Bitcoin, Uncensored
- Brett Schor
- Jun 30
- 3 min read
Most people never think about financial censorship because they've never experienced it. Yet history is full of people who discovered too late that their money wasn’t really theirs.
If your bank account was frozen tomorrow, your card stopped working, or your savings suddenly became inaccessible, you'd care very quickly whether your money can move without someone else’s permission.
Unstoppable money, by design
Bitcoin is hard to censor. That doesn't mean it's invisible or lawless. Bitcoin transactions leave a permanent public record. But if you take custody of your own bitcoin, no institution can prevent you from sending it to someone else.
That feature wasn't an accident. Bitcoin was engineered to survive in an adversarial environment. Its creator understood that any form of electronic money controlled by a central authority could ultimately be censored.
So Bitcoin was built without one. Rather than relying on human gatekeepers to decide which transactions are allowed, it follows a shared set of rules that apply equally to everyone. Without a central authority in charge, there is no single point of control that governments or other powerful actors can pressure into shutting the network down.
The dark side of censorship-resistant money
Bitcoin gained early notoriety through the Silk Road, a dark web marketplace for drugs and contraband, and later through ransomware attacks. It also became an alternative funding rail for WikiLeaks after payment processors cut off donations over its connection to Julian Assange. More recently, sanctioned states like Venezuela and Iran, both excluded from the global financial system, have turned to Bitcoin as an alternative financial rail outside Washington’s control.
Not exactly a flattering resume.
But the numbers today tell a more nuanced story. Blockchain analytics firms estimate $154 billion in crypto transactions were linked to illicit activity in 2025, representing well under 1% of all crypto transaction volume. And while bitcoin is often singled out in the headlines, its share was less than 7% of that total, or roughly $11 billion. Stablecoins, not bitcoin, have become the preferred digital asset for illicit activity. Meanwhile, the UN estimates that $800 billion to $2 trillion is laundered through the traditional financial system each year.
If criminal use were enough to discredit a form of money, the US dollar would have failed that test long ago.
None of this justifies illegal activity. It simply reminds us that technologies shouldn’t be defined by their worst users. Bad actors tend to adopt useful technologies for the same reason everyone else does: because they work.
Who really needs uncensorable money
The people who need unrestricted access to money are often ordinary individuals facing extraordinary circumstances.
An Argentine business owner converting pesos to bitcoin to escape capital controls. A Nigerian activist keeping a protest movement alive through bitcoin donations after traditional payment channels were shut off. A Venezuelan family using bitcoin to take their life savings with them when forced to flee their country.
For these people, censorship resistance isn’t a feature. It’s a lifeline.
My grandparents fled Vienna in 1938, as antisemitic persecution intensified under Nazi rule.They left behind a lifetime of savings, much of which was seized by the State. Had Bitcoin existed back then, they could have left with their savings intact. They wouldn't have needed anyone's permission to do so.
The Bottom Line
Every powerful technology comes with tradeoffs.
The internet enabled borderless commerce and global communication. It also enabled fraud, misinformation, and cybercrime.
Bitcoin is no different. Like the internet before it, it’s an open, neutral protocol available to anyone, for better or worse.
For the people who need it most, that’s a tradeoff worth making.
______________________
Comments