Cryptocurrency: Securing Freedom of Speech

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Oct 1 00:36:39 PDT 2021


Seems some crypto hating Left-GovBank-sters dreamed
up to propagandize FUD that Bitcoin is a 'Far Right' thing.
That's false. But it can help protect free speech against
censorship. Best adopt distributed privacy capable crypto
today, since your speech will be censored someday too.

https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-europe-f7f754fc2c68b0eb0d712239323f26c3

https://dailystormer.su/apocalypse-prep-retards-guide-to-using-bitcoin/
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/
https://counter-currents.com/
https://generationidentitaire.org/
https://www.identityevropa.com/
https://bitchute.com/
https://gab.com/

Far-right cryptocurrency follows ideology across borders

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of
the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against
Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially
motivated murders. It has also made its founder, Andrew Anglin, a
millionaire.

Anglin has tapped a worldwide network of supporters to take in at
least 112 Bitcoin since January 2017 — worth $4.8 million at today’s
exchange rate — according to data shared with The Associated Press.
He’s likely raised even more.

Anglin is just one very public example of how radical right
provocateurs are raising significant amounts of money from around the
world through cryptocurrencies. Banned by traditional financial
institutions, they have taken refuge in digital currencies, which they
are using in ever more secretive ways to avoid the oversight of banks,
regulators and courts, finds an AP analysis of legal documents,
Telegram channels and blockchain data from Chainalysis, a
cryptocurrency analytics firm.

Anglin owes more than $18 million in legal judgments in the United
States to people whom he and his followers harassed and threatened.
And while online, he remains visible — most days, dozens of stories on
the Daily Stormer homepage carry his name — in the real world,
Anglin’s a ghost.

His victims have tried — and failed — to find him, searching at one
Ohio address after another. Voting records place him in Russia in 2016
and his passport shows he was in Cambodia in 2017. After that, the
public trail goes cold. He has no obvious bank accounts or real estate
holdings in the U.S. For now, his Bitcoin fortune remains out of
reach.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a collaboration between The
Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE that examines challenges
to the ideas and institutions of traditional U.S. and European
democracy.

Beth Littrell, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center who is
helping represent one of Anglin’s victims, says it’s grown harder to
use the legal system to stamp out hate groups because now they operate
with online networks and virtual money. “We were able to sue the Ku
Klux Klan, a terrorist organization, in essence out of existence,” she
said. Doing the same today is much harder, she said. “The law is
evolving but lagging behind the harm.”

CURRENCY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT

In August 2017, a week after the “Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, Anglin received 14.88 Bitcoins, an amount
chosen for its oblique references to a 14-word white supremacist
slogan and the phrase “Heil Hitler” because H is the eighth letter of
the alphabet. Worth around $60,000 at the time, it was his biggest
Bitcoin donation ever and would be valued at over $641,000 at today’s
exchange rate. The source of the funds remains a mystery. Anglin now
faces charges in U.S. court for conspiring to plan and promote the
deadly march.

By the time of Charlottesville, Anglin had been cut off by credit card
processors and banned by PayPal so Bitcoin was his main source of
funding. In his “Retard’s Guide to Using Bitcoin,” published in April
2020, he claimed to have funded the Daily Stormer exclusively through
Bitcoin for four years.

“I’ve got money now. I’ve got money to pay for the site for the
foreseeable future,” he wrote in December 2020, as Bitcoin’s price
surged.

Anglin’s former lawyer, Marc Randazza, argued that political
censorship by financial authorities drove Anglin to cryptocurrency by
shutting him out of traditional banking, which he said is “more
Nazi-like than Andrew Anglin could ever hope to be.”

“Don’t create a black market and then be surprised there’s a black
market,” Randazza added.

While Anglin likely turned to Bitcoin for practical reasons, part of
the appeal of cryptocurrency to the radical right is ideological.

Bitcoin was developed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis when
distrust of the global financial system was running high. It offers an
alternative that doesn’t depend on banks. Instead, transactions are
validated and recorded on a decentralized digital ledger called the
blockchain, which derives its authority from crowdsourcing rather than
a class of elite bankers.

As one white nationalist cryptocurrency guide circulating on Telegram
puts it: “We all know the Jews and their minions control the global
financial system. When you are caught having the wrong opinion, they
will take it upon themselves to shut you out of this system making
your life very difficult. One alternative to this system is
cryptocurrency.”

Richard Spencer, an American white supremacist, has dubbed Bitcoin the
“currency of the alt-right.”

It’s hard to tell how large a role cryptocurrency plays in overall
financing for the far right. Merchandise sales, membership fees,
donations in fiat currencies, concerts, fight clubs and other events,
as well as criminal activity, are also common sources of revenue,
government and academic research has shown.

What is clear is that early adopters of Bitcoin, like Anglin, have
profited handsomely from its increase in value over the years. Bitcoin
prices are notoriously volatile. Since April, the currency has shed a
third of its value against the U.S. dollar, then took a further
drubbing last week when China declared cryptocurrency transactions
illegal.

Chainalysis collected data for a sample of 12 far-right entities in
the U.S. and Europe that publicly called for Bitcoin donations and
showed significant activity. Together, they took in 213 Bitcoin —
worth more than $9 million at today’s value — between January 2017 and
April 2021.

These groups embrace a range of ideologies and include white
nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and self-described
free-speech advocates. They are united by a shared desire to fight the
perceived progressive takeover of culture and the state.

“These people have real assets. People with access to hundreds of
thousands of dollars can start doing real damage,” said John Bambenek,
a cybersecurity expert who has been tracking the use of cryptocurrency
by far-right actors since 2017.

Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, Anglin’s webmaster for the Daily Stormer,
has raked in Bitcoin worth $2.2 million at today’s values. The Nordic
Resistance Movement, a Scandinavian neo-Nazi movement that’s been
banned in Finland, Counter-Currents, a U.S.-based white nationalist
publishing house, and the recently banned French group Génération
Identitaire have each received Bitcoin that’s now worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars, Chainalysis data shows.

Two social media platforms that have been embraced by the far right,
Gab and Bitchute, received a surge in Bitcoin funding in the lead up
to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Since 2017, Bitchute has
gotten Bitcoin worth nearly $500,000 at today’s values, about a fifth
of which rolled in during the month of December 2020. Gab has gotten
more than $173,000; nearly 40% came in during December 2020 and
January 2021, Chainalysis data shows. On Aug. 1, Gab announced it was
stepping up its fight against “financial censorship” and creating its
own alternative to PayPal to “fight against the tyranny of the global
elites.”

PRIVACY COIN

While cryptocurrencies have a reputation for secrecy, Bitcoin was
built for transparency. Every transaction is indelibly — and publicly
— recorded on the blockchain, which enables companies like Chainalysis
to monitor activity. Individuals can obscure their identities by not
publicly linking them to their cryptocurrency accounts, but with
Bitcoin they cannot hide the transactions themselves.


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