Police from all different forces across Canada joined together to try to bring the ‘Freedom Convoy’ occupation to an end on Feb. Louis got someone to video him as he walked the streets of Ottawa to hand them out. These were essentially what are known as “paper wallets” - in a demonstration of bitcoin’s flexibility, those printed sheets held tangible value. Credentials to those wallets were then printed out, along with relevant instructions.
According to prices at the time, each wallet would have held roughly $7,500 in bitcoin. Louis split 14.6 bitcoins from the donated funds into 100 digital wallets, the two men recounted on Twitter. With fresh aid from a man going by the pseudonym “JW Weatherman,” St. In both cases, authorities had traced the funds and then obtained the private keys of alleged perpetrators. Similarly, it had recovered millions from a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline last year. Justice Department announced it had recovered US$3.6 billion in cryptocurrency seized from a 2016 hack of the exchange Bitfinex. On top of that, all transactions are added to a publicly available blockchain ledger, making the guarding of one’s private key an essential and complicated task.Īs the protest donation drive was happening, the U.S. But cashing out often depends on centralized exchange platforms that are beholden to laws and regulations. Control depends solely on one’s private key, the equivalent of a password. Louis received in managing the donation drive was short-lived, and he soon found himself largely alone at the centre of a gathering storm.īitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, does not have traditional intermediaries that can intercept transactions. It gained international attention.īut any help St. Bitcoin Magazine sold hats and donated the proceeds. Jesse Powell, who heads the American Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, gave a whole bitcoin, then worth more than US$39,000.
Photo by ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP via Getty Images files More bitcoiners joined in helping in him manage it, and it became more sophisticated and ended up with a name: “HonkHonk Hodl.”ĭemonstrators continue to protest in Ottawa on Feb 19, 2022. So, protest organizers officially embraced St. And Ottawa residents, fed up with the disruption, filed a class-action lawsuit against the protesters that also targeted their funding. The crowdfunding site GoFundMe, Toronto-Dominion Bank and a court order sought by the Ontario government froze more than $20 million raised through more traditional methods. Louis said he simply wanted to introduce the cryptocurrency to more people.īut his efforts soon took on greater significance, as the protests grew disruptive and made headlines around the world. Bitcoin, with libertarian beginnings, seemed a natural match for a protest espousing individual freedoms. A million sats, or satoshis, would be about $475. Louis recounted in a recent public Twitter Spaces audio discussion, using the term for the smallest division of a bitcoin. “I thought it would be good if we could raise a few million sats,” St.
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In late January, when the convoy came to Ottawa to protest pandemic restrictions and all manner of perceived injustices, he set up a donation portal for them within a day. It was simple and unambitious, a QR code on his Twitter account pointing to an address for a digital wallet. Louis’s day job is as a physiotherapist, with degrees from Western University and the University of Ottawa. While he wasn’t immediately available for an interview, he did briefly tell me, “I’ve witnessed some of the most beautiful things and also some of the darkest things in my life.” This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
The pressure on him had become increasingly harsh. Nick, who despite being open about his fundraising on social media had never revealed his last name, eventually found himself outed in a lawsuit by Ottawa residents that identified him as Nicholas St. Support for Nick’s donation drive had surged because bitcoin is not like traditional currencies and can’t be frozen or seized in the same way. To many investors and advocates, that’s the source of its value and utility. Nick’s shepherding of the bitcoin donations became a public demonstration of that power.īut at the same time, it became a lightning rod, drawing criticism and specific government measures that put the same value and utility to the test. Unexpectedly, it went on to raise more than $1.1 million, its records show, as the convoy’s other sources of funding came under attack through freezes, court orders and the federal government’s Emergencies Act. Nick had started a bitcoin donation drive for the protesters.
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