“We have a mammoth task — to correct the corruption in the world. It is possible.” — @Hadiya HM

Oslo knows what’s up.

“What we want is for critical news stories not to compete with cat videos. Journalism was not designed for that.” — @anjansun , on the importance of Nostr

NOSTR getting its due at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

“Unfortunately, dictators are more united than democracies.” — Masih Alinejad

“The courtroom has replaced the coup as the means of repression.” — Parit Wacharasindhu, Thailand Move Forward Party Oslo Freedom Forum

“Nothing compares to bullies who wield state power to silence millions.” — Maria Sarungi Tsehai, Oslo Freedom Forum

“Bitcoin is digital gold.” In reality, bitcoin is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Promoted to Full Professor!

Nostr Panel @ MIT Bitcoin Expo

Packing the essentials for CheatCode. See you in Bedford!

CoinJoins Help Democracy Protests (originally in Forbes) Inspired by @npub17xvf...c9as and @gladstein Hundreds of activists around the world use bitcoin for its censorship resistance properties — rather than speculative trading. From Nigeria to Russia, activists across the globe see bitcoin as a tool for promoting pro-democracy protests despite financial repression. Financial repression and nonviolent resistance in a variety of dictatorships were a few of the topics of discussion at the Human Rights Foundation’s Global BitcoinBitcoin -1.1% Summit on Thursday, October 3. Protests usually need money to function, and so seizing cash and freezing bank accounts is an effective way to neutralize citizens’ ability to fight back against dictators before they can become too organized. Often this financial repression is enough to force the end of the protests, due to the difficulty of organizing protests without any money, and organizers’ uncertainty about their survival without financial access. Bitcoin cannot be seized, because it is not a physical asset residing in space. It is a digital asset, residing at an address in the bitcoin blockchain. In order to use bitcoin, one need only have a 64-character private key to that address, or a 12-word (or 24-word) phrase associated with a wallet. Private keys are too long to memorize for most people, but a piece of paper on which a private key is written is much easier to hide than physical cash. Bitcoin also cannot be frozen, because there are no authorities on the Bitcoin network that have the power to block or stop transactions. Even if there is an address that a person wants to stop from transacting on the bitcoin network, there is nothing they can do about it. These features of bitcoin are often fretted over by American authorities bemoaning their inability to prevent foreign adversaries from transacting using bitcoin, despite the American authorities’ best efforts to sanction them. But of course, a network that resists censorship by foreign authorities of necessity resists censorship by American authorities. This is a price we must be willing to pay for the sake of democratic activists worldwide. According to the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, 5.7 billion people – 72% of the world’s population – live under authoritarian rule. When financial repression fails, dictators turn to the second tactic – arrests, often followed by torture. One might think that using bitcoin makes it difficult to find those responsible through the protests – at least through their financial transactions. But this isn’t the case. Bitcoin transactions are recorded on the ledger, and the ledger is public. Anyone can download it, view it, and analyze it. And while the ledger doesn’t contain people’s identities or locations, it is subject to analysis and often yields identifying information. This, of course, can be disastrous for anti-authoritarian pro-democracy protesters and activists. The greater the resources of the dictatorship, the greater the risk of using bitcoin. It’s better than banks, to be sure, but it’s a risk nonetheless. There are ways to make bitcoin transactions more private. One is CoinJoins. In a CoinJoin, users jointly construct transactions where their coins are combined and then sent out to various addresses. None of the destination addresses is connected to any of the originating addresses. Nobody knows who else is CoinJoining with them. Since it is an automatic protocol, no coordinating authority has custody of the bitcoin involved; each user retains control of their own coins throughout. Because of CoinJoins, a person can send money to an activist or protestor without anyone knowing who sent it. A Russian national can send bitcoin to the Anti-Corruption Foundation through a CoinJoin without Putin’s government knowing – even if Putin’s government knows who the originating address belongs to and who the final destination address belongs to. Of course, in such cases, multiple rounds of CoinJoining is advisable. Because of the censorship-resistance of bitcoin, it is a favorite tool of protestors. But it is not private enough to make them comfortable that they won’t be identified and arrested. So they turn to the privacy-preserving features of CoinJoins. CoinJoins enable pro-democracy protesters fighting against dictators to use censorship-resistant money – bitcoin – more privately. People can hide their identities from those hunting them. This is something that should be encouraged and supported. But some governments – democratic governments, even – have taken a different view. They’ve said that CoinJoins violate anti-money-laundering rules. The U.S. government arrested the developers of a privacy-focused wallet called Samourai Wallet that used CoinJoins by default, charging them with having “facilitated more than $100 million in money laundering transactions from illegal dark web markets.” But cybersecurity, AML, anti-terrorism laws are used by authoritarian goverments to target pro-democracy activists or opposition leaders, says the Open Dialogue Foundation. For example, Erdogan’s government recently arrested a Turkish student on terrorism charges for participation in religious services. India arrested leaders of the Aam Aadmi opposition party for supposed financial crimes. Azerbaijan arrested opposition leader Gubad Ibadoghlu for production, acquisition or sale of counterfeit money. In Venezuela, presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has been arrested for terrorism after an election he claims he won. Tunisian opposition leader Lotfi Mraihi was arrested on suspicion of money-laundering. Leave aside the fact that the Samourai developers built a non-custodial wallet, never taking custody of any user funds, and so weren’t transmitting money. The fact remains that CoinJoins are a vital tool for human rights and pro-democracy protests in dictatorial regimes. Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation estimates that “dozens of protest movements on five continents impacting millions of people since 2020 have used bitcoin as part of pro-democracy protests.” He adds that “HRF supports Bitcoin privacy tools and recognizes the power of privacy-preserving collaborative transactions for human rights defenders – especially ones operating under authoritarian regimes.” CoinJoins are morally neutral. Chainalysis estimates that in 2023 about $25 billion in value was used by illicit actors, and under $2 billion went through some mixing like CoinJoin. CoinJoins provide privacy through obscurity, and so work best when there are a lot of people CoinJoining. The more developers, coordinators, and users there are, the more privacy protesters can achieve. Most Americans are not on the ground protesting against dictators, but we can help the cause by coordinating CoinJoins and CoinJoining ourselves. Democratic governments could encourage that as a way of peacefully exporting democracy without costing any tax dollars.

