Protests throughout the world, in Hong Kong, Chile, France, the Middle East and elsewhere, are embracing the principles and products of cryptocurrencyin many cases without even knowing it.

Todays movements are made up of hundreds and thousands of protestors, groups of disparate individuals aligned around values and causes. The decentralized networks theyve adoptedreliant on technology rather than leaderscould ensure their longevity. It could also permanently alter the geopolitical landscape.

In the same way, blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is reliant on decentralized networks.

But just how closely aligned are these leaderless movements with the similarly decentralized blockchain and cryptocurrencies? And what impact are they having on the adoption of decentralized principlesand, ultimately, on the price and perception of crypto?

The Internet provides a backbone for 21st century rebellion, but is also its weakest link.

The Swiss Army Knife for modern day protesters is the smartphone; a communications tool thats also a camera, GPS and more besides. The killer app is private, encrypted social media and messaging apps such as Telegram, with its secret chat function.

These tools enable protestors to evade surveillance; form anonymous groups; post video footage; agree how and where to rally, and request additional supplies.

But, earlier this month, Iranian authorities showed how they can be defused.

Mass demonstrations against petrol rises, the result of US sanctions, turned violent but were quickly diffused when Iran pulled the plug on Internet connectivity for over 90% of the country.

Its not an easy thing to do. But regimes around the world, including those in Russia, have been busy retrofitting traditional private and decentralized networks with cooperation agreements, technical implants, or a combination of both, to give themselves more power over Internet access.

In both Russia and Iran, Telegram has been banned by authorities since last year. But Russian dissidents have managed to find ways around the ban, often using VPNsVirtual Private Networkswhich route an Internet connection through a different country. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has also proved adept at moving the companys servers to stay one step ahead of authorities.

Decentralized applications, dapps, are also becoming increasingly popular. Messaging apps Bridgefy and FireChat both work by creating a mesh network of users mobile phones offline, via Bluetooth. Messages are relayed from phone to phone until they reach their destination.

But the technology is still nascent and not practical in confrontational situations, say protestors. And its especially difficult for Iranians to access foreign servers and infrastructure because many companies ban them for fear of US sanctions.

One of the main attractions (and criticisms) of Bitcoin is that it can be used indiscriminately by anyone from protestors to terrorists to sanctioned regimes. Everyone from the Iranian regime, which has mined bitcoin to dodge sanctions, to Ukrainian protestors, who held up signs with QR codes during 2014s Maidan Square uprising in a bid to raise funds, has taken advantage of its censorship resistance.

Fundraising techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated to evade detection; the armed wing of Palestinian group Hamas reportedly uses a fresh digital wallet for each transaction. But for donations, even cryptocurrency is fallible. Payment processor BitPay was accused of blocking crypto donations to the Hong Kong Free Press for several weeks last October.

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Of course, being associated with funding for terrorist groups, and other violent organisations, doesnt do the image of cryptocurrencies any favours.

Nevertheless, Bitcoin proponents such as Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano, believe that the non-seizability of Bitcoin becomes ever more attractive in moments of geopolitical crisis.

Data for OTC (Over-the-counter) crypto trades from LocalBitcoins suggests that, during the early months of the Hong Kong protests, peer-to-peer trading increased. A further spike appears to coincide with the protests escalation, at the end of last month.

Libertarians point to events in troubled countries such as Chile, which is seeing widespread protests over long-standing economic injustice. ATMs reportedly ran out of cash there earlier this month. They argue that when people experience such measures, theyre more likely to sell local currency for bitcoin to escape the uncertainty surrounding the legacy markets. Essentially, it's a tool of freedom for people under tyranny and that's significant, Bitcoin advocate Jimmy Song told Decrypt back in September.

Song has been working with the non-profit Human Rights Foundation to teach activists how Bitcoin might be useful to them. Its a significant part of what Bitcoin is supposed to be. Its becoming a much bigger part of the human rights movement all around the world, he said.

But while enthusiasts might be quick to suggest that Bitcoin is acting as a safe haven for funds, or a protest tool in Hong Kong, analysts warn that reliance on a single source is unwise.

Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella Movement shaped the form of today's protest. IMAGE: Flickr

LocalBitcoins volumes are one indicator but they're hardly reflective of the full BTC market in any given region, Mati Greenspan, founder of the Quantum Economics newsletter, told Decrypt.

