2023-10-03 14:02:39
Nine years ago today, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made a significant public comment about the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. At the time, Bitcoin was already a five-year-old project that had burst into the financial public consciousness just a year earlier, when the exchange rate crossed the $1,000 mark. At that time, Bitcoin was no longer new to Assange. In fact, Wikileaks has been discussing accepting Bitcoin since 2010, when users tried to introduce the journalistic agency to this new payment method in its early days. Wikileaks finally started accepting Bitcoin in 2011. Since then, the organization has attributed this milestone to the fact that it helped break the bank blockade ordered by the US government following the publication of secret information. A 2014 interview also shows that Assange spoke with the same conviction about the technology years later. In the video, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a bold statement about Bitcoin. That comment has since proven remarkably accurate. In the interview, Assange called Bitcoin “the most interesting thing on the Internet.” His words have aged very well as the value of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed over the years. At the time of the interview, bitcoin was trading at a fraction of its current price. Yet Wikileaks used this technology as a publishing platform, in part to prove the existence of the information it published. In another part of the interview, Assange discussed the nature of Bitcoin, and cryptography in general, as a tool for civilians to resist government overreach. Wikileaks became one of Bitcoin’s advocates early on “Cryptography can create situations where it can protect the people who use it against the full power of a superpower. The full power of a superpower won’t help you solve a math problem.” – He told. “It’s not something that can be achieved by overwhelming coercive force.” Assange’s foresight regarding the importance of Bitcoin is evident when considering the remarkable performance of the cryptocurrency’s price since the interview. In 2014, bitcoin was trading at around $380 on exchanges. But now let’s jump ahead to 2023, when bitcoin is already trading at $28,000. That’s an increase of more than 7,000% in the nine years since then. As Bitcoin matures and becomes more accepted, it remains closely tied to the principles of decentralization and anti-censorship that both Assange and WikiLeaks championed. Assange is still in prison for publishing information in the public interest, and his fight for freedom remains one of Bitcoin’s top causes.
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