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bitcoinwarrior.net / Mark Norton / 8/10/14 “Bitcoin is not political,” a growing number of people are saying as it grows in popular usage. Initially, Bitcoin found a home among the libertarian crowd because of its decentralized nature and the more people begin using the currency, the libertarian fervor wanes. Ultimately this is a good thing since if Bitcoin is to succeed, it’s going to need to be used by people of with a wide diversity of political thought.
But that doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is not political. It’s political at its heart. It’s just that its politics are harder to pigeonhole than with a simple term like ‘libertarian.’ Bitcoin was not born out of a vacuum, but out of the abuses of power in our governmental and financial systems that rig the game in favor of the well-off and leave the rest of us wondering how to get by. Bitcoin returns some of the flexibility and privacy to our finances that we used to have before the government and banks ratcheted up demands on our information and banks began to impose high fees and penalties in accordance with labyrinthine rules only an accountant could understand.
According to this report, Chase bank has even started requiring people to prove where they got money they are depositing in order, as they say, to impede illegal activity. Any time controls like this are put into place, we are told that they are for our protection, minor inconveniences to impede criminal activity. It also gives them incredible power and incredible opportunity for abuse. And, unfortunately, the people running the government and the banks are merely human. They are tempted by power and control, they are motivated by fear and prejudice. It’s the tendency of governments to exceed their mandate and it’s the responsibility of the people to make sure that they do not. With the rise of the internet, it’s gotten harder and harder to contest that power. Bitcoin, among other decentralizing technologies, gives us the potential to counter that power.