Huge thanks to everyone who came to Bitcoin Amsterdam. Speaking on the main stage is absolutely nothing like the philosophy conferences I’ve spoken at for the first decade of my academic career! @Andrew M. Bailey and @Craig Warmke and I reflect quite regularly on how surreal our lives have become — and y’all’s support has everything to do with it. Please keep reading and sharing our work at resistance.money, and we’ll keep producing as much as we can! (Photo credit: @Frank Corva Old Account)

COINJOINS PROTECT DEMOCRACY My latest in Forbes, inspired by my experience at @npub17xvf...c9as's Global Bitcoin Summit. https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/09/how-bitcoin-coinjoins-facilitate-pro-democracy-protests/

ll be at @PUBKEY with @Arsh Molu from @npub1zhqc...h0dw tonight at 6! If you’re in NYC, show up. We will have signed copies of Resistance Money to trade for donations to HRF.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The University of Wyoming has established the UW Bitcoin Research Institute. uwyo.edu/bitcoin The BRI aims to produce high-quality peer-reviewed publications about bitcoin from all academic disciplines. First act: hiring @Andrew M. Bailey! Much academic bitcoin research is quite poor, because it's done by people who don't understand bitcoin. Mora et al predicted "bitcoin alone could push emissions 2 degrees". They failed to account for the difficulty adjustment *and* didn't know there was a block size cap! Others like Taleb’s infamous "Bitcoin Black Paper" are unaware of Layer 2s like Lightning, and others are unaware of the supply cap -- perhaps bitcoin's most distinctive feature. Others make faulty assumptions about bitcoin user demographics. These mistakes make their way into journalism, and policy. Bitcoin is multi-faceted in theory, and even more so in practice. Journalists can't be experts, so they rely on academics. Too many of those academics have let them down. The good news is that there is good academic research on bitcoin. Work by Will Luther, @npub18wgt...r2wn , @Margot Paez / jyn urso , @Craig Warmke , Matthew Ferranti, @npub1ws69...xzeg and others understands and explains bitcoin very well. But for academics interested in bitcoin, the incentives often don't line up. Few advisors will let their advisees focus on bitcoin, so bitcoin projects must be side projects. And without advisor or community support, these projects are rarely taken on. The Bitcoin Research Institute fixes the incentives. We provide a community who can support scholars and give critical feedback on their projects, and we provide funds for travel and lodging. We're removing barriers for scholars who want to work on bitcoin. More academic work on bitcoin should be done by people who understand bitcoin. The BRI aims to produce that work, which will filter up to journalists and policymakers. The University of Wyoming is the perfect place for this, with Sen Lummis, @Caitlin Long , State Sen Rothfuss, Law School Dean Julie Hill, Steve Lupien, bitcoin miners using all kinds of energy like @npub1k7tc...8edl , a School of Energy Resources, School of Environment and Natural Resources... The UW Bitcoin Research Institute is a 501c(3) nonprofit. Because of @Caitlin Long , the University -- and by extension the BRI -- can accept bitcoin directly. And UW allocates 4% of our investments to bitcoin, so if you donate bitcoin to the BRI, we will NOT sell it. If you're a scholar and you want to be involved, my DMs are open! If you're a journalist and you want to learn more, my DMs are open! If you want to support our work, you can do so here: https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/49172/donations/new

I’m stoked for this! If you’re in or near NYC, come join us! View quoted note →