Bitcoin is freedom tech

María Corina Machado received the news that she’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while confined to an undisclosed location.

The “Iron Lady of Venezuela” and “Latin American Joan of Arc” has been in hiding since Nicolás Maduro threatened her with "maximum justice” in the wake of the 2024 election that made clear she’s the rightful president of Venezuela.

Machado reports that she’s survived assassination attempts and a kidnapping since then, but has refused to leave the country.

She sent her three children into safety abroad, but chose to remain herself — “a choice that has inspired millions of people,” according to the Nobel committee.

It’s an example that should resonate far beyond Venezuela: “María Corina Machado has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace,” the committee added.

One of those tools, Machado says, is bitcoin.

The Maduro regime has “weaponized financial systems against its people,” she told the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), citing a deliberate bout of hyperinflation that hit a high of 10 million percent in 2018.

Since 2008, the Venezuelan government has expropriated its citizens’ savings by removing 14 zeros from the national currency — 100 trillion of today’s bolívars buy what a single bolívar did in 2008.

“Holding a bag of candy was worth way more than having a bag of your national currency,” one expropriated Venezuelan said, “because the candy could hold its value.” 

Machado advocates for bitcoin as a better, less sugary store-of-value: “Some Venezuelans found a lifeline in bitcoin, using it to protect their wealth and finance their escape.”

Machado herself, however, uses it not to escape.

“Our campaign operates without banking access,” Machado says. But they can still take donations: “Unlike bank wires, which the regime usually blocks, bitcoin donations cannot be seized.”

In that sense, bitcoin has helped Machado lead the struggle against Maduro from within Venezuela.

It’s enabled many other Venezuelans to both survive and resist Maduro.

“Bitcoin bypasses government-imposed exchange rates and helps many of our people,” Machado adds. “It has evolved from a humanitarian tool to a vital means of resistance.”

Another protesting Venezuelan, Jorge Jraissati of the Economic Inclusion Group, says this makes bitcoin part of a “tech-based strategy” to combat authoritarianism.

“The key to defeating autocratic regimes lies in citizens’ having universal access to freedom technologies like Bitcoin, Signal, and Nostr,” he writes. 

Bitcoin in particular has empowered his countrymen “to overcome Maduro’s financial surveillance and repression.”

Much of the world lives in similarly repressive circumstances. 

Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation estimates that “87% of humanity was born into either an authoritarian regime or a collapsing fiat currency.” 

In that large part of the world, “the legacy banking system simply does not work well enough anymore to fund democracy work,” he explains.

Bitcoin, however, is “keeping resistance alive” in places where government-issued currency “cannot be used for essential human-rights activities.”

Gladstein says bitcoin is increasingly the currency for those activities, and is on its way to becoming “a standard currency for human-rights activism and beyond by 2030.”

We’re accustomed to seeing giant 2030 price targets for bitcoin, but could it hit an even bigger activist target?

If it does, the Nobel committee may get credit for helping it on its way.

Gladstein notes that “the overwhelming majority of bitcoin critics live in the United States or Europe and are blinded by enormous financial privilege.” 

By awarding their Peace Prize to an enthusiastic user, the Nobel committee might help remove the blinders and improve bitcoin’s image in the 13% of the world that doesn’t need it as anything other than an investment.

For Machado, the primary benefit of the Nobel Peace Prize is that it makes her safer by making her more famous.

“This raises her visibility and increases the cost of attempts to suppress and destroy her,” Gideon Rose of the Council on Foreign Relations explains. “By putting the sanction of benevolent international opinion on her efforts, [the Nobel] may protect her life.”

For bitcoin then, the significance of the award is that Machado has similarly put her benevolent opinion on the oft-maligned cryptocurrency, which may protect it from its critics.

Because only a Maduro-like authoritarian can be opposed to freedom tech.

— Byron Gilliam

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