Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said the Canadian government’s efforts to block the flow of money to trucker protesters in Canada illustrate the reason why cryptocurrencies exist.
“If truckers are blocking roads and it undermines the economy, fine – it’s illegal. But when the government doesn’t enforce laws and doesn’t give people a chance to protect themselves, and banks deprive people of their financial livelihoods without due process, this is exactly an example of how decentralized technology complicates such processes,” Buterin said.
He added that cryptocurrency is not so much a radical technology as a restorative one.
“It’s not about lawlessness. In a sense, it’s about restoring the rule of law,” he said.
He said the government and police can still act legally and prosecute suspects in the usual ways, without involving financial intermediaries.
“This concept of prosecuting intermediaries and using intermediaries to get around all this is dangerous. Having decentralized alternatives for intermediaries is a good way to limit the potential damage,” Buterin said.
This week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government invoked seldom-used emergency powers to quell trucker protests. Banks and other financial service providers were allowed to freeze or suspend accounts linked to protesters without a court order.
Supporters of the truckers tried to circumvent the bans by collecting donations in cryptocurrency. In turn, the government blacklisted a number of cryptocurrency addresses.