00:38Liz argues, quote, people ought to have as much freedom as possible to make donations to nonviolent anti-government political causes that are aligned with their beliefs without government insinuating that they're supporting terrorism.
00:49The liberatory promise of crypto lies in the fact that it can bypass these intermediaries, make transactions more discreet, something Trudeau's lackeys surely know and seem a bit threatened by.
00:59Liz joins us now to expand.
01:01Welcome back, Liz.
01:03Thanks for having me.
01:04Yes, thanks for being with us.
01:06So, you know, we've seen this really tremendous crackdown recently with Trudeau and the Canadian government vowing that, you know, the crowd is, you know, kind of pressuring the crowdfunding platforms to not give money, wanting to freeze the bank accounts, trucker protests.
01:24So, like, this could be crypto's moment, right?
01:27This is one of the main reasons crypto enthusiasts have been for this technology, that it is somewhat more outside the realm of government control, right?
01:39Absolutely.
01:40I mean, this is sort of the conceptual promise of cryptocurrency, this idea that you can evade government surveillance, that when your government's cracking down on you, possibly sending in cops, sending in the military, freezing corporate bank accounts and suspending your insurance, doing all kinds of crazy things.
01:58The promise of crypto lies in the fact that it really evades a lot of this.
02:02The problem, though, which I think we all sort of can foresee, is that a lot of truckers probably are not super adept at using crypto.
02:10This is probably not something that they have much experience with.
02:14And so there are a bunch of technologists and people who are on the technical side in cryptocurrency world who are trying to sort of bridge that gap to make it much more user friendly and to sort of teach people on the ground how they can access these, quote unquote, wallets, as they're called.
02:28But they're dealing with some logistical hurdles there.
02:31So though this is the sort of conceptual promise of crypto, it's a little bit difficult to execute in practice.
02:37But at the same time, they have no other option.
02:40GoFundMe said that they would not support a protest like this and basically redistributed the funds saying, you know, we're not actually going to distribute these, even though donors have have pledged to help truckers.
02:53These funds won't actually get to truckers.
02:55A Christian right wing fundraising site, Give, Send, Go, a Canadian judge actually issued an injunction against it, saying that they could not distribute funds to these truckers.
03:04So these truckers are in need of food and housing and shelter, all these different things.
03:09And yet they've really been stymied at every twist and turn.
03:12So this is the conceptual promise of crypto.
03:15It is difficult to execute in practice.
03:16So, Liz, I finally got into the crypto game the other day because I had to pay a journalist for some work that he did for us in Afghanistan.
03:25And the only way to do that is through crypto.
03:28So I had to set up the whole wallet and all that stuff.
03:31And I had to put my ID in and had, you know, had to, you know, it.
03:35So and so it made me wonder, you know, a photo of my driver's license, that sort of thing.
03:40And they were talking about how that's required by regulations as Coinbase wallet.
03:44And so that made me wonder, well, how secret is this?
03:48I mean, so what in other words, what capacity do governments have to crack down on crypto if they feel like it?
03:54The promise of crypto is that it magically evades government oversight.
03:58How true is that?
04:00Well, I think what you're tapping into is that you are using technically an intermediary of Coinbase.
04:05And I use Coinbase, too.
04:06I think they're absolutely wonderful.
04:07But one of the problems that we're now seeing is that governments like the Canadian government,
04:11and we've seen a lot of this in the U.S. as well,
04:14they're asking platforms like Coinbase to report transactions of a certain amount to FinTrack or to the IRS, you know, in Canada and the U.S.
04:23And so there's a little bit of this problem, which is that you need to bypass these platforms like Coinbase
04:28because of the reporting requirements that have been layered on.
04:31So in a sense, what we're seeing is governments being pretty threatened by crypto technology
04:35to the point where they're really targeting these platforms that make things a little bit more user-friendly,
04:40but that really deliver some of the same promises of crypto.
04:44I think it's a really big problem.
04:46And I think we're going to have to bypass that more and more.
04:50The problem is that bypassing it is technically more challenging.
04:54So, I mean, I would struggle to do that.
04:55It seems like you would.
04:56And I bet a lot of these truckers who are trying to spend their time protesting are also going to struggle with that.
