No Ted Cruz, Bitcoin Isn't Anti-Left; bitcoin is apolitical

Riding on Canada’s “independence convoy” protests, Republican Senator Ted Cruz recently took to the stage to embrace bitcoin at a highly publicized CPAC event. In a generally pro-Republican campaign, Cruz rebuked his political opponents, ranging from Justin Trudeau and Elizabeth Warren to the Chinese Communist Party, for opposing bitcoin because of his desire to control people’s financial liberties and civil liberties.

Of course, the story of the Canadian trucker played out smoothly. Cruz’s right wing, Opposition to the Freedom Convoy united around a common opposition to the Liberal Trudeau government’s vaccine mandate. It was also heavily associated with right-wing political figures such as Tamara Licht, a member of the far-right Maverick Party. Political pressure proved too much for many, even leading private crowdsourcing platform GoFundMe to cancel a fundraiser after it raised more than $10 million for truck drivers.

bitcoin is apolitical

The only problem with Cruz’s anti-leftist spin on bitcoin is that it’s wearing pure, partisan Malarki clothing. Bitcoin doesn’t care about your politics. It is not against the progressive left, or the conservative right, or the political centre. Bitcoin is apolitical and bipartisan. Its decentralized nature means that no entity can change its network unless it achieves broad consensus. If bitcoin is to anyone, it is For Individual.

As Jonathan Bayer masters in “The Blocksize Wars,” there have been countless unsuccessful attempts over the years by bitcoin activists and organized groups to unilaterally modify bitcoin’s underlying code to include larger node sizes. . To highlight just one example out of many, the 2016 “Bitcoin Classic” failed to pass and adopt a proposal to increase the size of bitcoin blocks from 1 MB to 2 MB (which allows for faster transaction processing). Despite this, it was supported by big institutional players. At the time, prominent bitcoin developers such as Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Bitmain’s Jihan Wu, bitcoin.com’s Roger Ver and Gavin Andresen.

In contrast to projects on smart contract-enabled blockchains such as Ethereum or Binance smart chains that are powered by large foundations and visible figureheads. When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulatory spotlight shone on the largest decentralized exchange Uniswap in 2021 amid the decentralized financial boom, its flagship foundation Uniswap Labs delisted dozens of synthetic derivative tokens, similar to blue-chip stocks. were. Apple, Alibaba and Amazon, citing reasons for the “evolving regulatory landscape” (read: we don’t want to offend Big Brother).

But Cruz’s attempt to impose a politically partisan spin on bitcoin is not only philosophically inconsistent, but also detracts from the evidence for its current use. Consider the last few years in the history of bitcoin.

When the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement began in 2013, some protesters confiscated bitcoin for advertising it as a financial tool of freedom. BLM activists developed art projects on blockchain to raise awareness for victims of racial slurs and police reform. The work of various authors and annual events, such as the Black Blockchain Summit, are some examples of progressive efforts to spread awareness on bitcoin’s potential to empower black and minority communities where the current financial system excludes them.

When far-right demonstrators of the infamous “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally were universally blacklisted by credit card platforms and major payment platforms including Visa, Patreon, PayPal, Apple Pay and others, its supporters also turned to cryptocurrency. Turning to be, 15 donated bitcoins (valued at $60,000 in 2017 when the rally took place).

What about evil regimes like North Korea and Iran? Cut off from the global financial system, these rogue states have both used bitcoin to cushion the economic impact of the crippling sanctions. It was estimated that North Korea stole a total of $395 million worth of cryptocurrency, some of which went to funding its nuclear weapons. The 2021 Elliptic Report found that Iran generates about $1 billion annually in bitcoin mining, giving it some economic relief from punitive sanctions and sanctions imposed by the US on its regime.

Like most of his people in Washington, Cruz is adept at playing the populist game. But suffice it to say, his insatiable need to strike the iron of political opportunism, while it is hot, will not allow him to pitch his political tent as white supremacists, or the BLM movement, or North Korea – including All of them have publicly condemned on record. Nevertheless, all of these groups have used bitcoin in one way or another for their own purposes.

The oldest veterans of bitcoin know the digital asset as apolitical. This is what attracts them in the first place. Born out of the 2008 global financial crisis, the same year bitcoin pseudonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto wrote his white paper, the philosophy of bitcoin is steeped in its radical neutrality because it simply cannot be controlled centrally.

It is as absurd as Cruz to support bitcoin in partisan right-wing political rhetoric as saying that the First Amendment is anti-left because it allows right-wingers to verbally beat up their opponents. This is also particularly reprehensible. Cruz himself is one of the leading cheerleaders in the anti-Big Tech campaign, stressing the need to bring Facebook, Twitter, and Google under the federal government’s regulatory gamut.

Bitcoin is not “good” because it improves the economic freedom of oppressed minorities (although that is completely welcome). Nor is it “bad” because bad actors make it fit for mischief. This is simply a neutral, no-permissions financial network that anyone is welcome to use. This is voluntary money. People use it not because they were forced, but because they choose to. Or as one writer puts it: “Bitcoin is digital no-fake-given.”

Exchange-traded funds may add politicization to bitcoin

Perhaps one aspect is that bitcoin may be politicized to some degree. As bitcoin gains mainstream adoption, financial institutions are creating tradable financial products such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are pegged to the value of bitcoin. To the extent that these institutions are controlled by politically occupied financial regulators (spoiler alert: they are), and consumers choose to buy these products, bitcoin will be caught in the toxic tide of partisan political culture.

Still, there are good reasons to be optimistic. For one, its underlying underlying asset, unlike fiat currency, is still one that cannot be manipulated arbitrarily. Second, these products are relatively attractive because setting up a digital wallet to store bitcoin is still unfamiliar to the average person. As bitcoin becomes more popular, consumers will choose to buy bitcoin directly as opposed to derivatives of bitcoin. Lastly, buying bitcoin directly on an exchange is not inconvenient or expensive, as buying physical gold requires vault storage.

Still, Cruz is not the only politician who has tried to appropriate bitcoin to serve its partisan end. The sharpest anti-crypto politicians in Washington like Elizabeth Warren run in the same contradiction, only in reverse. By focusing entirely on how bitcoin is used by bad actors, she overlooks its potential for economic emancipation for people of color who have historically been marginalized.

As bitcoin becomes a household name, partisan players will try to take advantage of it for their political purposes. But students of cryptocurrency history and design will know otherwise.

This is a guest post by Donavan Choy. The opinions expressed are solely their own and do not necessarily represent those of BTC Inc. either . reflect the thoughts of bitcoin magazine,

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