but it cannot orchestrate mass surveillance on all Bitcoin payments. In Russia, Vladimir Putin can target an NGO and freeze its bank account, but it can’t freeze its Bitcoin wallet. “
Concise translation: world leaders can print money and cause inflation, track all your transactions down to the micro level and randomly freeze bank accounts, but bitcoin offers a way out.
Also for safe countries
Almost a year after his article appeared in Time Magazine, Gladstein is still convinced that bitcoin will always exist as a means of exchanging value. While in that article he mainly wrote about the need for bitcoin for refugees, he now thinks that our “safe” society will soon see the need for bitcoin. This also applies to people who cannot think of a need for a decentralized currency that the government cannot control.
Bitcoin remains a louse in the Chinese fur
That’s because China is rewriting the rules of what you can do with money. With this he refers to the plans for his own Chinese cryptocurrency, insofar as you may call it that, with which more control can be exercised.
Bitcoin remains a louse in the Chinese fur. Gladstein spoke about this during his keynote Bitcoin Versus Big Brother: Financial Rights Are Human Rights in Helsinki during SlushHQ. This is a meeting where 25,000 people from around the world gathered, including 3,500 startups and 2,000 investors, to discuss how to build successful businesses by using new technologies for future economies.
One of the most important things he said:
“Bitcoin is a huge problem for them because it ruins their plans. It is a digital currency that they cannot control that is beyond their micro surveillance and is likely to get more difficult to control. So I guess the solace or the little silver lining for civil rights activists or anyone who is trying to push back against injustice, will be that Bitcoin will always exist and will always be an option. And even with peer-to-peer trading, you’ll always be able to access it.
So well in the most Orwellian circumstance, you could still meet up with someone in China and invite them over to my place and they could help me with “homework” or something, and I could then pay them with this digital currency. And I could just write, “Oh, it was for homework.” But on the side, they’re sending me Bitcoin and the Chinese government doesn’t know about it. So I think there will always be a way for us to have this sort of parallel economy. ”
He refers to a fictional future that may not be so fictional at all. It is a vision of the future that made George Orwell famous with his 1984 novel. In this fictional society, people only have those few square centimeters in their heads, everything else falls under state control.
Effect on the rest of the world
Gladstein examines the intentions and method behind China’s social credit system. He says that financial data from social media platforms and other public portals are used to create a detailed profile of a citizen. Based on this profile, a person’s financial options and liberties are determined. For example, it is decided whether you can get a loan or not, whether you get a clean version of the internet and what kind of schools your children can go to.
He expects China’s long arm to have its effect on the rest of the world:
“Don’t think this could happen in your country. It will be spreading around the world. “
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