Late last year, after WikiLeaks began releasing its trove of State Department cables, many individuals sought to show solidarity with the group by making a donation. They found, however, that many payment processors would not remit money to WikiLeaks, some say as a result of U.S. government pressure. PayPal even froze the group’s account so it couldn’t access funds already collected. “Hey, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal: It’s MY money,” media critic Jeff Jarvis tweeted at the time. “How DARE you tell me where I can and can’t spend it?” Intermediaries as Choke Points Whether or not payment processors ought to be telling us how to spend our money online, the fact is they can. We rely on third parties to transact online, and when government wants to restrict how we can spend money online, it’s these intermediaries they turn to. Online gambling and sports betting is perfectly legal in countries like the UK, Ireland and Australia, and a resident of the U.S. will have no problem reaching the websites of gaming sites from those countries. Placing a bet is another matter, however, because the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 requires payments systems to block transactions to online gambling sites. Similarly, Congress is considering a law like the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which would not only allow the Department of Justice to seize the domains of sites suspected of selling counterfeit and pirated goods, but would also require payment processors to block transactions to sites placed on a black list. To transact online, you have to have an account with a third party like PayPal that you trust will follow your payment instructions. There’s been no such thing as “online cash,” no currency that could be exchanged untraceably between two persons without a third party intermediary–no such thing, that is, until now. True Digital Cash Bitcoin, an open-source project created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, is the world’s first distributed and anonymous digital currency. That’s a mouthful, but it’s not difficult to understand. Since the web … Continue reading Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks