Bitcoin, bästa argument för och emot

Kanadensare som stöder lastbilschaufförerna har via tjänsten GoFundMe samlat in nästan tio miljoner kanadensiska dollar, motsvarande över 70 miljoner svenska kronor, för att visa demonstranterna sitt stöd. Förra veckan valde GoFundMe emellertid att frysa de insamlade medlen, och liberala partikollegor till Trudeau vill att kommunen beslagtar pengarna och använder dem för att finansiera påstådda merkostnader för lastbilsprotesten.

ON AUGUST 11TH 2017 far-right groups from all over America came to Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. The next day a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one of them. In the aftermath PayPal, an online-payment platform whose terms of service forbid raising money to promote hate, suspended extremists’ accounts. So did Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Visa and Discover, two credit-card firms, followed suit, as did Patreon, a crowdfunding site. Far-right groups found themselves in search of other places to raise money. What many of them embraced was cryptocurrency.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), an advocacy group, has identified over 600 cryptocurrency addresses used by members of the far right. They include ones associated with Andrew Anglin, publisher of a neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer; Andrew Auernheimer, a white-supremacist hacker; and Don Black, founder of a white-power online forum. They advertise their wallets on their websites and social media, asking for donations. And they get them. Stefan Molyneux, a far-right podcaster who was ousted from YouTube, has received over $1.67m in bitcoin. Mr Anglin has reportedly received over 100 bitcoins ($3.8m).

The bill submitted by the Ministry of Finance provisions several restrictions for Russians interested in investing in bitcoin, including identification requirements, yearly investment limits, and custody arrangements, according to the statement.

Russians will have to provide their personal information to buy or sell bitcoin on regulated exchanges, though it is still unclear how much information will be necessary. Users will also only be allowed to buy about $7,700 worth of bitcoin per year upon successful completion of a testing procedure to assess their knowledge level of cryptocurrency. If they fail the test, they will only be able to purchase up to roughly $650 worth of bitcoin per year.

Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals to and from an exchange will only be allowed through accounts in a bank, the statement said. It seems, therefore, that users’ won’t be able to withdraw bitcoin to a self-custody wallet.

“In addition, for the safety of clients’ funds for crypto-exchanges, a nominal account mode is introduced, on which the funds of bidders will be located,” per the statement. “Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies.”

Tweets from the CEOs of Coinbase and Kraken that advocated self-custody of digital assets are being looked at the by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for violating sanctions put in place to curb the trucker protests in the country, according to a report from The Logic.

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) sent the tweets to the police because it believed that the crypto executives were offering advice on how to evade the sanctions on funds, according to the report.

Late last week, the Ontario Provincial Police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ordered all regulated financial institutions, including crypto exchanges, to cease trading and freeze the assets of “designated persons” involved in the trucker protests as well as 34 associated crypto wallets.

Shortly after Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the measure, both Powell and Armstrong tweeted in support of self-custody wallets.

Self-custody means that the owner of the digital asset holds the private key for the wallet and thus has exclusive access. An appropriate metaphor would be keeping an asset in a safe with only the owner having the combination to the safe, instead of placing it in a bank.