The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are cracking down on Bitcoin  Covered: Canada Blacklists 29 Bitcoin Addresses What is the Impact? Canada Blacklists 29 Bitcoin Addresses As political upheaval continues to rock America’s neighbor to the north, Federal authorities are now looking to cut the funding to protestors off at all costs — including blacklisting […] The post Canadian Feds Blacklist Bitcoin Addresses As Tensions Mount appeared first on CryptosRus.

Canadian Feds Blacklist Bitcoin Addresses As Tensions Mount

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are cracking down on Bitcoin 

Covered:

  • Canada Blacklists 29 Bitcoin Addresses
  • What is the Impact?

Canada Blacklists 29 Bitcoin Addresses

As political upheaval continues to rock America’s neighbor to the north, Federal authorities are now looking to cut the funding to protestors off at all costs — including blacklisting bitcoin addresses. The Royal Police issued an order to all FINTRAC companies in the country “demanding them to cease transacting with bitcoin addresses allegedly associated with the Freedom Convoy’s fundraising efforts.”

This comes after the Deputy Prime Minister announced (as seen in the below video) on Monday that crowdfunding platforms, including cryptocurrency, would need to register with the appropriate authorities and face enhanced regulation under the “Terrorist Financing Act.” Under the Emergency Acts set forth by the Trudeau government, banks can apparently freeze or suspend bank accounts without a court order and be protected from civil liability.

This has spiraled into today’s news of the blacklisting of bitcoin addresses. The order states: “Pursuant to the Emergency Economic Measures Order, under subsection 19(1) of the Emergencies Act, there is a duty to cease facilitating any transactions pertaining to the following cryptocurrency address(es).” 

The document goes on to list 29 bitcoin addresses that have transacted over $1 million USD. This is censorship on the bitcoin network and something that is not new. Anyone caught engaging with these addresses is subject to potential scrutiny they may have never imagined. It is easy for the government to trace a public BTC address to an individual.

The Royal Police have demanded that any information “about a transaction or proposed transaction in respect of these address(es), is to be disclosed immediately to the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” Now, to be clear, they cannot prevent people from sending bitcoin to one another, they cannot get the bitcoin itself unless they get the private keys.

What is the Impact?

What this action does is make it nearly impossible to convert bitcoin back to Canadian dollars as “regulated off-ramps fall under the RCMP’s scrutiny.” There are ways around this; mixing, Tornado Cash, Monero, are a few examples. However, cashing into fiat regardless of attempts to hide is made incredibly difficult when such blacklistings occur.

As Balaji points out below, the seizure resistance of the Bitcoin network remains intact, and Canada can’t do anything about that. However, they can throw a “spanner in the works” and make that bitcoin difficult to liquidate and actually use.

While this is a troubling development, it certainly hasn’t hurt the price of bitcoin, it only helped in fact. After the Deputy PM announced the new scope of the Emergency Acts, Bitcoin had what many have dubbed, a “freedom pump” that sent BTC past 44.5k. Currently, bitcoin is trading at 43.6k.

To be clear, there is nuance to what is happening in Canada, there are always two sides to a story. Nevertheless, it appears the Trudeau government has now seriously cracked down on crypto, and many see it as a bridge too far. If anything, it clearly highlights that crypto is not “useless”, and proves the Peter Schiff’s of the world dead wrong.

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