The European Union is set to let the terrorists win and strike a blow against freedom by cracking down on Bitcoin.
In a meeting set to be held Friday, European Union interior and justice ministers will gather for a crisis meeting following the Islamic terrorist attacks on Paris last week where they will urge the European Commission (the EU executive arm) to propose measures to “strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by pre-paid cards,” Reuters reported.
The same draft document that includes a crackdown on Bitcoin is said to also include a plan “to curb more effectively the illicit trade in cultural goods,” presumably a reference to antiquities smuggled out of ISIS held territories and sold on the black market for a profit.
Bitcoin’s role in the Paris terrorist attacks isn’t entirely certain, despite the fact that the Ghost Security Group suggested earlier this week that Bitcoin may have been used to finance the attacks; the reality is that while it’s known that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has around $3 million held in Bitcoin accounts on the Dark Web, it’s still pure conjecture that those funds were used to finance the attacks in Paris, particularly given that at this stage it would appear that the attackers themselves were European citizens with no clear ties to ISIS.
Terrorists win
Much can be said about how security crackdowns of all various types as a result of the threat of radical Islamic terrorism actually runs counter to the very thing those terrorists hate about the West: the fact that we are free.
It may be cliched to say cracking down on anything as a result of terrorism is a case of letting the terrorist win, but without question the proposal by the European Union precisely fits this definition.
The big government socialists that make up the bulk of the European Union (if not all its elected members, but certainly its bureaucracy) would like nothing more than to impose their will on those ostensibly under their control among the 28 member states that have nearly entirely given up their sovereignty for the kumbaya idea of one people, one continent.
A crackdown or even a potential ban on Bitcoin in Europe doesn’t so much channel Orwell but Martin Niemöller in how freedoms and even people are slowly taken away without many saying a thing until the hand of Government comes for them.
First they came for Bitcoin, and I did not speak out—
Because I do not use Bitcoin.
The question is what in the European Union comes next.
Image credit: christiaantriebert/Flickr/CC by 2.0
Duncan Riley
Duncan is a co-founder of VC funded media company B5Media and founder of news site The Inquisitr, and was a senior writer at TechCrunch in its earlier days.
Tips? Press releases? Intersting startup? email: duncan@nichenet.com.au or contact Duncan on Twitter @duncanriley
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