December 2010. Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal cut off WikiLeaks after it published U.S. diplomatic cables.
The message was clear: access to the financial system can be revoked.
As calls grew for WikiLeaks to use Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto urged caution. In December 2010, he warned that WikiLeaks had “kicked the hornet’s nest” and that the swarm could turn its attention to Bitcoin, which was still young and fragile.
Despite those concerns, in 2011, WikiLeaks began accepting Bitcoin donations, bypassing traditional payment rails.
As Andreas Antonopoulos has often described it, Bitcoin represents a separation of money and state.
Banks believed cutting off payments could silence an organization. Bitcoin introduced a system where transactions don’t require permission from intermediaries.
Financial censorship today may be more sophisticated, but Bitcoin’s core design (decentralized and censorship-resistant) remains the same.
