To prevent such abuses we share six messages while meeting with #EU and #US policymakers:
📌As human rights defenders, we work with very sensitive information, and financial information is the most sensitive information.
📌Authoritarian regimes and dictatorships use this information both domestically and transnationally to destroy activists, journalists, women's rights organizations, and #LGBT rights organizations.
📌Banking privacy doesn't exist any more: personally I, Open Dialogue Foundation and members of #BTC Coalition testified to the EU and US institutions about such abuses.
📌#Bitcoin and self-custody privacy-protecting payment instruments/wallets are the only tools we can use to uphold human rights.
📌In seven reports we documented how authoritarian regimes use their financial institutions to circumvent sanctions to support each other and avoid accountability for human rights violations.
📌Bitcoin blockchain technology #SimpleProof is an example of how bitcoin can help protect election results from fraud and malicious #AI influence (#Guatemala 's case).
📍Solutions:
▪️G7 policymakers should use neutral regulatory language when it comes to #freedomtech, #bitcoin, privacy payment/crowdfunding instruments.
▪️G7 policymakers should review travel rule and stop sharing financial intelligence knowledge with authoritarian governments to prevent abuses.
More recommendations in our submission to FinCEN:
https://en.odfoundation.eu/a/724918,submission-to-fincen-us-digital-asset-aml-act/
quoting note1mzn…hyknAuthoritarian governments can de-bank human rights activists at a moment’s notice.
For these activists, #Bitcoin is a money of last resort.
My first piece for Forbes Digital Assets.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frankcorva/2024/03/06/how-bitcoin-can-be-a-tool-for-human-rights-activists/?sh=3dceccb02d74