In an interview with Mezha.Media, developer Peter Todd, who was called the real creator of Bitcoin and has already denied this information, spoke about the Bitcoin community in Ukraine. According to his observations, it has become smaller due to the usual realities of war.
Peter Todd has visited Ukraine several times, including after the full-scale invasion began, to support the local crypto community and share his experience.
“The first time I visited in 2018 was to go to a
very large conference; more recently we struggled to get 10 people in the
audience. But obviously, that’s just a fact of life during a war, where it’s
difficult to get outside speakers to come, and people are busy with other
things,” the developer said.
At the same time, he draws attention to the great risk that Ukraine faces as a society. This is the tendency for wartime measures to remain forever.
“As an example, you used to be able to buy sim cards in
Ukraine and just plug them in, without AML/KYC, and you used to be able to refill them without any paperwork. IIUC that has been restricted due to the fact that Russian drones have been using the cellphone network,” Peter Todd added.
He believes that such things are understandable “violations of privacy and freedom during
wartime” when Ukraine is facing an existential threat to its existence.
“… but
we don’t want stuff like that to be locked down incrementally forever. Free and
open societies are better for everyone,” Peter Todd emphasized.
He also believes that legalizing and expanding the use of Bitcoin could be one way that the Ukrainian government can commit to maintaining a free and open society. From an economic perspective, Bitcoin also promotes good financial discipline.
“We all know governments have a tendency to spend too much via the fact that they can essentially print money. Taking that away, committing to sound money, is just good discipline,” he said.
According to him, many countries are already doing this by accepting the fiat currencies of other, much larger countries. As one of the many examples, Peter Todd cited Montenegro, which uses the euro, and El Salvador, which switched to the US dollar before accepting Bitcoin.
“For both those countries, doing so was adopting
sound money from their perspective,” Peter Todd summarized.
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