Honk, Honk, HODL: Kako je Bitcoin spodbudil konvoj svobode in kljuboval zatiranju vlade

Among the chaos of the Freedom Convoy and Canada’s authoritarian reaction, Bitcoin proved itself to be a sovereign financial rail for fueling protests.

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The Freedom Convoy, a sweeping protest prompted by COVID-19 vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers, saw authorities work outside of established laws to quell demonstrations and block financial support. Among the chaos, Bitcoin proved itself to be a sovereign financial rail as hundreds of thousands of dollars in BTC reached protestors in spite of government efforts to block donations.

22. januarja je konvoj kanadskih tovornjakov za dolge razdalje zapustil pristaniško mesto Prince Rupert v Britanski Kolumbiji in prispel v bližnji Prince George. Naslednji dan je druga skupina tovornjakov potovala iz Delte v Britanski Kolumbiji na odsek trans-kanadske avtoceste. Do konca meseca se je okoli 3,000 tovornjakov in drugih vozil, ki jih je spremljalo več kot 15,000 protestnikov, zbralo v prestolnici države Ottawi, blokiralo njene ulice in se imenovalo Konvoj svobode.

Mestna policija je nemudoma sprožila kazensko preiskavo njihovega zbora.

Protestnike so sprva motivirali mandati za cepljenje proti COVID-19 za čezmejne voznike tovornjakov, ki jih je kanadska vlada izvajala 15. januarja. 7. februarja in nekaj dni zatem so protestniki občasno blokirali Ambassador Bridge, najbolj obremenjen mednarodni prehod v Severni Ameriki, ki dnevno preide blago v vrednosti 323 milijonov dolarjev. Podjetja v Ottawi so bila poškodovana in onemogočena pri delovanju, kanadski ekonomist Armine Yalnizyan pa je pozneje ocenil, da so lokalni delavci utrpeli 208 milijonov dolarjev izgube plač.

Protestnikom je skoraj takoj uspelo prekiniti običajno poslovanje in pritegniti pozornost medijev in 11. februarja je premier Ontarija Doug Ford razglasil izredne razmere. Kanadska vlada je 14. februarja sprejela izvenpravne ukrepe brez primere s sklicevanjem na Zakon o izrednih razmerah, odkar je bil sprejet pred več kot 30 leti, s čimer je oblastem dala začasno pooblastilo, da presežejo obseg obstoječe zakonodaje, da bi zadušili protest. Kasneje istega meseca so bili podobni protesti organizirani v več kot 30 drugih državah, vključno z ZDA, Argentino in Novo Zelandijo.

And through it all, the Freedom Convoy quickly became one of the most high-profile test cases for the use of Bitcoin as a permissionless and censorship-resistant way of transacting value to whomever, wherever, whenever.

“This will be a historical moment for Bitcoin,” explained B.J. Dichter, a Toronto resident born and raised in Canada, who was a long-haul trucker himself before becoming a spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy. “Because we always talked about this hypothetical, the government tyranny of blocking your bank accounts, stealing your money and whatever… Well, now they just did. So, it proved everything. Everything that people said about Bitcoin like, ‘Oh, that’s hyperbolic. That’s never gonna happen.’ Well, guess what? Yesterday’s conspiracy is today’s reality. And I think in the future, people are going to see, that was the moment that regular people and everybody understood that the government can’t track it, can’t block it, and shouldn’t be able to.”

Potisnjen na protest

Leta 2018 je kanadska tovorna industrija potegnila približno 31.5 milijarde dolarjev in prenesla več kot 63 milijonov pošiljk, poročajo Statista. Od leta 2009 do 2018 je skupaj ustvaril 277.1 milijarde dolarjev. Za mnoge Kanadčane je bilo v zadnjih nekaj letih delo tovornjaka na dolge razdalje videti kot priložnost za fleksibilen in zanesljiv dohodek.

