“The state is any entity that can retrospectively forgive a crime. If you forgive a murder, you get an army. If you forgive an assault, you get the police. If you forgive a theft, you get taxes. And this notion that there is the sovereign ability to change the rules for a limited number of people and grant them licenses to do things that would otherwise be criminal gives you a very clear definition of the State The State is what washes you. hands when you do something that is intrinsically wrong. @off leash
The recent imprisonment of the developers of the Samourai wallet implies a new attack by the US government on privacy, financial freedom and especially the use of cash.
They accuse Samurai owners of carrying out unlicensed money transfers and failing to adhere to draconian measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
First, they are accused of money laundering, a crime that in any libertarian legal system would not be considered a crime. In any system of social organization, whether minarchist, capitalist, libertarian, anarchist, agorist or any other moderately rational form, for there to be a crime, there must be a victim. In other words, it is not permissible to punish someone unless they have victimized another person. For there to be a victim, there must be non-consensual harm to another person. Only communist or pro-communist systems can tolerate the exaggerated fascism of punishing individuals even if they have never harmed anyone.
The crime of money laundering according to current law essentially consists of the action of concealing the illicit origin of funds obtained through illegal activities by seeking to (illegally) introduce this money into the legal financial system to give the impression that it comes from legitimate activities. That is to say, a crime without prejudice. In other words, an act that obviously should not be punishable. It is even an action that deserves to be rewarded. Isn’t the “criminal” who decides to use his money to acquire goods and services that do not harm third parties helping society as a whole? Does society benefit from preventing the use of money by criminals? Why does the State promote the criminalization of an absolutely harmless activity like the use of money when it has already prohibited activities that are harmful to third parties, which make someone a criminal? Don't voluntary disclosure programs or amnesty programs promote exactly the same action as the crime of money laundering, except that in this context the behavior is legal? So, given that money laundering laws sporadically accept this action, why not always accept it? And if the actions accepted by money laundering laws (essentially the same as money laundering) harm society, why are they allowed? Either money laundering really does no harm and should not be illegal, or money laundering laws harm society and therefore should be illegal..
On the other hand, the practice of terrorism can be defined as the exercise of domination over others based on terror. Therefore, terrorist financing is financial assistance to an entity dedicated to dominating others based on the terror transmitted. Both in the case of Samourai Wallet and in that of Tornado Cash, Silk Road and many others like it, the state has failed to demonstrate financial assistance to the suspected terrorists it claims to be fighting. If we really want to fight the financing of terrorism, we must start by fighting tax collection and money printing.. Key financial instruments that contribute to the economy of the only proven terrorist. There is no doubt that in cases like the three mentioned above, and many others, the state arrests people in order to strike fear into other promoters of similar businesses.
Finally, it should be noted that the State has no legitimacy to issue and control the licenses and permits that are inherent in every man by his own human nature. In any moderately rational system of social organization, the private actions of men which do not affect third parties cannot be subject to state regulations. If one person owns a lake and allows another to fish on it, the state has nothing to do with it, neither “granting” nor taking away rights, in this example “fishing licenses”. In the same vein, there is no room for state intervention if a person wishes to offer the money transfer service to other people who accept it voluntarily and who are not not victims since they have not suffered harm or filed a claim against this person.
Fortunately, Bitcoin fixes all of this by removing government funding and opening up the possibility of transmitting value in a decentralized, peer-to-peer way, without intermediaries. But the path to hyperbitcoinization is not and will not be without obstacles. The quest to maintain the status quo and gain maximum control over individuals is not something the Leviathan will lose without a fight. In the meantime, many innocent people will pay the price for the audacity to engage in activities not expressly approved by the world's masters. But I am convinced that ultimately the battle for freedom will be won by humanity as a whole. We are better than them in every way, we produce more, we are smarter, more creative and more resilient. And although each individual's hand-to-hand combat against the State is physically lost by the former, as in the case of Samurai Wallet; being distributed and being far more numerous than them, in the long run the battle will be won thanks to the impenetrable walls that Bitcoin and cryptography help us build.
This is a guest post from Camilo JdL. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.