Financial Censorship: 5 Global Cases and How Crypto Can Help You Avoid It | HackerNoon

There are institutions that you trust with your money. Banks, digital wallets, insurance firms, investment companies, and more. However, there’s a fact not that harmless about it: you open an account there, but the total control of the internal infrastructure is in the hands of those businesses. Ultimately, they can limit or freeze your funds, not to mention sell your personal data to others. They can also selectively deny their services, not always for valid reasons. That’s financial censorship, and it’s very real.

Financial censorship happens when individuals, groups, or organizations are blocked from accessing or using financial services, like bank accounts or payment platforms, usually because of political, legal, or social reasons. It can involve freezing funds, stopping transactions, or banning access to money as a way to control or silence people.

If you assume this only occurs in dictatorial countries, you’re sorely mistaken. It’s happened all around the world, in supposedly free and democratic countries, and against a wide variety of online platforms and organizations. We’ll explore some cases here, and what we can do to really own our money.

WikiLeaks (2010)

WikiLeaks is an organization founded by the renowned cypherpunk Julian Assange, dedicated to publishing classified documents, including sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables. Its mission is to promote transparency by exposing government and corporate misconduct through the release of secret information. This has led to global controversy and legal challenges for the organization and its founder.

In 2010, WikiLeaks faced a major financial blockade after releasing thousands of U.S. government documents. Payment processors like Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal cut off donations to the platform, severely impacting its ability to operate. This blockade caused WikiLeaks to lose a significant portion of its funding, forcing it to shift focus toward fundraising efforts to survive.

As a result, WikiLeaks turned to decentralized cryptocurrencies to bypass these financial restrictions. These coins provided an alternative way for supporters to donate without relying on traditional financial systems, allowing WikiLeaks to continue its operations despite the blockade.

Hong Kong Protests (2019)

Hong Kong, as a special administrative region, and communist China, have very different legal systems. Hong Kong follows a system based on British law, with more protections for individual rights and freedoms. China, however, has a stricter, government-controlled legal system. That’s why the 2019 Hong Kong bill to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance caused millions to take to the streets in mass protests.

This bill would have allowed the extradition of people from Hong Kong to mainland China for certain serious crimes, like murder or rape. However, many people were worried it could be used for political reasons or against anyone critical of the Chinese government (pro-democrats), which caused widespread fear. There was a widely known police misconduct back then, but it didn’t end with that.

Today, many ex-protesters, even after serving several years in prison, are facing financial censorship too. Several well-known Hong Kong banks have closed the protestors’ previous accounts without proper explanations, and now are denying them to open new ones. Without access to basic banking services, they struggle to find jobs or apply for welfare, making reintegration into society challenging. At the very least, the threatened bill was formally withdrawn the same year, so the protests worked.

Nigeria’s End SARS Protests (2020)

The End SARS protests in Nigeria began in October 2020 as a response to widespread police brutality, particularly by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which was notorious for harassment, extortion, and violence against citizens. The protests quickly gained momentum, attracting international attention and solidarity from various human rights organizations, highlighting the need for accountability and systemic change in Nigeria’s policing practices.

As the events escalated, organizers faced significant challenges, including financial censorship. Many activists relied on crowdfunding platforms and banks to raise money for protest supplies, medical aid, and legal support. However, after the Nigerian government imposed restrictions on these fundraising efforts, some platforms froze accounts and halted donations, claiming they were violating local regulations.

In response to these challenges, activists turned to alternative funding sources, including cryptocurrencies, to bypass the financial restrictions imposed by traditional banking systems. This way, they could receive donations without relying on banks or government oversight. Within the same month, the SARS was announced to be disbanded. Still, protesters in Nigeria persist due to their hard living conditions and government abuses, and cryptocurrencies are still used as a funding tool.

Protests in Belarus (2020)

These protests erupted following a presidential election that many believed was fraudulent, leading to widespread demonstrations against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. In response to the protests, authorities unleashed systematic violence against demonstrators, resulting in numerous injuries and legal penalties for participants. Activists quickly mobilized to support those affected, establishing fundraising efforts to provide financial assistance for medical treatment and fines imposed on protesters.

However, the Belarusian government retaliated by ordering banks to freeze donations intended for these humanitarian efforts. The BY_help fund, initiated by activist Andrei Leonchik, raised substantial funds from small donations, but officials labeled these contributions as support for anti-government actions. As a result, the government launched investigations into Leonchik and targeted the fund, seizing over £415,000 meant to aid victims of police brutality and repression.

The crackdown not only limited financial support for those injured or fined but also led to significant hardship for individuals with frozen accounts. Many found themselves unable to access their funds, leaving them struggling to meet their basic needs after enduring violence during the protests. The government’s actions showcased a strategic use of financial censorship to undermine the solidarity movement and suppress dissent within the country.

Tornado Cash (2022)

Tornado Cash is a decentralized cryptocurrency mixing service that enhances user privacy by obscuring transaction histories on Ethereum. By pooling together funds and redistributing them, it allows users to conduct transactions without easily tracing their origins. This service is often used to enhance anonymity for individuals wanting to protect their financial privacy for any reason, like their own well-being against potential persecutors.

In August 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, claiming it facilitated money laundering for criminals, including hackers. This action led to a blockade of the platform, preventing many users from accessing its services and taking down its domains. The sanctioning of Tornado Cash marked a significant instance of financial censorship, as it restricted users’ ability to use a privacy-enhancing tool and raised concerns about government overreach into decentralized finance.

Tornado Cash is notable as one of the first software platforms to be sanctioned by a government, highlighting the ongoing tension between regulatory authorities and the push for privacy in the cryptocurrency space. Its founders are now facing legal challenges, and the platform itself is one step away from full censorship.

A Solution in Crypto

As we can see, our online and financial freedom isn’t something we can take for granted. Many parties are constantly trying to apply censorship everywhere, but luckily, we have some freedom tools to rely on. Cryptocurrencies are, of course, one of them. Unlike traditional money, which is always minted and controlled by banks and governments, cryptos are decentralization-focused, and their only ruler is the code with which they were built.

It’s widely known that if you own your private keys (the only way to access and control a crypto wallet), then no one can manipulate your money but yourself… and the network’s middlemen. The level of censorship resistance and decentralization varies from network to network. That’s why Tornado Cash has faced that scale of suppression: Ethereum, with its middlemen, doesn’t provide a high level of censorship resistance.

On the other hand, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structures with no middlemen to approve transactions, like Obyte, have proved to be more decentralized and censorship-resistant. By using tokens and data inside this network, users can make direct peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries, including miners or “validators”.

This decentralization enhances resistance to financial censorship, as there are no middlemen that can block or freeze transactions at any stage, and users retain full control over their funds all the time with their private keys. This is how you can actually own your money!