"Licenco sem dobil, preden so se v Kanadi spremenili predpisi, zaradi katerih je bilo pridobivanje dovoljenja za prevoz tovornjakov zelo omejujoče," je pojasnil Dichter. »Moj brat je mislil, da bi bilo dobro, ko se bo upokojil, da bova morda skupaj začela poslovati in se je želel ukvarjati s tovornjaki ... Tako sem dobil licenco in sem dobival malo izkušenj, krajši delovni čas, ko sem imel dneve off ... Tovornjaki so postali stranski vrvež.«

Dichter recalled his role in the Freedom Convoy while sitting in the halls of the Miami Beach Convention Center during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in April, where he had been invited to speak about the role that Bitcoin played in sustaining the protest. He described himself as a “serial entrepreneur,” who has worked as a geologist and diamond grader, in the motorcycle industry, as a podcast producer and more. His own interest in Bitcoin was piqued in 2015 and he first invested in bitcoin the year after.

Dejal je, da so bili strogi predpisi, ki so bili naloženi kanadskim voznikom tovornjakov, dolgoletna točka spora med vozniki in regulatorji že dolgo pred organiziranjem konvoja svobode. Leta 2019 se je na primer 150 tovornjakov iz Alberte odpeljalo v štiridnevni konvoj na Parliament Hill v Ottawi, ki so se imenovali konvoj United We Roll. Po navedbah takratne lokalne novice, so tovornjakarji protestirali proti številnim vladnim uvedbam, vključno z davki na nafto in plin.

Dichter je letošnje zahteve za cepivo označil za "slamo kap, ki je zlomila čašo" za kanadske tovornjakarje.

"Večina nas je cepljenih," je pojasnil. »To so bili mandati, pomanjkanje izbire. To je bil problem.”

Dichter described a personal experience that took place just days before the convoy occupation of Ottawa; border agents had tracked his vaccine status by surveilling his phone within a certain vicinity of the U.S. border as he drove back home. To him and many other Canadians, this level of government monitoring was indicative of a growing willingness by government officials to track personal details about their citizens without permission.

"Če je temu tako, potem imamo popolnoma izsledeno in nadzorovano družbo, kot da je to noro, kam gremo, to moramo zdaj ustaviti in vsi smo to videli," je dejal. "Te končne omejitve 'Prosim papirje', da prečkate mejo v lastno državo, so bile ravno dovolj."

Približno teden dni preden so protestniki odšli v Ottawo, je Dichterja kontaktirala organizatorka Konvoja svobode Tamara Lich, dolgoletna prijateljica, ki je organizirala številna protestna gibanja v svoji rodni Kanadi. Aretirali so jo 17. februarja zaradi njene vloge v Konvoju svobode in od tega pisanja se ji zakonsko prepoveduje vrnitev v Ontario, razen zaradi razlogov, povezanih s sodiščem. Lich je Dichterja prosil za pomoč pri odnosih z mediji.

"Obožujem te tovornjake, prijatelj sem z njimi, vendar nobeden od njih nima medijskih izkušenj ali kakršnega koli medijskega usposabljanja," je Lich povedal Ditcherju, kot se je spomnil. "Ali ste lahko tiskovni predstavnik, pomagate pri sporočilih za javnost, vsem podobnim?"

Organizatorji Freedom Convoy so januarja 2022 začeli zbiranje sredstev na centraliziranem procesorju donacij GoFundMe, v upanju, da bodo zbrali približno 20,000 dolarjev za gorivo in druge osnovne zaloge, potrebne za podporo protestov. Na njihovo presenečenje so do konca januarja zbrali približno 4 milijone dolarjev od več kot 100,000 donatorjev, GoFundMe pa je organizatorjem razdelil približno 800,000 dolarjev.

Toda v začetku februarja je GoFundMe ustavil distribucijo zaradi pomislekov, da zbiranje sredstev ni bilo v skladu s pogoji storitve, ki vključujejo prepovedi »uporabniške vsebine, ki odraža ali spodbuja vedenje v podporo nasilju«.

"Nedavni dogodki v Ottawi v Kanadi so sprožili široko razpravo o zbiranju sredstev za konvoj svobode 2022 na GoFundMe," pravi izjava podjetja od 2. februarja. »Kot del našega postopka zbiranja informacij smo od organizatorja zahtevali tudi več informacij glede porabe sredstev, da bi zagotovili, da je zbiranje sredstev še vedno v skladu z našimi pogoji storitve. Ko ne prejmemo zahtevanih informacij, lahko prekinemo donacije, kot smo storili v tem primeru.«

Takrat se je kanadska vlada začela neposredno vpletati v prenos sredstev od donatorjev k protestnikom.

