Why an unstable world proves the point of cryptocurrencies (The Canada trucker protest)
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This series will deal with current world events and their consequences. We will be discussing the actions of governments, social movements and individuals that we don’t support, and we will be speaking of decisions that we do not condone. Our argument is always for cryptocurrencies and what we consider to be every individual’s right to keep and use them. We argue for nothing else, including but not limited to whatever politics the people discussed in these articles espouse.
Hello, all!
This is a series about failure.
About the failure of governments, banks, financial institutions, and all the centralised institutions that came before Satoshi Nakamoto published his white paper.
This article is now a part of history.
The first Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain included a message that pointed to The Times article we have linked to above. It is an illustration of the reason why Bitcoin was created. Because the financial system was going into meltdown. Banks had failed us, centralised institutions had provided no protection, and governments were at a loss.
As you read the texts in this series, do keep our disclaimer in mind. We aren’t in the business of politics, and we couldn’t care less who is right or wrong in the disputes we are going to be discussing.
What we do care about is that we put in place the mechanisms for you and your family to stay secure regardless of who’s right.
So let’s get started, shall we?
What were the trucker protests in Canada?
Short answer? What started as a relatively small protest against COVID-19 restrictions (namely vaccine mandates) organised by long-haul truckers rapidly evolved into wider protests due to the appearance of other forces, such as far-right agitators.
Longer answer? Here’s a thorough but quick-to-read article about the protests. It explains the essentials, that go from how the protests started to why they worked (massive trucks are excellent at shutting down roads, and nothing works when roads are closed) and how the government slowly but surely became more aggressive in its attempts to stop the protests.
So are the protesters the oppressed victims here?
Not necessarily.
By all accounts, the protesters broke a number of laws throughout the whole process. Not only did they break the laws, but they also made it impossible for the police to enforce them, to the point where Canadians are suing the police.
(and this is not to mention the extremists that infiltrated the protests and changed their nature into something entirely different, much more dangerous, much more violent)
So why is the CEO of a payments company writing about these things?
Because the government of Canada did something that went beyond normal policing.
What is The Emergencies Act?
When faced with local and even national law enforcement’s inability to curb the protests, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did something entirely unprecedented in the nation’s history.
He invoked something called The Emergencies Act. This is a 1988 law that had never been used, and that vastly expands the powers of the government. The act supposedly needs parliamentary approval, but that didn’t seem to matter. The Governor in Council (that means the government) quite simply declared that the country was under emergency, and… the act was enabled.
For a period of 30 days, the government got the power to essentially circumvent the entire democratic process of Canada. Supposedly, both Commons and the Senate (both houses of the Canadian parliament) would have to approve this, and yet… the Senate never did.
You don’t have to like or agree with the protesters to understand how dangerous this can be. In fact, the government of Canada is getting sued by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association simply for invoking it. The CCLA is not alone in being concerned about this, with Amnesty International also raising concerns.
Both these organizations, but AI in particular, should not be thought to be supporting the protests, by the way. They had noted their increased concern about the radicalisation of the protests as well.
The issue here is that even if you think the protests are abhorrent, the usage of such extreme powers by governments should make us all concerned.
Especially when the government decides protesters don’t get to eat anymore.
The Canadian government froze protesters’ bank accounts
And that, dear readers, is when we at Utrust started really paying attention.
When the Emergencies Act was invoked, the Canadian government essentially became all-powerful. They did a number of quite extreme things, essentially making it illegal for people to gather, and arresting 230 people for disobeying. Dozens of trucks were taken, and they will never be returned to their (previous?) owners.
We won’t get into whether this was justified or not.
The Canadian system itself hasn’t decided, and the government will surely have to deal with a number of inquiries and legal challenges where they will have to justify their actions.
At the end of the day, that’s up to the Canadian political and legal system to figure out.
What we do in fact care about is one very specific measure the Canadian government has put in place.
They froze and seized protesters’ bank accounts.
Not corporate accounts, by the way, as was said in the early days, but protestors’ actual personal bank accounts, where people kept their own money.
We are not discussing millionaires, we are talking about working people, who most likely didn’t have any other places where to keep their savings.
If you read the article we linked, you’ll see it went further. The government can’t even confirm it didn’t freeze random citizens’ accounts just because they donated to the protesters. They say it’s “unlikely” that “small” donors were affected by the freeze, but that’s as much as we get in terms of assurance.
The government used the emergency powers it gave itself through the Emergencies Act to effectively ban hundreds of people from accessing their only sources of money, effectively making it impossible for them to feed themselves, pay their bills, and keep their lives in check as long as they were protesting.
This demonstrates one thing very clearly.
We can’t depend on our bank accounts anymore
Bitcoin was designed for moments like these. Moments where the current banking system just can’t cope. Fortunately, we don’t have to just rely on Bitcoin anymore either, with the crypto ecosystem having grown and providing us with a number of currencies to satisfy very different needs and expectations.
We have written in the past that adoption grows in areas where the financial and political system are unstable. Emerging markets are busting the doors of adoption wide open.
You wouldn’t think of Canada as one of those countries.
You wouldn’t think the Canadian government would financially incapacitate hundreds of people, on a list constructed without any specific criteria, without any due process, without anyone being charged with any crime.
And yet they did.
The Canadian banking system was either powerless or uninterested in stopping the government.
With the world growing more unstable, we feel like our mission is more valid than ever. To provide currencies and payments that fall outside the scope of any institution, any government, any bank.
There are problems in this world that crypto can’t fix. But this? Crypto fixes this.
Why crypto fixes this
When you use crypto currencies (particularly if you choose a non-custodial wallet), no one controls your money but you. You choose where it goes, where it stays, who you pay, and who pays you.
There are many advantages to removing middlemen from this process, but an unstable world, and governments that like to keep a grip on who gets to keep and spend their own money may just be one of the strongest.
Now, a couple of caveats are in order. No possible or imagined form of digital currency can keep the government from arresting you or exercising power over you in other ways. Protesters were coerced into giving up their crypto wallets. And governments can in fact do to exchanges what they did to banks. So it’s not impossible for the government to take your crypto from you, depending on where and how you keep it.
Crypto was never meant to operate outside the law. Crypto companies are law abiding serious businesses. As the CEO of Kraken Jesse Powell rightly said in relation to the protests, crypto companies operate under the same laws as everyone else.
As Jesse Powell also said, however, you don’t need crypto companies to use crypto. Crypto allows you to take matters into your own hands because you actually own your tokens and coins. They belong to you not because institutions say they do, but because no one can actually move them without your consent as long as your keys are safe. There is no law against you keeping your own money.
Bottomline
The Canadian government ended its Emergency Act powers voluntarily and after a very short while. The measures taken were very effective, and the protests were swiftly dealt with.
For a number of reasons, the protests were also deeply unpopular. The fact that the far-right of the political spectrum tried to make the convoy about themselves surely didn’t help.
It’s still horribly concerning to those of us dedicated to making payments global, and to blazing a new path for everyone’s financial independence, to see a government seize protesters’ assets without any due process whatsoever, even under the guise of emergency.
In an unstable world, crypto is becoming more and more essential.
Utrust is a Web3 payments solution, 100% on-chain, decentralised, and doing things according to the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto.
This is why we accept payments from any wallet. We will always be fully compliant to any and all legislation from the territories where we operate.
But we will never discriminate against those who choose to take their own money and custody it themselves.
This series will continue to be published on Utrust’s blog as myself and the team take a look into our increasingly unstable world and the ways we can use technology to make it a better, safer, and more fair.
Stay tuned,
Sanja Kon
