According to Alex Gladstein, the director of strategic development at the Human Rights Foundation, Bitcoin’s decentralized nature makes it a powerful tool in the fight against corruption. In a recent interview, he explained that Bitcoin has the potential to limit the power of states with “collapsed democracies” by depriving them of the ability to control people.
Gladstein believes that Bitcoin can greatly prevent “tyrannical governments” from imposing their will on the people, specifically mentioning countries like Russia and China. These nations have not been successful in developing their cryptocurrency industries, making it increasingly challenging for them to exert control over their citizens.
In Gladstein’s view, Bitcoin is the key to restoring democracy, as it embodies values such as free speech, property rights, and open capital markets. In contrast, authoritarian countries seek to impose censorship, confiscation, and closed capital markets. Despite the Central Bank of Russia’s skepticism towards cryptocurrencies, the Russian government’s attitude towards the industry is becoming more tolerant. Legislators are working on bills to regulate mining and cryptocurrencies, and the State Duma of the Russian Federation recently adopted a bill that allows financial platforms to combine their activities with blockchain-based platforms that issue or exchange digital financial assets (DFA).
The Russian government is also considering mandatory identification of cryptocurrency exchange users to ensure that these platforms can operate legally in the country. It’s worth noting that in 2020, the Human Rights Foundation initiated a program to support developers who create solutions for anonymizing transactions in the Bitcoin network.