Canada's Seizure Of Crypto From Freedom Convoy Highlights Digital Currency's Flaws "Bitcoin is not as good as its marketers claim it to be at being a censorship-resistant payment rail" By Erin Marquis Yesterday 4:30PM Comments (66) Alerts A flatbed removes a truck from the convoy after police cleared Wellington Street, previously occupied by the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, on February 19, 2022. - Ottawa Police Services barricaded Wellington St. around Parliament Hill, clearing up the trucks and the camps that had been in Ottawa since January 28, 2022. Police in Canada deployed to dislodge the final truckers and protesters from downtown Ottawa, in a mostly peaceful operation aimed at bringing an end to three weeks of demonstrations over Covid-19 health rules. (Photo by Andrej Ivanov / AFP) Imagehoto by ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP via Getty Images(Getty Images) Canadian law enforcement seized an unspecified amount of crypto donated to theFreedom Convoythat terrorized the city for weeks last month. The crackdown highlighted how digital currency’s security bona fides stand up to real world tests. It’s definitely not everything boosters have promised. Nicholas St. Louis was “Bitcoin Team Lead” for the Freedom Convoy protest. Once GoFundMe froze the protest’s $10 million in contributions, St. Louis proposed raising funds via Bitcoin. He felt the digital currency was “Uncensorable, permissionless and when you custody it properly it is unconfiscatable,” according to theCalgary Herald. Police would put that assumption to the test. They raid St. Louis’ home for the funds’ private keys less than an hour after a judge order the digital currency handed over. Louis claims the raid was in violation of the court order, but when you advertise your funds as “unconfiscatable” police have an interest in acting quickly before any monkey business can occur. Of course a cryptocurrency is traceable. That’s the whole point of recording your ownership on a blockchain. You could possibly buy private keys in person with real cash (the actual secure, untraceable way to buy stuff),but there isn’t much point to crypto if you can’t transfer it into real world dollars. That’s where crypto exchanges come in as a weakbut necessary point for the currency. Related Stories Fuel Tank Drilling Is The Hot New Car Theft Trend Sweeping The Nation Honda And Sony Partner Up To Make An Electric Car And An EV Company To Boot The Invasion Of Ukraine Could Make The Chip Shortage Even Worse It turns out, the less a country regulates crypto, the safer it is. From the Herald: There are various tools and tactics, such as privacymixers, that can make it more difficult for people to trace where cryptocurrency originated and ended up. Michael Fasanello, the former director of training and regulatory affairs at Blockchain Intelligence Group, said the convoy fundraiser doesn’t appear to have made use of them, however. The often-repeated concept that cryptocurrency is useful to criminals because they’re difficult to trace is a myth, Fasanello said. “Depending on the circumstances, it can be extremely transparent and very traceable.” John Paul Koning, a Montreal-based financial blogger and a columnist with the cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk, said Canada’s regulatory regime for cryptocurrency-trading platforms likely helped make the various freezing orders on the Bitcoin raised in support of the convoy effective. The past year has seen Canadian securities regulatorsassertjurisdiction over the sector, including platforms based outside the country—giving them oversight over key infrastructure people need to turn crypto into money they can actually spend. Koning said Russia, a countryaffiliatedwith about three-quarters of global ransomware revenue, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, provides an interesting counterexample. Somewhat ironically, cryptocurrency’s censorship-resistant properties work better in countries where the sector is less regulated, he said. “Bitcoin is not as good as its marketers claim it to be at being a censorship-resistant payment rail,” Koning said. “The exchanges are key to making the stuff useful. You’ve got to sell it somehow.”
No, they did the equivalent of "freezing" bank accounts, which means if the crypto was held at some exchange, they froze it.
So there are potentially other "layers" of protection for crypto that you don't get with banks, brokerage accounts, credit cards and other fiat.
Yes, but I was thinking about this recently. If you are using Monero, or other privacy coins, they can pass a law saying that the provenance of the Monero you try to sell on the exchanges is required to be declared. For example, income or whatever. This will make it annoying to convert Monero to fiat.
Maybe, but you can still use private keys, wallets, etc. There's no option for that with your Chase account.
I will take the opposite viewpoint and suggest it's going to make BTC more valuable. As long as BTC is viewed as a libertarian ideal and used by thieves and crooks as a means to circumvent taxes and illegally made money it will not pass muster and governments will curtail its potential.
Yeah but that's not what cryptos were purported to be. The same that it can be used by thieves and crooks it can also be used by dissidents and whistleblowers who are fleeing from the oppressive autocratic regimes and that was its original intended purpose. With this feature now perpetuated, it's just like any other fiat money.
They were not promoted as anonymous, only pseudo-anonymous and it depends on your opsec. The main developer on defillama put out a bounty for anyone whom could dox him. He wanted to see how well he cleaned up his digital footprints. No-one has been able to claim yet.