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Bitcoin Companies’ Response to Canada’s Request to Freeze Protester Accounts Is Pure Gold – Opinion

By Pluralist / February 19, 2022

We’ve seen a lot of troubling civil liberties questions regarding the Freedom Convoy, particularly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. Among the most concerning: banning of protests at the whim of the government, conscripted labor — the government telling tow truck workers that they would be forced to work for the government against the Convoy — and even the freezing of bank accounts for the grievous sin of being involved in a protest against government mandates.

As we reported, you even had Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland laughing about seizing accounts. She is asked not just about the protesters’ accounts being seized but about the accounts of the people who donated to the protesters. She doesn’t give a clear answer about whether the donors’ accounts would also be affected.

Ottawa Deputy Police Chief Steve Bell, the interim police chief, also said that it’s not over if they manage to clear out the protest in Ottawa; they’re still going to try to go after protesters’ finances for the crime of dissent.

Tucker Carlson reminds us that such things are not allowed in an allegedly free society. And if they do get away with it, we know exactly where they will go next.

Despite the fact that banks such as the TD Bank collapsed, the bitcoin firms responded well to government requests to comply with new Emergencies Act orders.

Bitcoin wallet company Nunchuk announced that they’d gotten a request to freeze accounts from the government, “Yesterday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sent us a Mareva Injunction, ordering us to freeze and disclose information about the assets involved in the #FreedomConvoy2022 movement.” But Nunchuk explained to the clueless government that they don’t hold any money like a custodial financial institution, they don’t collect user information apart from emails, and they don’t hold the keys to any of the wallets — that it’s all private to the user, by design.

“Please look up how self custody and private keys work,” the company chided the government. “When the Canadian dollar becomes worthless, we will be here to serve you too.” Now, that’s gold. The government also learned lessons from the experience, so they will not be keeping the email details in future updates.

Edge wallet was able to respond even more directly to fascistic government requests.

Due to ongoing violence in Ottawa Canada’s capital, Chrystia Freiland has requested that the Emergencies Act be used to freeze accounts at various financial service companies. This includes those who have been linked to protestors occupying the area and those who provide funding for the protests but are not physically present.

Financial seizure, regardless of how popular the protests may be with people or not is something we must take seriously. It’s with great consideration that we would like to share our official response to the request that Canadian users’ Edge accounts be frozen:

This is the end of their story.

“And most importantly, we can’t, even if we wanted to.”

Very nice.

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Pluralist

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