3. februarja je odbor kanadskega parlamenta prosil uradnike GoFundMe, naj pričajo zaradi varnostnih pomislekov o tem, od kod prihajajo donirana sredstva in kam bi lahko šla. Poslanci so za pričanje zaprosili tudi Center za analizo finančnih transakcij in poročil Kanade (FINTRAC). Naslednji dan je GoFundMe odstranil kampanjo.

Več drugih centraliziranih platform za zbiranje sredstev je začelo zbirati sredstva za Konvoj svobode, vendar je bilo jasno, da je kanadska vlada potegnila črto v pesku. Sredstva za zbiranje sredstev na platformi GiveSendGo za donacije, ki je osredotočena na krščanstvo, so zbrali več kot 8.5 milijona dolarjev za protestnike, vendar je vrhovno sodišče Ontaria odobrilo sodno odredbo za zamrznitev sredstev. Do konca februarja se je Kanada sklicevala na zakon o izrednih razmerah in zamrznila več kot 75 bančnih računov, povezanih s protesti.

“Three years ago, if you had asked me what’s the chance that Canada would freeze individuals’ bank accounts… I’d find it really hard to believe it was 20%,” said Greg Foss, an outspoken Bitcoin advocate and fifth-generation Canadian. “And three years later, it’s 100%… It was not a good thing for freedom.”

Avenija brez dovoljenja

As Dichter and others organizing the Freedom Convoy wrestled with centralized fundraisers, Bitcoiners who had been supporting the movement throughout took it upon themselves to raise BTC donations through Tallycoin, a bitcoin-based fundraising platform.

“The Bitcoin community was awesome,” said Dichter. “Of all the things I had to deal with — these little groups infighting and people, you know, trying to do their own press conferences — the one community that I could depend on was the Bitcoin community, because they had all their ducks lined up. They were great, they just kind of kept me up to date.”

Tallycoin enables donations directly to a fundraiser’s Bitcoin wallet and offers the option to list an extended public key so that each individual Bitcoin payment generates a unique address. This is a critical privacy best practice that makes it more difficult for observers to associate these payments together. The platform also offers Lightning Network donations for fundraisers that use Bitcoin payment processors or by directly connecting their own Lightning nodes.

Using Tallycoin, a Bitcoiner named Nikolaja sv, who used the pseudonym NobodyCaribou, spun up a fundraising campaign called “HonkHonk Hodl,” receiving its first donation on February 1. As the Freedom Convoy’s fiat fundraisers were shut down and frozen, this Bitcoin-based campaign announced that it had surpassed its 5 BTC goal, worth about $213,000 at the time, on the same day that the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act.

But getting the bitcoin from HonkHonk Hodl’s Tallycoin addresses into the hands of protesting truckers, many of whom knew very little about the technology, would be a challenge. St. Louis teamed with J.W. Weatherman, a Bitcoin developer and donor, to establish a plan and they published a lengthy, public Google Doc called “Step-By-Step Guide For Distributing Bitcoin«.

The guide described a process of creating envelope packages to be handed out to protesting truckers directly via a “phone wallet that is properly backed up on paper.” At the time of this writing, the Google Doc appears to have been abandoned, with several items left unfinalized, but it outlined a process in which organizers utilized the security-focused Tails operating system, then the Electrum Bitcoin wallet to generate private keys, which would be handwritten in pen on two separate pieces of paper. These papers would then be sealed in an envelope, labeled as “trucker 1 — seed 1,” for instance, then sealed inside another envelope, alongside written directions for how to import the seed into a secure phone wallet and, ultimately, spend the donated bitcoin.

15. februarja preko Twitter, St. Louis informed donors that he planned to distribute the bitcoin to 200 protesting truckers in a “verifiable way” by handing out paper bitcoin wallets containing seed words pre-loaded with 10,000,021 satoshis, along with instructions for how they could secure and utilize the funds.

17. februarja je St. Louis na Twitterju objavil posodobitev, da sta s partnerjem v 14.6-urnem obdobju razdelila 90 BTC približno 24 tovornjakarjem, ki so hodili od taksija do taksija in jih osebno izročili.

“There’s eight grand in bitcoin in there,” St. Louis tells a trucker in one video posted to Twitter on February 18, as he hands the trucker an envelope covered in sparkly stickers. “Basically, open it up, there’s instructions. All you do is a recovery code, it’s going to tell you to download BlueWallet, which is what the recovery code is for… Boot it up, it’s yours, thanks for your service.”

