- Bitcoin’s 2024 uprising has been met with fear by several banking institutions.
- The Human Rights Foundation chief explains why BTC is a hazard to dictators.
- Alex Gladstein highlights the discrepancy between fiat currencies and Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has been making the headlines this year due to a new all-time high (ATH), the history to be made with its upcoming halving, and the Securities and the Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to allow Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) 10 days into the new year.
While the swiftly progressing social adoption of BTC has been hard to ignore even for the biggest opponents of the leading digital asset, Alex Gladstein, the Chief Strategy Office of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), joined the What Bitcoin Did podcast on April 8 to explain his take on why the globe is divided into two camps over Bitcoin’s emergence as a disruptive technology.
Bitcoin Putting Dictators at Crossroads?
One of the most interesting arguments for Bitcoin is the encouragement of freedom, the human rights activist said. According to Gladstein, there are three key traits of society that every dictator would avoid at all costs.
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In his allegory, Gladstein took China or Russia as an example, stating that the regime’s country wouldn’t be able to imply an autocratic government within its borders without the help of censorship, confiscation of a citizen’s goods and assets, and closed capital markets.
In contrast, Bitcoin’s Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain offers the opposite: free speech, rights to personal property, and an always open capital market. Naturally, human rights activists mentioned Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer (P2P) nature, a hazard to any dictatorship at its core.
Gladstein originally turned to Bitcoin in 2011, when governmental institutions financially deprived WikiLeaks and chose Bitcoin over fiat as an alternative payment method. Later, Gladstein was convinced of Bitcoin’s social potential in 2013, when it was used in multiple fundraising campaigns for Ukrainian protesters in Maidan.
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Therefore, the HRF embraces BTC as more than an effective financial instrument; rather, it is a talisman of sovereignty, privacy, and freedom. El Salvador has acclaimed Bitcoin as a legal tender since 2021, successfully employing the digital asset to solve many socio-economic issues.
On the Flipside
- While Bitcoin (BTC) itself could be labeled as a hazard to dictatorships, both countries, as mentioned by Alex Gladstein, are developing their own central bank digital currency (CBDC) via blockchain technology.
Why This Matters
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) believes in Bitcoin’s potential to empower tyrannized citizens, therefore BTC can become a pivotal instrument in protecting human rights around the globe.
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