He said that investment funds and analysts are tracking protest movements and political instability as bellwethers of crypto price, but emphasized that economic stability remains the most important factor.

In countries where the local currency sees massive devaluation the propensity to hold bitcoin is much higher, he said. Correlations between buying activity and inflation in Venezuela, or political events in Argentina are more likely, he believes.

But thats assuming funds are accessible. In Lebanon, five weeks of anti-government protests were fuelled by anger at corruption, and bank accounts were frozen. Protestors there reported that digital assets are rarely useful as currency, since citizens were cut off from global exchange platforms.

Leaderless rebellion is not new, despite recent headlines. In the 1980s, during the last phase of the anti-apartheid struggle, black Africans evaded martial law by organizing in a cell-like structure. A major factor in the movements eventual success was the effective coordination of economic boycotts against white businesses by these so-called cells.

Similarly, in the ongoing Hong Kong protests, members of the protest movement made an early decision to eschew centralized leadership. The fact that all the leaders of the unsuccessful 2014 Umbrella movement protest were convictedand received sentences ranging from two to 16 monthsis still fresh in citizens minds.

But decentralized protest is mushrooming even in areas of the world where penalties for rebellion are far less severe. The Occupy movement over wealth inequality, which started with Occupy Wall Street, went viral in 2011, after thousands of protestors pitched tents in the heart of New York City.

Most recently, Extinction Rebellion (XR), a global, non-violent protest movement sparked by the lack of government action over climate change, mobilized hundreds of thousands to take part in civil disobedience.

Decentralized organization gives you a great deal of autonomy, which I think appeals to people who become involved in protests and activism because they tend to be protesting against authority figures and rigid hierarchical structures anyway, Steve Tooze, a local organizer for XR, told Decrypt.

He believes that, like himself, many of those joining the movement have a minimal history of activism. I think people are desperatein our current climate of growing authoritarianismto feel empowered, and able to have agency of their own, and I think XR gives that to them, he said.

Tooze praised the fluid and transparent nature of the movement, which seeks to adhere to a detailed constitution, empowering anybody to act so long as they agree to its core principles, But he admitted that the process of reaching consensus on which actions to pursue could be time consuming and frustrating.

But the biggest challenge facing XR, he contends, is the authorities determined persecution of figures perceived to be XR leaders. Roger Hallam, one of the movements founders, is seen as something of a driving force behind it. Last week, he was accused of anti-Semitism for comments he made about the Holocaust, and disowned by the German faction of the group.

Earlier this year, XR members also disowned a controversial plan he was involved in, to fly drones and disrupt holiday flights at Heathrow, the UKs busiest airport. The consensus was that it crossed the line of non-violent protest.

But other controversial actions have gone ahead. During one rush-hour protest at Londons Canning Town, protestors attempting to stop trains were dragged down from their roofs by angry commuters.

Tooze said that the Canning Town action was massively controversial, but that, like other major actions, it was subject to extensive debate beforehand. He emphasized that, in 99.9% of cases, there were no problems, but explained that if a group of people decide theyre going to carry out an action, if there are three of you, and you adhere to the principles, you can act in the name of XR.

XRs decision-making structures, the connection between loose groups of rebels, and ways to make communications more effective, are all under review, said Tooze. The movement is currently processing an extensive survey among its membership, which will inform the future choices it makes.

Its very difficult for mass movements to prevent unwelcome or unhelpful actions or words by minorities among the memberswords or actions which can then be used by enemies to judge or condemn the whole movement, Carne Ross, author of The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century, told Decrypt.

The only recourse is to emphasize, to the press, that the minority do not represent the majority, even if its inevitable that those who use violence or provocative words will get more attention, he said.

He added that it was legitimate, in his opinion, to exclude and publicly condemn those who endanger the movement by negative actions or words. A former British diplomat turned anarchist, Ross contends that successful and long-standing examples of leaderless rebellion do exist, and can provide a template for the future.

As an example, he points to the forums that take the place of leadership in Rojava, a region in Northern Syria which revolted against the regime in 2012 and achieved de-facto autonomy as a result. He contends that, thanks to modern communications and social media, such movements can scale with unprecedented speed and range to a massive extentthats what is so exciting about them.

