What Do Human Freedom and Bitcoin Have in Common? Everything.
This post was written for Slovakia’s twentyone.world community
During 2023, I noticed that some of my favorite bitcoiners, people overflowing with personal inner integrity like Lyn Alden, Jeff Booth, and Jack Dorsey, were attending an international conference called the Oslo Freedom Forum. This is an annual conference that aims to create a space for dissidents, artists, journalists, and freedom fighters from around the world to meet and share experiences and tools that help them fight oppression in their home countries. It’s important to realize that 70% of humanity today lives under the oppression of totalitarian regimes. You read that correctly, 5.6 billion people are less free than you.
Because Bitcoin is a tool for economic freedom, which is an essential part of freedom itself, it rightfully has a place at this conference. That’s why for several years now, the Oslo Freedom Forum has been inviting bitcoiners from around the world to educate human rights activists about Bitcoin and show them how unstoppable, uncensorable, deflationary money can help them in their fight.
I myself am a bitcoiner (proud maxi) and at the same time deeply feel the injustice being done to the free human spirit around the world, so this year I decided to participate in Oslo Freedom Forum and draw inspiration, connection, and contacts with like-minded people.
The First Two Days
The first two days of the conference were focused on presentations by dissidents and freedom fighters from around the world. The entire program and recordings of the presentations are already available online. The presentations were very impressive and emotionally charged, and even though I’m a very, very tough and rough guy, I often couldn’t hold back tears.
Even though we might not perceive it this way in Slovakia, we belong to the developed world and our problems (even though the current situation is serious) are still nothing compared to what’s happening in the world. Yes, sometimes something reaches us through world news, we watch some documentary about life in a poorer country, and maybe we look up the ranking of countries by GDP per capita on Wikipedia, but such direct contact with people living in these regimes is much more powerful and at times overwhelming for me.
Each participant brought a strong story with them, but of all of them, I would highlight Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of the Rwandan genocide, who personally saved 1,268 people from brutal death, and whose story was portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda.
Bitcoin and Freedom of Speech
One of the main ideals and goals of Bitcoin is freedom, because the freedom to trade, that is, to communicate economically freely, is directly connected to, if not identical with, freedom of speech. And for this very reason, people like Jack Dorsey and Lyn Alden, who perceive bitcoin as a tool for economic liberation, are also looking for solutions on how to provide freedom of speech to people in such an unstoppable and uncensorable way as Bitcoin provides for economic communication.
In this conversation, they talk about Nostr, an uncensorable internet protocol that takes control of your communication away from companies like Meta, X, etc., and puts it in your hands. While these companies may share our ideals of freedom of speech, we must realize that they are subject to censorship pressures from states and cannot always resist them. In this conversation, they also warn about the dangers of algorithmic manipulation and how important it is to have the option to choose an algorithm that, for example, presents my daily news.
Financial Freedom Track
The third day had a separate, full-day track called the Financial Freedom Track, which was dedicated to a series of short presentations about how bitcoin is already helping today:
Conclusion
Bitcoin has different meanings for different people. In our relatively developed, wealthy, and safe society, it’s easy to narrow your interest in Bitcoin to just potential fiat profit, or philosophizing about monetary policy. Maybe it’s not entirely graspable for you yet, dear bitcoiner, or perhaps pre-coiner, but Bitcoin is a beacon of light, freedom, and truth for millions of people around the world.
And maybe you don’t perceive it today, but that darkness of authoritarian regimes is slowly creeping into societies where it was once unimaginable. Bitcoin is humanity’s only chance to live in freedom and peace. With every unit of your economic energy that you store on the Bitcoin network, you help not only yourself but millions of people around the world for whom Bitcoin is the only tool for economic communication.
Stack sats (buy Bitcoin) as if the future of you, your family, your country, your planet depended on it. Because it does.