• darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    11 days ago

    Yep it’s just sanctions tactics turned inwards.

    There’s no dramatic images of dozens of people being marched off to black sites never to be seen again. There’s no court drama because the government has long had assumed great latitudes in controlling money, doing interdiction on it, and forcing the injured parties to positively prove otherwise in courts in long, expensive, boring, hard, up-hill processes.

    But it’s a chilling effect just the same. And it clogs the gears of the opposition, it makes the lives of the leadership hard when say they can’t access banking services because their risk profile is too high or else it’s illegal because of these restrictions on them. It puts a price on associating with these groups by leading to contamination and tainting of your own group so others tend to avoid touching or helping or interacting (again sanctions tactics, classic).

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 days ago

        Bitcoin will not help you. Half of the reason places like Coinbase are allowed to operate us because they regularly turn over their transaction data to the government when asked to. On top of that, Bitcoin is literally a ledger of transactions. All it takes is one person not using a secure transaction and the whole thing is open to scrutiny and can be dug into.

        • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 days ago

          Cash is king for a reason. Gift cards and burner accounts are ways to get around those kind of sanctions but yeah, it does make life horribly difficult when some places don’t even do cash for rent sometimes.