Technology, he said, means you dont need a leader to disseminate strategy, which can spread horizontally. And, while authorities can turn off the Internet, its not a viable long-term strategy.

By their nature, communication systems like WhatsApp are decentralized, said Ross. That characteristic of decentralization gives the network its powerboth as a tool to disseminate information and tactics widely, but also to protect users against the targeting of leaders.

He also believes that, should a revolution develop into a new and more democratic way of doing things, a new way of government, then a role for cryptocurrencies should be anticipated.

But not everyone agrees. In his book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook, historian Niall Ferguson, warns that a Libertarian utopiaof free, equal and interconnected netizensis a romantic ideal, not borne out by the past experience of history.

Vast, new networks have been made possible but, like the networks of the past, they are hierarchical in structure, with small numbers of super-connected hubs towering over the mass of sparsely connected nodes, writes Ferguson.

The powers that lend leaderless protest its force (such as decentralized networks on the Internet) can just as easily be co-opted by the less benign forces they seek to overthrow, he suggests.

So advocates of decentralization through blockchain should keep an eye on how decentralized protestand the authorities' response to itis evolving.

Originally posted here:
How Bitcoin points to the future of decentralized protest - Decrypt

China announced that it was introducing facial scans for mobile phone users in anattempt to further monitor its citizens to ensure real identities are used online. We asked if the proposed Crypto Yuan will also be a tool for mass surveillance.

Well in terms of bitcoin price that week could have gone a lot worse. Although of course, it could also have gone a lot better.

The week opened at around $7200 and continued its downward trend from the end of the week before. Prices dipped to as low as $6600, prompting some to forecast further losses. Bitcoin had other ideas though and bounced straight back up to the $7.2k level.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin protocol received an upgrade, which was proclaimed nuclear war proof.

Prices then started to pump midweek, heading up to $7.5k before eventually topping out at around $7800.

As the weekend came through, gains started to trickle away, down to around $7.3k. However, one analyst thinks that we will soon be trading back at the $8k level.

Dovey Wan suggested that perhaps the overarching price movements of the whole year were closely entwined with the Chinese PlusToken scam.

China-based IDAX exchange sought to allay concerns about withdrawal issues earlier in the week, claiming it was down to the firm leaving the mainland Chinese market. However, it later transpired that the CEO had gone missing with the keys to the cold-wallets.

South Korean exchange, Upbit, reported an irregular withdrawal of $51 million in ETH. Investigations are ongoing, but the company vowed to cover the loss.

Bakkt continued to post record volumes, with 3151 BTC, worth $23 million traded on Wednesday alone.

Mining manufacturer, Bitmains Jihan Wu continued to assert himself following his recent return. This week he announced two new Antminer 17 models, with improved hash rate and efficiency.

Bitmain was also involved in some court action this week, as they tried to get a case against them by United Corp dismissed.

Rumors emerged that Russia was finally to clarify its stance on cryptocurrency, with expectations that it would follow Chinas anti-crypto route. However, a top official conceded that it would be hard to enforce a de-facto ban on cryptocurrency in the country.

What was your favorite bitcoin and crypto news story of the week? Let us know in the comments below!

Image via Shutterstock

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Sunday Digest: Bitcoin Price And Other Crypto News - Bitcoinist

Bitcoins price may be evaporating, but Wall Street players are embracing it like never before. The owner of the New York Stock Exchange has begun Bitcoin futures trading, Fidelity is expanding its Bitcoin custody business, PricewaterhouseCoopers is auditing crypto funds, Davis Polk & Wardwell is giving them legal advice, and Marsh & McLennan is helping companies get insurance. All the boldfaced names are on board.

Those developments would seem to be bullish for the digital currency. And yet, Bitcoin has been languishing, and not just in terms of its price, which is down 16% over the past month, to $7,700. The digital currency simply isnt useful, and there is no clear path to it getting there.

There needs to be greater utility, said Adam White, the chief operating officer of Bakkt, the cryptocurrency custodian launched by NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange (ticker: ICE). White was speaking at a conference put on by a New York company called BlockWorks Group that aims to educate investors about cryptocurrencies.

