Key facts:
Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan politician opposed to the government of Nicolás Maduro.
The letter was signed by Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation.
A group of 21 human rights (DD. HH.) activists and defenders, among which the Venezuelan Leopoldo López and the bitcoiner Alex Gladstein stand out, sent a letter to the Congress of the United States (USA), in the that establish a position in favor of bitcoin (BTC), a currency that has allowed it to “give refuge” in countries with broken economies.
The activists say in the letter, available on the Financial Inclusion website, that bitcoin “provides financial inclusion and empowerment because it is open source and permissionless.” Also, offers “unprecedented” access to the global economy for people “in countries like Nigeria, Turkey or Argentina, where local currencies are collapsing, breaking up or being cut off from the outside world.”
The figure of Leopoldo López among the signatories of the letter to the US Congress draws attention, being a Venezuelan politician who was imprisoned from 2014 until his (assisted) release in 2019.
López has been a harsh critic of the ruling Chavismo in Venezuela, promoting protest actions against the socialist ruler. In 2014, he promoted a series of demonstrations that resulted in the death of at least 43 Venezuelans.
After escaping from house arrest in April 2019, López traveled to Spain, where he settled with his wife, human rights activist Lilian Tintori, and their children.
From that country he has promoted an entire campaign against the government of Maduro, which he describes as a dictatorship, because he kept him imprisoned in a military prison in Venezuela for more than three years.
Your relationship with bitcoin could answer your relationship with the human rights defender, Thor Halvorssen Mendoza, who is the president of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), where the bitcoiner Alex Gladstein serves as CEO. This organization is close to the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the past, it has awarded scholarships in satoshis to developers, as we have reported in CriptoNoticias.
Bitcoin gave shelter to our compatriots
The activists attest that “when the currency catastrophes hit Cuba, Afghanistan and Venezuela, bitcoin and other currencies”, such as stablecoins or stable currencies, “gave refuge to our compatriots”, revealing that they have used BTC “to help people at risk when other options have failed.”
“We write to urge an open-minded and empathetic approach to the monetary tools that play an increasingly important role in the lives of people facing political repression and economic hardship.”
DD defenders. H H. in favor of Bitcoin.
The letter was also signed by the Mexican senator Indira Kempis, the Cuban activist Ricardo Herrero and the aforementioned Gladstein.
Response to the anti-bitcoin letter
The 21 activists (some who participated in the Oslo Freedom Forum) sent the letter to the United States congressmen in response to the letter that a group of critics also sent to the US legislaturewhere they stated that cryptocurrencies are “unproven” and not a solution to economic problems.
For human rights defenders, «almost all authors of the anti-cryptocurrency letter come from countries with stable currenciesfree speech, and strong property rights.”
“Users of dollars and euros most likely have not experienced an extreme devaluation of the currency or the cold control of the dictatorship. For most in the West, the horrors of monetary colonialism, misogynistic financial policy, frozen bank accounts, exploitative remittance companies, and an inability to connect with the global economy may be distant ideas. For most of us and our communities, and for most people around the world, they are daily realities. If there were “much better solutions already in use” to overcome these challenges, we would know about it.”
DD defenders. H H. in favor of Bitcoin.
While they don’t say that BTC and other cryptocurrencies are capable of solving “every” economic problem, “ample evidence suggests that bitcoin has empowered and will continue to empower Americans and citizens of the world for the next decadeand that, along with stablecoins, “this open and decentralized monetary network will help challenge tyranny and strengthen democratic movements abroad.”
“To claim that the practical value and future potential of cryptocurrencies ‘doesn’t exist’ negates the lived experience of millions of people like us and our colleagues who have relied on bitcoin and stablecoins in times of crisis and autocracy,” they said in the statement. letter, and then they recommended to the congressmen to investigate and explore “the global value” of these technologiesas well as its “empirically proven benefits for millions of people and its potential”.
“We hope there will be no restriction”
Activists call on US congressmen not to make or implement policies that could harm the ability to use bitcoin and other currencies for your humanitarian human rights work.
This, because “just as some of us have acted to defend the open web in the past, today we defend an open monetary system.”
“Until now, many of us have been forced to have broken coins, as our rulers prevented us from accessing dollars. We have paid the price of exorbitant international money transfers. We have seen how our dictatorial leaders from Beijing to Moscow tried to ban bitcoin. We hope they will choose a different political path, one that allows us to save, connect and gain freedom.”
DD defenders. H H. in favor of Bitcoin.