What if the state has decided to confiscate your bitcoins?

Bitcoin is a black market currency – Few people say it, but Bitcoin was only created to provide an alternative monetary system, which allows users around the world to bypass currency, banks and local politics. If our business is going rather calmly for the moment (price volatility aside), it is always good to consider future obstacles by studying those of the past.

1933 – US confiscates gold held by Americans

It was under Roosevelt’s presidency that the infamous Executive Order No. 6102 was born on April 5, 1933.
The goal? Provide relaxation to the banking sector who found himself in an emergency situation by enjoining the Americans to return all the gold they held in exchange for paper money.

Let us recall here, for the beauty of the story, that this measure follows two major events:

• La bankruptcy of the Bank of the United States in December 1930. Which, despite its name, was a private bank, of course, but remained one of the most important financial establishments in the country;
• What it is now customary to call the ” bank holiday “. Week of March 1933 pendant to which all US banks remained closed following an unprecedented liquidity crisis.

For whom was gold holder At the time, the situation was very simple. You return the precious metal to the Federal Reserve in exchange for greenbacks or go illegal.

Lare the penalties? Nothing less than 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. These same $10,000 at the time are worth, once inflation is corrected, nearly $250,000 currentprecision necessary to recontextualize the severity of this sanction.

Studies, adapted by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, while fear did its job. Nearly 22% of the gold held by individuals had been returned at the beginning of 1934.

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Similar confiscation orders in other countries

Perhaps, do you think that such an extreme measure can only be taken in the United States, land of excess.
This is unfortunately not the case, and if we will not dwell on all of them, Italy called for the return of gold in 1935 and France in 1936. Fortunately, the ban was short-lived in the land of lights. Indeed, citizens could again hold precious metals from March 1937.

The globalism of economic crises therefore did not wait until 2008, and you will have noticed the proximity dependent on the set of dates of these prohibitions. But, in 1930 as in 2010, the consequences of the errors of the financial and monetary systems fell on citizens and savers.

It is aware of these consequences that cause and of a system that regularly mows down those who, however, feed it, that Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin.

If you have read the white paper of Bitcoin, you know that the creation of the protocol was largely motivated by Satoshi’s desire to override trusted third parties and other intermediaries. Thus establishing a parallel economy operating on a peer-to-peer model and propelled by the beauty of an independent, impartial and apolitical computer system.

The control of each transaction by all the members of the network is the surest way to avoid crises of confidence. If everyone knows everything, controls everything, there is no longer any need to trust others. However, the liquidity crises experienced by the banking world are all due to a one-off lack of confidence. It spread and got out of control.

Of course, it is quite certain that lending more money than you have does not help establishment of a healthy economic situation. Faced with this observation, it is possible that we find ourselves faced with the following situation.

Bitcoin becomes illegal

Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. Bitcoin will be made illegal by some states. The latter will have first tried by all possible means (confiscatory taxation, excessive regulation) to discourage the use of the protocol, but overwhelmed by its success and under the guise of defending the monetary sovereignty of an already dying system, coercive measures will eventually be taken.

It is therefore from today that it is up to each of us to ask ourselves the following question.
What would I do then? Will I be one of those who return their tokens to the National Bank, or those who resist? And, if I wish to belong to the second category, what risks and penalties am I prepared for to face ? How to anticipate them, how to thwart them?

If these questions have never occurred to you, keep in mind that nothing is ever acquired. UN government threatened by a system it does not control will take actions that, without totally compromising it, could do a lot of harm to the development of Bitcoin.

Not-so-theoretical concerns

Remember, it’s the beginning of 2022. The Canadian government has taken emergency measures to block, without a prior court order, the bank accounts of participants in the “freedom convoy”.

It is therefore not so aberrant to think that one day, this same State could deem it illegal to hold crypto-assets if he considers that these digital jets cause a disturbance to public order. Or that they reflect the execution of illegal operations. Except that it is much more difficult to censor Bitcoin and prevent you from using it than to freeze access to your bank accounts.

Closer to home, the testimonials of investors and entrepreneurs engaged in cryptocurrency and who see their closed bank accounts manu militari multiplying.

More than ever, it is important to look into the question of your digital hygiene, the safety of your accounts and on the best methods of self-holding your digital assets.

And since the articles written by yours truly are largely guided by his reading, let us quote a question that Milton Friedman asked himself in his book “capitalism and freedom”: “ How can government, our creature, be prevented from becoming a monster that will destroy that very liberty for whose protection we have established it? “. I you let me think about it.

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