Video nato prikazuje voznika in St. Louisa, ki se rokujeta skozi okno kabine tovornjaka, preden St. Louis stopi naprej.

“I just met that guy a couple, I don’t know, a week ago, and he had a Bitcoin toque on,” the driver explained after turning back to the camera. “I said, ‘What’s up with that?’ He said, ‘Actually, if you don’t mind…’ So I let him sit in the truck or whatever, and we downloaded his wallet or whatever and he said there’s some massive, freedom loving people who love Bitcoin and stuff like that, so he said we’re probably going to get some big donors in the future, so whatever. And apparently there’s eight grand of bitcoin in here… I guarantee it’s legit… That’s definitely one of the craziest things that’s happened in the last two weeks.”

A kratek dokumentarec sprosti ga Razlog’s Zach Weissmueller indicated that the HonkHonk Hodl fundraiser raised more than $1 million worth of bitcoin before it was shut down by St. Louis, and that it delivered more than $600,000 into the hands of protestors.

Osrednja točka neuspeha

On February 16, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) issued an order to all FINTRAC-regulated entities, demanding that they cease transacting with a list of 29 bitcoin addresses that it had associated with the protest.

17. februarja, istega dne, ko je St. Louis objavil, da sta s partnerjem osebno razdelila več kot 14 BTC protestantim tovornjakarjem, je zasebna skupinska tožba proti udeležencem Freedom Convoya prejela sodno odredbo, znano kot "prepoved Mareva". Omogočil je zamrznitev kriptovalute, povezane s skupino obtoženih na seznamu, in jim omejil prenos te kriptovalute na bančne račune in naslove denarnice, navedene v tožbi.

Med toženci v tožbi so bili Lich, Dichter in St. Louis. TallyCoinu in drugim platformam za digitalno premoženje je naročil, naj zamrznejo vse transakcije, povezane z identificiranimi denarnicami. Tožbo je sprožila skupina prebivalcev Ottawe, ki so trdili, da so bili zaradi protesta prisiljeni zapreti svoja podjetja ali so izgubili delo. To je bilo prvič v zgodovini Kanade da je bila takšna prepoved uporabljena za zamrznitev kriptovalute in odvetnik, ki je zastopal tožnike, naj bi najel zasebnega preiskovalca izslediti organizatorje konvoja za svobodo.

“The velocity with which the Canadian government was able to target and freeze the flow of money speaks volumes about how much power lies in the freedom of transacting,” said Econoalchemist, a pseudonymous Bitcoin privacy expert who publishes guides online focused on how to accumulate and protect BTC while obscuring your real-world identity. “This is where Bitcoin shines, a decentralized, peer-to-peer electronic cash system. With no central authority to deny transactions based on some floating moral standard, peers within the Bitcoin network can transact free from anyone’s permission. No government blacklist or class action lawsuit can stop a Bitcoin transaction from going through.”

As evidence of Bitcoin’s ability to enable transactions despite government regulations, HonkHonkWallets.GitHub.io, a website run by convoy fundraisers to automatically scan the Bitcoin blockchain, indicates that 59 of 100 wallets distributed to truckers had been claimed and that 29 of those had seen at least one additional transaction, as of block 732,726. Much of this activity occurred well after the Mareva injunction was granted.

But Bitcoin is pseudonymous, rather than anonymous, and all transactions are recorded on Bitcoin’s public and immutable ledger, meaning that every transaction is subject to scrutiny in perpetuity. Bitcoin may have proven to be a powerful method for circumventing centralized fundraisers for the Freedom Convoy, but it demonstrated its current limitations as well.

“The limitations of transacting with Bitcoin are mostly from connecting external information to on-chain activity,” Econoalchemist explained. “For example, using on/off ramps that require KYC information. This is where permission and censorship creep into the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

Do 18. marca je kanadski policiji uspelo zamrznejo skoraj 6 BTC dvignili zaradi protestnikov tovornjakov.

"Čeprav RCMP ne bo komentiral primera, je izdal izjavo za CBC News, v kateri pravi, da ima zmožnost zasega in izterjave premoženja digitalne valute, s čimer opozarja na pretekle primere, ko je krona uspešno preganjala kripto kriminalce," je zapisano 21. marca. Poročilo CBC News.

