This week Russian Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom) announced an immediate ban of Telegram messenger in order to tackle terrorism, after the company refused to hand over user information. In response, CEO Pavel Durov said that Telegram will use BTC to fund proxies and VPNs that will allow users to bypass the ban: “To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally.”