05:01Yeah, I can barely figure out Coinbase.
05:03Go ahead, Kim.
05:05I mean, I've had crypto and I've been big into the crypto game for a couple of years now,
05:09and even I still don't fully understand how everything works.
05:12I mean, it's kind of complicated and difficult.
05:13Then they throw new things at you like NFTs and whatnot.
05:16But, Liz, you know, one of the arguments against crypto and one of the ways people disparage crypto is by saying,
05:23oh, this is used for criminals.
05:25This is for criminal syndicates and for those that want to just commit crime,
05:27even though cash has been used forever in this way.
05:31I just recently, a few days ago, got scammed by a scammer using Zelle.
05:36I mean, using my bank account, dollars, and Zelle.
05:39So when people say, oh, well, this crypto is a way to bypass.
05:43It's for criminal.
05:46I mean, what do you say to that in regards to that?
05:49I say the government is currently sort of implying that these people are criminals when that is not the case.
05:55These are nonviolent, peaceful protesters, by and large.
05:58There have to be fully fair and honest.
06:00There have been some reports of, I think, some homeless shelter employees who were harassed
06:05or potentially one who was assaulted by one of these protesters.
06:07But we're talking somewhere, you know, between 3,000 and 18,000 protesters, by and large,
06:13nonviolent, very peaceful, just basically occupying, being annoying, being nuisances, honking their horns at all hours of the day and night.
06:22But generally speaking, the thing that I would point to is, yes, this type of technology is used by criminals.
06:28This type of technology is also used by people that the government wrongly deems criminals,
06:33people that the government's trying to crack down on.
06:35I mean, I see a huge problem with the fact that the word terrorist ought to be reserved for people who commit
06:41wide-scale acts of political violence against their governments.
06:45And yet, we're using the word terrorist.
06:47We're insinuating that these truckers are that.
06:51And that's really not the case.
06:52These truckers have pretty simple demands.
06:54They're asking for a vaccine mandate to be repealed.
06:57They're people who, by and large, operate alone.
07:00You know, in a truck cab, you typically have one to two people.
07:03They are interacting with some people at different loading docks.
07:06But generally speaking, this isn't a high-contact profession.
07:09And they're saying, hey, we want the medical freedom and we want the bodily autonomy to make this choice for ourselves.
07:14These are not terrorists.
07:16And it just seems the way the government and the crowdfunding platforms, somewhat in cooperation,
07:22are handling these is just so wildly discordant from how left-wing protests were handled.
07:28I mean, Kamala Harris herself, wasn't she tweeting out links to raise bail money for BLM people who've been put in jail?
07:36Which, fine, rightfully so.
07:38Everybody deserves a fair defense and an opportunity to defend themselves, bail funds, etc.
07:43But it's like they're pretty, to me, basically equivalent scenarios.
07:48And in this scenario, the government is forcing, to some degree, these companies, and they're doing it anyway,
07:56to just be like, no, this kind of protesting, absolutely illegitimate.
07:59We will shut it down by any means necessary.
08:01You can't be involved in funding it whatsoever.
08:06It's so hypocritical.
08:07It's just obviously hypocritical.
08:09Yeah, I think there's a bigger problem here, which is that you erode people's trust when you basically try to tell them
08:16that there are some causes that are right and some causes that are wrong.
08:20And there's not a clear principle by which this is true.
08:24It sort of seems like it's about the mainstream consensus, and it's about a little bit of a left-leaning bias
08:32in terms of deeming which cause is acceptable to fight for and which cause is odious to fight for.
08:38I mean, I don't think people like to be condescended to.
08:42I don't think people like to be lied to.
08:43And I don't think people like to be told that their belief system is invalid or that their concerns are illegitimate.
08:50And so I have a big problem with these platforms, this de-platforming that we're seeing.
08:54Although these companies are fully within their rights to do so, both you and I are libertarians and fully agree with that,
08:59I do think we both have a little bit of concern with, you know, how will people react
09:04and what are the second-order political consequences of telling people
09:07that the cause that they're fighting for is illegitimate.
09:11Right.
09:11They just should be honest and say, you know what, our platform is a fundraising platform
09:16for only left-wing causes that were left-wing branded.
09:20They should be upfront about that if that's how they're going to operate.
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