CoinJoins Help Democracy Protests

(originally in Forbes)

Inspired by nostr:npub17xvf49kht23cddxgw92rvfktkd3vqvjgkgsdexh9847wl0927tqsrhc9as and nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu

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.


democracy is a scam read Plato


Onward 🫡


🌀 is shut down by doj, what are you going to do? All spends are deterministic


Would be nice for the DOJ to not attack freedom tech


just us fren


Canada is never mentioned in these stories, as if pro-democracy protests can’t be targeted by the Western “democracies”. It’s always about Africa, Iran or Russia Russia Russia.

But let’s not forget the trucker protests of 2022 and what Turdeau’s government did.


Privacy is a prerequisite for liberty.

nostr:nevent1qqs8ktqf383ryj4w8znlqc74p0fjvvh5xw9ekqkg6nk8j2wdv6xetsczyzf4k0qh0k4uahyjn63mzqzazjf0p20mm2sj4pkwvwpmaeqzw0406jqn4jv


Greetings from the Winners' Club @ https://satosh.ee/


What coinjoin do you recommend? I'm all for layering freedom tech on freedom tech💪


🌀 enabled ability to use bitcoin as digital cash. that is why devs arrested.

“they” do not want to see real digital cash.

Bitcoin is designed to operate without permission from any authority.
Its value proposition is entirely based on this property.

Therefore bitcoin cannot be both permissoned and permissionless.

Its security architecture necessarily assumes it is operating without state permission.

Well “they” are taking that permissionless value away by forbidding bitcoin to be used as cash.
Arresting devs who dares to develop cash like spending properties with #Bitcoin.


Great post 👍


Yes of course, cannot be blind to western “democracies” Hypocrisy is here!


Do NOT frame my motivation for providing coinjoin coordination services as "helping democracy". My coinjoins are intended for helping anarchists fight AGAINST democracy.

Democracy preys on the world's minorities. Democracy must be abolished.


Helping democracy *protests*


Use BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin or Wasabi Wallet. These allow you to make your transactions completely anonymously: https://mempool.space/tx/212c4f1e13380491788a2c62a9e2f26806491e0b89c946cb4b81ad1aaa16fb22


What?

Imagine how insulted the Samourai developers would be by your article. They were hunted and imprisoned by a democratic government.


You don’t think they’d like my explicit defense of them? Or did you just read the title?


That's exactly the point I'm making: The Samourai coinjoin coordinators were hunted and imprisoned by a democratic government, and you responded by writing a pro-democracy article instead of condemning democracy as the predator that targeted them.

So yeah, they'd be incredibly insulted that you used their martyrdom to promote their persecutors.


I wrote a pro-CoinJoin article. In that article, I pointed out the hypocrisy of those democratic governments, given the use of CoinJoins for pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian protests. CoinJoins are good. Democracies that are against them are hypocritical. I stand by both of those claims.


Why can't you just say "coinjoins are good, democracies are evil"?


Because I don’t think you have to believe democracies are evil to believe that the Samourai devs did nothing wrong.


If democracies are as harmless as you seem to think they are, then how about you run a coinjoin coordinator?


I suspect you’re having a hard time with the logic of conditionals.


No I don't, you told people they should run a coordinator in your article. I'm running one, why aren't you?


and i suspect you aren't the real Bradley Rettler.

your NIP-05 is broken and your school website doesn't link to this npub. either one should be an easy fix for the real Brad.

but using a NIP-05 service doesn't really prove anything in this case.