Theres an argument that Bitcoin is a store of value, and acts like digital gold, and that is its use case, White said. That may be true. Its our thesis that the size of that pie will never be big enough to justify the aspirations and the opportunities that this technology brings.

A recent survey of crypto and blockchain CEOs and founders connected to venture-capital firm Digital Currency Group came to a similar conclusion about Bitcoins use cases. Of those leaders, 71% expect Bitcoin will mainly be used as a store of value over the next five years, and another 7.6% say it wont be useful for anything.

Bakkt is trying to push Bitcoin into the real world, working with Starbucks (SBUX) to let people pay with it at the register. But even that experiment shows Bitcoins limitations. When the service launches next year, Starbucks wont actually be accepting Bitcoinsoftware will turn it into cash before it hits the companys balance sheet.

Others have similar hopes for larger adoption. Konstantin Richter, CEO of blockchain company Blockdaemon, said at the BlockWorks conference that the biggest impact for all of us would be somebody like Square accepting Bitcoin for payments. That would probably double the price of everything. But Square (SQ) already tried to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin in 2014, before pulling the plug because of a lack of interest. Despite now allowing users of its Cash app to invest in Bitcoin, it hasnt brought Bitcoin back for merchants.

Wall Street has built a robust structure around cryptocurrency. The walls, electricity, and pipes are secure, but the building remains a shell where few want to live. In part, this is simply a matter of timing. The infrastructure had not been there in 2017, when Bitcoin was having its moment, doubling monthly and drawing millions of new retail investors. The washout that followed drove many of those investors out.

There may be no way to convince those investors to crawl back in given the rout they experienced in 2018, when Bitcoin lost 70% of its value. But some fund managers think there is another demographic that will soon get comfortable with crypto.

If you think about the wealth of this country, its in the hands of 50- to 80-year-olds, not 20- to 30-year-olds, said Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, a crypto-focused merchant bank. We havent had this group participate in a big way yet.

A Galaxy affiliate introduced two new funds aimed at that crowd in November, with one demanding a minimum investment of $25,000. Fidelity, Bloomberg, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, and Davis Polk are all on board to track and provide custody for the products. For the first time we can actually create a fund that has institutional service providers, institutional feel, Novogratz said.

Still, one challenge to getting those 50-to-80-year-olds involved is that Bitcoin remains subject to remarkable volatility, with price moves that can be difficult to explain. Optimists say the idiosyncratic moves show that Bitcoin is uncorrelated to the rest of the market. But its one thing to invest in an uncorrelated asset, and quite another to invest in an irrational one.

Despite the pedigree of the firms now backing crypto, Bitcoins drastic price moves continue to rattle the market, including an 18% plunge in a matter of hours on Sept. 24. Explanations for the moves often seem pasted-on after the fact. People do try to reverse engineer it to link it back to an event thats perhaps caused it, says Simon Peters, an analyst with brokerage eToro. He adds that Bitcoins recent weakness has been caused by a lack of demand. Miners are looking to offload Bitcoin on exchanges, but they arent finding enough buyers, he says. Investors may be rattled by Chinas decision to ban many cryptocurrency exchanges.

Even with the recent drop, Bitcoin nears the end of 2019 in stronger shape, its price having doubled since January. In its 10th year of trading, the digital currency hit several significant milestones and drew in major new playersmost prominently, Facebook (FB) announced its Libra project to create a new digital currency that would make payments cheap and easy around the world.

Going forward, it will need a new narrative. Bitcoins most distinctive attribute is that it allows money to be transferred over the internet by people who wish to remain anonymous. Proponents call this censorship-resistance, but it also means that Bitcoin is used to fund things like child pornography rings, blackmail schemes against local governments, and subverting elections. Its no surprise that Bitcoin made several cameos in the Mueller report.

Bitcoin remains an elegant technology, with real potential. But to catch the eye of those 50-to-80-year-olds who havent yet invested, it will need a clearer purpose beyond just Wall Streets approval.

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com

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Bitcoin Has Wall Streets Love. But a Lack of Utility Means It Doesnt Have Investors. - Barron's

Reports of bitcoin's demise may have been exaggerated but everyone who's currently holding bitcoin is going to die one day (probably).

What happens to our digital remnants when we die has been a problem the likes of Facebook and Google have already had to grapple withbut digital currency like bitcoin makes the problem far more pressing.

