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My introduction to bitcoin was due to this https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m...

2010, about November, when Wikileaks was loved by everyone here on HackerNews. When donations were piling up by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. When Assange was the postgresql security hacker turned whistlblower-enabler and journalist.

Then suddenly all donations, globaly, halted to Wikileaks. Bitcoin was the only way, and its only real use still possible - censorship resistant transfer of value.



> censorship resistant transfer of value

But how do you get actual value out of it, i.e. currency? AFAIK most exchanges have pretty strict money laundering rules these days, it's not like Wikileaks could just open an account to liquidate those BTC donations...


It is possible to exchange for cash and it isn't money laundering to just change BTC to cash.

An exchange may face political pressure to stop facilitating wikileaks converting BTC to USD/GBP/EUR but thats about the extent of it.


There are several ways to bypass exchanges. LocalBitcoins and Bisq are two ways. There are more though.




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