Bitcoin Brings Activists And Entrepreneurs Together In Oslo
The Oslo Freedom Forum welcomes activists from around the world.
Human rights defenders met with Bitcoin
Bitcoin
“Bitcoin has the potential to, in a very practical way, help people who we refer to as high-risk people,” Mogashni Naidoo, a bitcoin user experience (UX) researcher at the Bitcoin Design Community, said in her presentation at the conference. “I believe that in creating these applications, we need to connect with the humans actually using [them].”
Naidoo referred to her process of interviewing the users of the products such as bitcoin wallets that she and her team design before even conceptualizing what the product might look like.
“If we come up with solutions before we really understand the problem, then we’re only hypothesizing,” Naidoo added.
Seth For Privacy, the Head of Marketing and Strategy at Foundation, a bitcoin hardware wallet company, takes a similar approach and came to the conference to gain a better understanding of what activists need when it comes to bitcoin.
“It’s really invigorating to have these conversations,” he told me in an interview. “They help us to see problems that people on the ground are having that we don’t notice in the Bitcoin Twitter bubble or the places where it’s just Bitcoiners congregating and talking.”
Seth For Privacy, an advocate for privacy in bitcoin transactions, as his pseudonym implies, also mentioned that the conference reminded him to keep privacy front of mind when designing new products.
“Seeing people who actually need bitcoin as freedom money is the best catalyst for us to think more deeply about bitcoin privacy, to assess where bitcoin privacy is right now and the ways we can make it better,” he added.
Privacy In Focus
Privacy in bitcoin transactions was a notable theme at the event.
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice arresting the founders of Samourai Wallet, a privacy-focused bitcoin wallet, many at the conference were worried about the future of such technology.
Anna Chekhovich, Financial Director at Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, expressed her concern on a panel.
“If the chilling effect on Bitcoin developers grows, it can damage freedom fighters globally,” Chekhovich said.
Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer for the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), the organization that puts on the Oslo Freedom Forum, stressed that HRF has long been committed to helping preserve privacy for activists.
“HRF’s focus on Bitcoin has always included privacy,” Gladstein told me in an interview. “It’s been very foundational for us, because activists get spied on all the time.”
He went on to share how HRF has funded projects that help preserve bitcoin transaction privacy such as ecash protocol Cashu and bitcoin desktop wallet Sparrow Wallet.
“We’re very proud to have supported a lot of privacy technology over the years,” Gladstein added.
The Challenge Of Educating Westerners About Bitcoin
A number of the speakers at the event were from the Global South — a term that encompasses Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia — or under authoritarian regimes who shared how they intuitively understand bitcoin because it provides financial utility and access that traditional monetary and financial systems in their respective countries don’t.
This was in contrast with some of the attendees from Western countries—jurisdictions governed by democratically-elected leaders that have highly functional financial systems—who still struggle to see the need for something like bitcoin.
“It’s even harder to educate in Western countries than in African countries or elsewhere where people get bitcoin very quickly because they need a tool that helps them to send money in and out the country or have the freedom to pay for something that maybe the government doesn’t want [them to pay for],” Crack The Orange and Bitcoin For Fairness founder Anita Posch told me in an interview.
Posch has traveled to a number of African countries including Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ghana to teach activists and everyday people alike about bitcoin. She hosted multiple sessions at the Oslo Freedom Forum in which she shared her knowledge about how to use bitcoin privately, while consistently highlighting the fact that bitcoin is a critical tool for activists.
“It’s very, very important to get the message around that Bitcoin is a tool that enforces human rights,” she told me.
