Julian Assange, the leader of the whistleblowing journalistic organization WikiLeaks, may have been essentially a prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but he hasn’t let that slow him down.
In his second AMA on Reddit, he talked about his new book, “When Google Met WikiLeaks, about mass surveillance, ISIS, and, of course, Bitcoin.
One redditor asked him “do you currently use bitcoin? What are your long term views on bitcoin?” In response, Assange mentioned “there’s nots on Bitcoin in my book”, specifically about WikiLeaks’ history with it.
On 5 December 2010, just after VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon, and other financial companies started denying service to WikiLeaks, a debate broke out on the official web forum for Bitcoin about the risk that donations to WikiLeaks using Bitcoin could provoke unwanted government interest in the then nascent crypto-currency. “Basically, bring it on,” wrote one poster. “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, responded: “No, don’t ‘bring it on.’ The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.” See the post on the Bitcoin Forum: archive.today/Gvonb#msg26999. Six days later, on 12 December 2010, Satoshi famously vanished from the Bitcoin community, but not before posting this message: “It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.” See the post on the Bitcoin Forum: archive.today/XuHCD#selection-1803.0-1802.1. WikiLeaks read and agreed with Satoshi’s analysis, and decided to put off the launch of a Bitcoin donation channel until the currency had become more established. WikiLeaks’ Bitcoin donation address was launched after the currency’s first major boom, on 14 June 2011.
He also mentioned that Bitcoin is an interesting and important development, “but not in the way most people think”. He continues:
Bitcoin’s real innovation is a globally verifiable proof publishing at a certain time. The whole system is built on that concept and many other systems can also be built on it. The blockchain nails down history, breaking Orwell’s dictum of “He who controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future.
WikiLeaks and Bitcoin: A Long History
Famously, when Wikileaks was under heavy fire after releasing a massive number of US diplomatic cables back in 2012, the powers that be responded by blocking the organization’s ability to receive donations. Bank of America, Visa, PayPal, Western Union, and Mastercard all joined the blockade. Their plan was, of course, to choke WikiLeaks’ ability to raise funds and maintain their organization.
But the results weren’t what the government was expecting. WikiLeaks began accepting Bitcoin donations as a result, bypassing the issue and allowing the organization to generate funds. At the time WikiLeaks raised around $30,000 in bitcoin. And at the time, Bitcoin was worth about $10.
Of course, it’s worth much more now. And WikiLeaks has certainly benefited from that explosion in price.
Assange’s book, When Google Met WikiLeaks, is available through OR Books.
Julian Assange: "Bitcoin Is An Extremely Important Innovation"
No comments:
Post a Comment