In this age where the powerful use the economy as a weapon, cryptocurrencies offer us a way to avoid the tyranny of power, but to what extent are governments willing to tolerate them? and how useful can they be in the fight for freedom?

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Hello leofinance friends, I hope you are doing very well.

Almost every time we hear about Canada, we hear positive things, like it is a peaceful place to live, the people are extremely friendly and the social security is one of the best in the world. And maybe all this is the general standard of things over there, but recently in the news we have seen a series of events unfold that at least from my point of view, leave the Canadian government in a very bad light. And they will end up affecting the cryptocurrency world.

The truckers' protest.

To understand what I am talking about, we have to go back to the end of January of this year, due to the restrictions imposed by the Canadian and American governments in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic. Truck drivers who were not vaccinated were forbidden to cross the border between Canada and the United States, and if they tried to do so, they had to undergo medical examinations and long periods of confinement, which made it impossible for a truck driver to do his job efficiently.

At this point we must remember something, vaccination against something, whatever it is, should always be optional, forcing someone to receive medical treatment without their consent is a violation of human rights. Everyone's opinion on whether or not to be vaccinated is valid, as long as it is an opinion or advice, and not a mandate, I personally received my third dose of vaccine yesterday, but I support the basic freedom of anyone who does not want to be vaccinated because it is their human right to refuse.

Well, although the majority of truckers decided to get vaccinated, about 90 percent, there were some who decided they would not, with the restrictions putting them practically out of business, they decided to protest for the lifting of the restrictions. On January 22, hundreds of vehicles, organized in a convoy, began heading to the city of Ottawa, Canada's capital. To stop their trucks there in protest.

Another important parenthesis I must make is that trucking is a vital sector for the world economy, more than 70% of goods are transported in cargo trucks. To paralyze this industry is a tremendous blow to the economy, more so in the midst of the global container crisis, which has generated shortages and rising prices around the world.

As the convoy traveled more truckers joined, as well as many people who are not truckers but are against the limitation of personal freedoms.

On January 29th the convoy arrived in Canada and by then thousands of people were already marching in support of the protest, the movement that was initially underestimated by the government had such an impact that Justin Trudeau, President of Canada, decided to leave the capital with his family to take refuge in a secret location, even so the protest at all times remained peaceful.

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On February 11, the Canadian government declared a state of emergency, which basically gives the government more power and control over certain resources to deal with situations that require a more forceful and rapid response. Such as natural disasters or insurrections. At this point, concerns about the economic impact were already the subject of high-level conversations.

This was not enough to deal with the protests, so on February 14 the Canadian government implements the Emergencies Act, which is essentially a modernization of the War Measures Act, which allows the government to bypass many of its own laws to do the things it needs to do to ensure its continuity, such as abolish the right to privacy or detain anyone they deem suspicious, prevent gatherings of more than 5 people or prohibit leaving or entering cities.

To be clear, all governments in the world have a similar mechanism, it is like an Authoritarianism Button, which when activated, suspends social guarantees such as basic human rights of freedom of expression or freedom of transit.

And here we come to the part that interests us the most, among the measures to demobilize the protesters were, jail time and fines for those who participated in the protests, prohibition to travel to where the protests were taking place, prohibition to people from other countries to attend the protests, and more critically, the prohibition under penalty of fines or jail of the use, donation, collection, or solicitation of funds to support the protest, or for people involved in the protests. This my friends is the focus of this article, but let's finish the narrative of the protests first.

With these new powers, between February 17 and 20 the Canadian government launched a joint operation with all security apparatus to dismantle the protests, protesters and organizers were arrested, vehicles were towed away and roadblocks set up by the protesters were dismantled, by February 21 the protests were virtually over except for a few small pockets of resistance.

Fundraisers, GoFundme and cryptocurrencies in the crosshairs.

As I mentioned earlier the measures that interest us most at this time was the coordinated attack by the government on the ability to economically sustain themselves from the protests, if you have ever participated in a protest before, you will know that Thirst, and Hunger make many doubt the cause after a few hours, banners, spray paint and fuel are not cheap, and every hour you spend protesting is an hour you are not working, if you are in a delicate economic situation protesting may not be an option for you.

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[The protest received support from personalities such as Elon Musk, who reportedly also made a substantial donation through one of his companies].

With this in mind, the protest organizers started a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe days before the start of the convoy. On February 14, and to the surprise of the Canadian government good amounts of money were being raised, with 5 million Canadian dollars raised by January 25, under pressure from the Canadian government the GoFundMe platform announced on January 24 that it would not release the money unless the collectors of the money credibly demonstrated how they would use it, which, they did, and on January 27 GoFundMe had no choice but to start releasing the money.

Due to further pressure on February 2, GoFundMe again halted delivery of the money, under alleged reports of violations of the platform's terms and conditions of use, at which point the movement had already raised more than 10 million Canadian dollars. On February 3, the Canadian House of Commons called on GoFundMe to respond to the body's concerns about the possible use of the money by extremist groups. Parliament also called on Canada's financial security agencies to investigate the situation because many donations were being made under false names.

On February 4, GoFundMe had no choice but to remove the campaign from its platforms.

The truckers quickly moved their fundraising operation to the GiveSendGO platform. Raising by Feb. 10 $8.2 million.

But the Ontario attorney general managed to get approval from the Ontario supreme court of justice to freeze the donation campaign funds on GiveSendGo. This under the pretext of funding extremist groups.
On February 19, nearly 76 bank accounts of people connected to the protests were frozen.

With no options, the protesters turned to cryptocurrencies, on February 16 CoinDesk announced that they received an order from the Ontario Mounted Police to stop facilitating transactions to 34 Crypto Wallets related to the truckers' protest.

While Jesse Powell CEO of Kraken, an exchange with more than 6 million users, announced on February 17th that his company would be forced due to pressure from the Canadian government to cooperate with them in everything they were asked to do, but that they recommended people involved in the matter to withdraw their cryptos to personal wallets, as Kraken could not protect them anymore.

And the CEO of CoinBase, Brian Armstrong expressed on twitter his concern about the situation and the need to protect the right to the free transaction of funds.

These expressions put Jesse and Armstrong in the crosshairs of Canadian law enforcement.

These events are important because they show us why many major figures in the world economy, who to no one's surprise are also major figures in politics, and therefore very powerful, are disdainful of cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies are a way of being able to make commercial transactions without depending on central banks or submitting to the scrutiny of governments, and also to avoid traditional private banking, which is so infiltrated in political power that it is almost part of it.

If blockchains allow anonymity and transparency of transactions at the same time, exchanges generally have to link accounts to a personal identity, this is the weak point that the Canadian government attacked, knowing that they could not do anything against Bitcoin or Ethereum.

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[The memes were great too, this one is a reference to the fact that even though the protest dissolved, truck drivers still sound their horns as a way to show solidarity with the movement].

With cryptocurrencies gaining more and more relevance in the world economic scenario, as for example how useful they have been for the Ukrainian people in the middle of the Russian invasion, it is important to understand how valuable they are for economic freedom, and therefore for personal freedom, and also why organizations like the International Monetary Fund or the U.S. Treasury Department oppose them, because they take power out of their hands and give it to us, the people.

It is also important to know what their strengths are to take advantage of them [BlockChain algorithms] and where the weaknesses are to correct them [privacy in exchanges].

But regardless of the final outcome, perhaps all this did is get many more Canadians to dabble in the world of cryptocurrencies, and that in itself, is a victory.

Thanks for reading. If you liked the article support me with your vote. Have a good night.
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