Now, U.K.-based Coincover, founded just last year, has teamed up with Palo Alto-headquartered bitcoin storage company BitGo to offer bitcoin and cryptocurrency willshoping to solve the problem of what happens to your bitcoin when you die.

Bitcoin has only been around for just over 10 years but it will likely still be around long after ... [+] we're gone.

When access to a bitcoin wallet is gone, the bitcoin is gone forever. Coincover reckons around 4 million bitcoin (worth some $30 billion at current prices) has been lost as a result of people dying without letting their next of kin know how to access it.

And as bitcoin and crypto become more mainstream (eventually), the number of bitcoin being lost forever into the ether is only like to rise.

"As bitcoin becomes more mainstream and its value continues to increase, considering how to manage it as part of an estate planning exercise is becoming increasingly difficult," said David Janczewski, Coincover's cofounder and chief executive, adding that, with bitcoin, "theres no bank manager to ask, and no one can break in for you."

Earlier this year, in perhaps the worst case of posthumously lost bitcoin, the chief executive of Canadian bitcoin and crypto exchange Quadriga, Gerald Cotten, died suddenly while on vacation in India, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies apparently unrecoverable.

Bitcoin's epic 2017 rally meant many bitcoin holders became overnight millionaires, with many ... [+] worried about what will happen to their bitcoin when they died.

Though Coincover's service does little more than hand out pseudo-wallet keys to people's next of kin, bitcoin and cryptocurrency remains so clunky and tricky to use that most spouses, children, or parents of bitcoin holders would be unable to recover it on their own.

It may be that as crypto and digital asset services improve there won't be a need for this kind of service, but for now those with extensive bitcoin and crypto holdings are understandably worried.

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Bitcoin Isnt Dead But One Day You Will Be - Forbes

Bitcoin's epic 2017 bull run was at least partly inspired by interest in bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain from the world's biggest banks and financial institutions.

This year it was the turn of tech companies to boost bitcoin. After falling sharply in 2018, the bitcoin price rallied hard in the first half of 2019 due to tech companies from social media giant Facebook to iPhone-maker Apple eyeing bitcoin and crypto.

Now, with the likes of Tesla's Elon Musk and Twitter's Jack Dorsey talking up bitcoin, PayPal chief executive Dan Schulman has revealed he's a bitcoin believer.

PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman said he holds bitcoin and only bitcoin.

"Yes, only [bitcoin]," Schulman told Fortune magazine in response to being asked whether he holds any cryptocurrencies.

Schulman's attitude to bitcoin and crypto reflects the wider market, with many increasingly confident bitcoin will remain the largest and most popular cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin's dominance, its value compared to the whole cryptocurrency market, has risen this year as so-called altcoins are sold off. Bitcoin dominance now sits at around 65%, up from around 50% at the beginning of the year, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Schulman, who was speaking to the magazine after he pulled PayPal out of Facebook's troubled libra cryptocurrency project, also confirmed earlier reports the company has teams working on blockchain and cryptocurrency.

"We think theres a lot of promise to blockchain technology," Schulman said. "Its intriguing to us, but it really needs to do something that the traditional rails cant do."

"On the crypto side, its still very volatile, and therefore, we dont have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins.

"That doesnt mean that I dont think crypto is an interesting idea ... more commodity-like than it is cash-like right now. But you can think of use cases in different countries and different places where it can be more stable than the alternatives."

Many in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry were excited by Schulman's revelation, taking it as an endorsement of bitcoin and its potential.

"PayPal CEO owns bitcoin. Thats it. No other crypto. Only bitcoin," said crypto investor and co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, Anthony Pompliano, via Twitter, adding a fire emoji.

The bitcoin price was sent sharply higher this year as some of the world's biggest technology ... [+] companies began to develop their own bitcoin rivals.

In June, PayPal was revealed to be one of Facebook's 28 founding members of the Libra Association but the company backed out in October along with payments rivals Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe.

Facebook, the world's largest social media network that includes messaging app WhatsApp and image-based Instagram,is scrambling to make its June 2020 launch date for its bitcoin rival libraagainstmounting regulatory scrutiny and internal strife.

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Move Over Jack Dorsey And Elon Musk, Theres A New Bitcoin Believer In Silicon Valley - Forbes