Can crypto empower us to control our finances when Governments hold the power to deny us access to our money?
The illusion of having control over our fiat money in bank institutions!!
The censorship resistant feature of decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is required in today’s world as circumstances necessitate this.
Fiat currency and our bank accounts are controlled by the Central bank and central bank-regulated financial institutions. However, Government-controlled agencies have the power to restrict anyone from accessing money from their bank accounts.
I will explain this with a real life example.
Ruling BJP dispensation blocks opponent Congress party from accessing funds — India News Story
Indian Lok Shabha elections are scheduled to take place in April this year and the main opposition party, Congress found that its bank account got frozen by the Income Tax Department of India.
So, Congress could not get access to its funds to conduct its everyday functions with the party Organisation not even having money to pay salaries to its workers. Ouch!!!!
Right now, all political parties need more funds for running their election campaigns, but the Income Tax Department under the control of the BJP-run Government was able to throttle fund accessibility of the Congress party. All this done, so BJP’s main opponent finds it difficult to organize election campaigns to win the elections.
News article — https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/editorial/brazen-attempt-to-throttle-democracy-2900027
Government misuse of power using Income Tax agencies to freeze bank account for unjustified reasons
Now, it is definitely scary that the BJP Government under Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, froze bank account of a major Political Organisation but it’s unjustified as well as the intention behind this action was only to deprive Congress from funds so the party struggles to fight election.
This entire episode shows how this control of the financial system by the ruling Government is dangerous to democracy.
The official reason cited by the Income Tax department for justifying their act of freezing bank account of Congress was that the political party delayed the filing of its tax returns for the year 2018–2019 and there was an amount of 41.4 lakhs unaccounted for. Congress has said that this untallied amount was donations it received in cash from its MPs and MLAs.
Surely, freezing the bank account of the Congress Party for this reason now during a major election period seems a severe punishment, which is unfair!!
Furthermore, Congress was asked to pay a penalty amount of 215 crore, for the above issue mentioned by IT Department, which is completely unreasonable.
For now, Congress is allowed to use the funds, after they took the pains to approach and appeal the matter to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal which specified a condition that 115 crore has to be deposited until the hearing for the matter is done next week!!
The reality is that we don’t have full control of our money deposited in banks
AI generated image using Canva
It’s frightening to imagine the kind of harassment common Citizens would face if they irked the ire of the Government as we don’t have the influential power of political parties to reach anyone to guide us out of this situation!!
This is why holding of decentralised currencies is required!! You really can’t trust your fiat money that’s in the bank to be available for you to use because you don’t control it, even though that money may be your hard-earned money. Don’t you think that’s unfair?
Governments can prevent you from procuring funds using crypto
Now practically, Governments control even decentralised currencies as your Bitcoin wallet address on CEXs can be frozen. Still, for now, if you keep BTC, in a non-custodial wallet and transact with care to maintain privacy not leaving unnecessary traces on chain, you retain access to your Bitcoin.
Selling BTC when required for liquid funds is not easy or convenient, as even P2P platforms like localbitcoins have closed down. Even then KYC is required by most P2P platforms, so every crypto can be tracked.
Crypto was created originally to empower us to own and control our money!!
Still, it is a fact that Bitcoin was designed to be censorship resistant, giving you the power to own and control your money/wealth!!
Let’s just reflect over the fact that we need actual control over our finances.
My question is can crypto and Blockchain provide a solution for this?
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