TL;DR - Two pro-bitcoin nations have the "Authoritarian" label stamped on them. Read through this post to find out which one is really Authoritarian.
Forenote: I don't want to pretend I am an expert on either of the countries that I am detailing, but rather articulate. This thread may be edited for formatting purposes
I was considering making this post a couple of days ago, but I thought maybe it was irrelevant, but after seeing the events of what transpired in a country that has the third highest bitcoin hashrate (Kazakhstan) and comparing it to El Salvador, which is trying to play catch up on both the world stage and for bitcoiners, I feel like it is necessary to detail what is going on and open everyone's eyes just a little bit.
I feel dumb for typing this, but I feel like it needs to be said. The guys who are anti-crypto / anti-bitcoin in general tend to come in to this subreddit with the mentality that maybe we are all a bunch of anti-government nerds that want to dump crypto on each other. I feel as though we should all unify under one common theme: censorship resistance. Imagine if our governments were more transparent with us. Here's the comparison we are gonna draw:
El Salvador, Bukele:
1. Labeled a "dictator".
2. Allows free speech and criticism.
3. Willing to empower people by enabling Bitcoin transactions / make it legal tender.
4. Non comprehensive list of sanctions on El Salvador government officials
5. When protests & riots take place, he lets protestors protest and lets the entire world watch without cutting off the internet.
What kind of dictator is nice enough to do this? Listen until 47:45 https://youtu.be/ls2h0FFNMjY?t=2784
Kazakhstan, Tokayev:
1. First "president" of Kazakhstan (a "democratic, secular, constitutional unitary republic" according to Wikipedia) after a guy who rules for 30 years post-soviet era appointed him as president, he was not elected either.
2. Nation is a participant of the Israeli-developed "Pegasus" diaspora. Your phone conversations may be monitored in KZ, (timestamp at 1:57).
3. Interested in Cryptocurrency mining for the sake of generating revenue from electricity sales.
4. Non comprehensive List of Sanctions on Kazakhstan government officials
5. When these last protests & riots took place, he cut the internet to his country, and fired a lot of government officials and replaced them to come mid-way between satisfying his people and maintaining his own power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFaxdWKC-7E - just skim through this video at 2x speed to get an idea of what was going on in KZ if you were someone who was living there these last 17 days.
Conclusions: I feel like we're comparing apples to oranges in terms of geography / relevance to America and perhaps the larger western world as a whole, but this is something worth thinking about. Also the issues that Kazakhstan faces are not the same as those that El Salvador faces. But the situations are still both worth examining for a few hours if you ask me.
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