Morda jih vodijo verižne metode nadzora, police raided St. Louis’ home in late February and, according to him, seized 0.28 bitcoin stored in a wallet that he controlled along with Lich and Freedom Convoy organizer Chris Barber.

"Policisti so me na silo odpeljali iz stanovanja in me odpeljali do neoznačenega policijskega vozila," je St. Finančna pošta, glede na članek, objavljen marca. »Policija je želela osnovne fraze za moje kripto denarnice. Pod prisilo policije sem posredoval svoje osnovne fraze."

Kdaj Bitcoin Magazine Louisu sredi aprila, ni želel komentirati tega članka s pojasnilom, da je zanj še vedno veljala sodna prepoved Mareva in je bil zaskrbljen, da bi lahko zaradi nadaljnjih pravnih težav dodatnih 7.5 v podarjenih BTC ogrozilo vladni zaseg.

“I would have used a Bitcoin donation tool that generates a new address for every donor,” Econoalchemist said about how he might have operated the Freedom Convoy fundraiser differently in hindsight, while acknowledging that these privacy measures would disrupt transparency about how the donations were distributed. “I would have been sending all donations to [bitcoin mixing service] Whirlpool at periodic intervals during the fundraising campaign… I would have asked the truckers for their deposit address instead of creating the wallets on their behalf… Then I would have sent them their bitcoin from the Whirlpool post-mix balance.”

Svetilnik svobode

17. februarja, na dan, ko je bila izdana odredba Mareva, je policija v Ottawi zgradila 12 metrov visoko ograjo okoli stavbe parlamenta in vzpostavila več kot 100 kontrolnih točk na celotnem protestnem območju. Med drugimi sta bila aretirana Barber in Lich. Naslednji dan je policijska akcija policistov na konjih, ki so ji sledili pešci oblečeni v dobro vidljive jakne, taktične ekipe v maskirnih in oklepnih vozilih, prijeli še najmanj 100 ljudi in odvlekli 21 vozil.

Do poznega popoldneva 19. februarja se je zadnja pomembna skupina protestnikov v mestu usmerila na vogal ulic Bank in Sparks, ki se je do mraka razvila v ulično zabavo tisoč ljudi z improviziranim DJ-jem. Nato je vrsta policistov uporabila poprov sprej, da je množico potisnila en blok južno do ulice Queen Street, preden so se preostali protestniki začeli razhajati.

Kmalu zatem so organizatorji konvoja svobode udeležencem naročili, naj zapustijo mesto. Od tega pisanja so zahteve za cepljenje proti COVID-19 za kanadske tovornjake še vedno v veljavi.

Toda kljub neslovesnemu koncu Konvoja svobode v Ottawi, številne tekoče tožbe in navdahnjeni protesti, ki še vedno potekajo v drugih delih sveta, dokazujejo, da je bil zelo uspešen pri opozarjanju na vzrok tovornjakarjev, pa tudi vse večji pritiski na osebno svobodo v zahodnem svetu.

»Kot Kanadčan gledam protestnike, ki se z obeh strani naroda zbližujejo v Ottawi, in število ljudi, ki mahajo s kanadskimi zastavami na avtocestnih nadvozih in ob straneh ceste… Kanada ni pokazala toliko čustev, odkar smo nazadnje zmagali na zlata medalja v olimpijskem hokeju proti ZDA,« se je spomnil Foss. »To je bil coming out, to so bili ljudje, ki so izražali svoje svoboščine in mahali s kanadsko zastavo in v tem preprosto ne vidim nič narobe. In v tem ne bom nikoli videl nič narobe. In potreboval je kup tovornjakov, da so ponovno vznemirili strast med Kanadčani."

And the saga served as one of the most high-profile test cases for Bitcoin as a sovereign financial rail in its thirteen-year history. As Bitcoiners continue to tout the technology as an off-ramp from undue censorship and surveillance, its use as a system for getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in value directly into the hands of those who had been blacklisted by the Canadian government may be the most potent illustration of that power to date.

Perhaps most significantly of all, it demonstrated on the world stage that fiat can only be used how governments decide, while Bitcoin is for freedom.

“I love Bitcoin, though I actually love my country more,” said Foss. “That being said, it’s gonna be a tight horse race, because my country’s going in the wrong direction and Bitcoin’s going in the right direction.”

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• Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-bitcoin-fueled-canada-trucker-convoy