Truckers in Canada have been staging protests in recent weeks, as you probably know. The organizers of the protest have stated that they oppose vaccine mandates for truckers who cross the border. A new wave of protests are planned in the U.S.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked a law known as the Emergencies Act in response to the protesters, which provides expanded power to the national government.

One of these powers allows the government to use the financial system to pressure their opponents to give up their protest by limiting their access to their bank accounts. Supporters of the movement sent donations through crowdfunding platforms and cryptocurrency, including bitcoin.

First, they came for the truckers

Whenever a powerful interest acts against a group of dissenters, we are faced with this choice:

1. We can examine the group and decide whether we identify with them; if we identify, we hold their freedoms in paramount importance. If we don’t identify with them or identify with the “other side,” we can justify their repression as a means to our desired end of defeating our ideological enemy.
2. We can take the long view that power used against a group, regardless of who the group is, could one day be wielded against people like us. Whether and when that happens depends on who currently controls that power, which is always subject to change.

We take the second view. Irrespective of politics, the events in Canada serve as a case study of the enormous power of overly-centralized financial systems. This power, once realized, is difficult or impossible to contain; history teaches that a freedom lost is hard to recover.

The freedom to transact in the prevailing monetary medium is essential to the operation and security of a free society. The actions of the Canadian government should concern anyone who wishes to preserve the ideals of free, open societies, regardless of personal politics.

Do we believe a world where an elite wield power over money to manipulate society? Do we value financial privacy and freedom, or do we accept that donors to social causes can have their bank accounts frozen if the government they oppose decides to silence dissent?

Can bitcoin help?

There have been many instances of governments who control monetary and financial systems wielding that power to achieve political goals. Seeing Canada repeat this pattern is heartbreaking, but not surprising. Just as all fiat currencies trend toward zero value eventually, all governments who wield the power of the money printer will eventually abuse it.

Bitcoin was designed for this moment. As a monetary network that is not controlled by any government or firm, it is the only viable technology that allows people to transact digitally and without the presupposed approval of central authorities.

Sending bitcoin is easy

Bitcoiners often talk about inflation and how bitcoin prevents fiat currency from being able to transport value across time – i.e., that the value of fiat money evaporates as more and more of it is created. However, the Freedom Convoy has demonstrated fiat's failure in transmitting value across space as well.

Using the internet to send a few dollars to someone in another location is not a hard engineering problem. It is only difficult because of the thicket of financial and political interests that one’s money must maneuver through in order to make it out the other side.

When our payment networks have central points of failure, censorship is always the eventual result. However, unlike fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin's payment network is distributed in computers throughout the whole world, rendering it the only censorship resistant money – and the most robust technology for reliably and freely transmitting value across space.

How bitcoin failed the truckers

Let's be honest. Bitcoin may have been perfect for this moment in theory, but it didn't exactly shine.

Crowdfunding platforms and bitcoin fundraising initiatives were well-intentioned but ultimately, software and processes were not in place to smoothly get bitcoin donations where they were supposed to go.

Furthermore, bitcoin is not private by default. It can be used privately, but most people new to bitcoin will be just as traceable through their bitcoin transactions as they are through their banks.

Finally, the truckers in Canada are not part of a circular bitcoin economy. That means that they need to convert the bitcoin into fiat money in order to use bitcoin donations to buy food and fuel. This is, again, a part of the system vulnerable to attack by state actors.

On the other hand, these are all solvable problems that bitcoin developers are actively working on. There's no doubt they'll be successful. It's just a matter of time.

What can you do?

First, think about what it would be like to be de-banked. Envision your life with your funds suddenly frozen. Stop taking financial freedom for granted, and start taking steps to protect yourself.

The simplest step you can take is to understand that just holding and buying bitcoin supports a world that values all people, opinions, and ideas. By counting yourself as part of the bitcoin community, you support the value of bitcoin and the viability of the network.

If you hold money in a custodial wallet with Coinbits or another provider, learn how to withdraw it to a private wallet that only you control.

Next, learn to use bitcoin privately so that your business remains just that – your business and nobody else's.