Bitcoin aids freedom-fighters more than criminals due to transaction visibility, scale impracticality, and oligarchs having better, more private alternatives.

Bitcoin proponents say bitcoin is freedom technology – that it helps people save and transact safely in authoritarian regimes, and even aids in the fight against authoritarianism. Indeed, 21 human rights advocates from 20 different countries sent an open letter to Congress in 2022 saying this. They cite bitcoin’s open and permissionless network. Bitcoin’s being permissionless makes it inclusive, resistant to censorship, and relatively private.

At the same time, bitcoin proponents have sought to mitigate fears that bitcoin could be used by the very same authoritarians, oligarchs, and criminals to evade sanctions and commit crimes. Proponents claim that it is impossible, or at best impractical, for these activities to occur through bitcoin.

These claims appear to be in conflict. How can bitcoin aid freedom-fighters but not oligarchs and criminals, when it seems that the very features of the network cited as helpful in the former case are that the bitcoin network is indifferent to who is trying to use it–criminal or activist?

...read more at btcpolicy.org