«The greatest threat to the State is independent intellectual criticism.« Murray Rothbard
In the world fiat la authority decides how information and money are managed. And to ensure this, it uses physical force on people as a bargaining chip. Let's look at some examples. The Nigerian government wants to collect $10 billion from Binance because, according to them, the exchange is responsible for the devaluation of its fiat currency. So, due to the physical impossibility of kidnapping the owner of the exchange since he did not make the risky choice of visiting the African country, it chooses to kidnap three of its executives who did make that risky tourist visit. Logically, the Nigerian state He doesn't call it kidnapping but preventive arrest. In this way, it seeks to control the discourse in order to sanitize the immoral act of depriving people of their freedom of movement who have never been found guilty and who, furthermore, have never harmed anyone, given the lack of victims in the crimes committed. In this way, we can see that, as Vinay Gupta points out, “the State is any entity that can retroactively forgive a crime.” He adds:
“If you forgive murder, you get an army. If you forgive assault, you get police. If you forgive theft, you get taxes. And this notion that there is a sovereign ability to change the rules for a limited number of people and give them licenses to do things that would otherwise be criminal gives you a very clear definition of the state. The state is that which washes your hands when you do something that is inherently wrong.” Vinay Gupta.
On the other hand, but with a similar approach, when the United States government wanted money from Binance, it negotiated directly with the owner and achieved its objective more quickly. But also He leveraged his negotiation on the threat of “legalized kidnapping”which led to Changpeng Zhao being sentenced to prison despite having paid more than four billion dollars. A third recent example is that of the French government, which, in order to pay homage to the United States, decided to “legally kidnap” Telegram owner Pavel Durov, causing the latter to immediately modify the censorship and control policies within his social network. On September 6, Durov announced that he was suspending Telegram’s “people nearby” service and changing it to “businesses nearby.” In other words, where users were previously free to carry out activities with people nearby, now only verified businesses will be free to do so. What kind of identification and proof of legality will be required of these businesses? It has not yet been announced, but what we can be sure of is that there is a deepening of KYC/AML regulations and that they are being implemented at gunpoint with the smell of croissants. Can someone who has a firearm pressed against his temple truly express his will and consent? A weapon that is being held by the state apparatus, which also legally prevents him from leaving the country and which threatens him with the easily enforceable promise of jail time. The latest recent example is the closure of Twitter (now X.com) by the Brazilian government. In this case we see that the authorities demanded that a declared executive of the company be physically present in the country. In other words, they legally requested that the network send someone so that he can be “legally kidnapped” in case the Latin American government considered that the network did not comply with the laws. And, precisely because the company that manages the social network decided not to give up the body of an employee, the platform was legally closed. It should be mentioned that the legality of the closure, as well as of any act, is determined by the state apparatus. Without prejudice to the existence of constitutions (sets of supra-legal norms), the material legal reality of Western republicanism is that The State is the sole and exclusive interpreter of legality and the constitution. Therefore, no matter how far a State's action deviates from the written norms, the State is legally the first and last interpreter of the same. Therefore, nothing matters – legally speaking – what the administered parties may think or interpret in this regard.
«But whether the Constitution really is one thing or another, this much is certain: it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or it has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is not fit to exist.» Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)
These are demonstrations of how The authority controls centralized networks with the force of the stick. But they also do it with the carrot. Examples of those who decided to make a full-fledged pact with the authorities and eat the carrot—paying the cost of following what the authorities require to the letter—are Meta (Facebook and Whatsapp), Microsoft and Google, among others. This author understands that if there is still some glimmer of freedom of expression in this world, it is mainly due to the technical-material impossibility of exercising police power against all of us who express ourselves. And not because of an ideological-cultural issue, since, considering the current state of positive law—of regulation—on freedom of expression and its massive acceptance by society in general, the cultural battle for a society that allows individuals to express their thoughts without suffering coercion is being lost. However, we are some 8 billion people who continually interact with each other by carrying out actions and inactions, transmitting information and exchanging values or capital. And they, the authority, are a very few and very discredited politicians and public figures who can only control physical force and the narrative with the deficient fiat money that they manufacture and distribute to buy wills. Wills that increasingly begin to see the advantages of the deflationary bitcoin over the inflationary fiat and that, even without wanting to, As they join the Bitcoin network, they diminish the power of the authority.
Fortunately, the individual freedom of 8 billion people is materially uncontrollable. But in contrast, what happens in a centralized network is easily controlled by the authority in power, either by using the stick or the carrot.
Bitcoins under centralized management
The world's largest exchange holds bitcoins from miners, companies, investment funds, OTC funds, ETFs and other exchanges.
Source: TimeChainIndex. Coinbase currently controls around 2.2 million bitcoins, according to timechainindex.com; that is, more than 11% of the current circulation. This centralized cache of considerable wealth represents a continual invitation to be attacked and looted by that entity or sum of entities with enough strength and technique to be able to take it. What stops Coinbase from performing the classic rug pull (total emptying of liquidity and subsequent default against creditors) that centralized exchanges have already accustomed us to? What stops the administrators of the private keys from colluding to disappear by sharing the loot of more than 220 trillion satoshis? What stops the current US government from issuing a decree and automatically taking over the management of the entirety of the aforementioned loot? Almost a hundred years ago, the American government decided to seize all of the solid financial wealth of its users through the “legalized theft” of the gold they possessed. Are we today politically further away from a new possible executive order 6102 than when it was issued in 1933? At that time, the government decree was necessary for the pure fiat system (not backed by gold) to work. The market needed to be drained as much as possible of other financial assets in order to prevent users from escaping the inflationary dollar as much as possible. Today, as we continue to move towards hyperbitcoinization, it seems that It would not be unreasonable for history to repeat itself. and the future confiscation would be, on this occasion, the most similar asset we have to digital gold. An inevitable issue when holding bitcoins under compliance is centralized (in compliance). A fact that, if it occurs, would add a new demonstration that bitcoins in compliance are an insurmountable contradiction. Decentralization is not only practical but also necessary, essential, for the true protection of private property and freedom of expression. For this reason we must never forget the trite but no less true and useful refrain: “If they're not your keys, they're not your bitcoins”.
Camilo JdL for Crypto News at 861.149 timechain
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