Kanye West and the hat with Bitcoin’s Satoshi
Hip-hop icon and businessman Kanye West wore a hat with the name of the Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto after the firm’s bank account was closed by JP Morgan Chase.
Kanye West’s Pro-Bitcoin Hate After JP Morgan Fallout
In a tweet, political commentator Candace Owens shared a letter West allegedly received from financial giant JP Morgan.
JP Morgan gave Yeezy LLC and West until November 21, 2022 to transfer account funds around 140 million dollars elsewhere, following the rapper’s formal break with the financial institution.
Many have concluded that the bank’s choice was motivated by West’s recent anti-Semitic remarks. Not only that, it seems the decision was also due to other nasty comments the singer made on social media amid the chaos of Paris Fashion Week.
Earlier, the rapper had questioned the bank’s management and put his contacts with a number of major clients, including Adidas, to the test.
Kanye West claimed he had broken no laws and called JPMorgan’s choice shocking.
West observed:
“I invested $140 million in JP Morgan and they treated me like crap. So if JP Morgan Chase treats me like this, how do they treat the rest of you?”
This comes on the heels of PayPal’s attempts to implement a $2,500 in fines on all users it believes exhibit misconceptions. PayPal was forced to quickly downplay the policy and pretend it was an accident.
After feeling his customer base, who condemned the insanity of a fintech company trying to dictate what is and isn’t acceptable speech.
Moving away from the particular saga of Ye and what he said, it is important to identify the accelerating trend of incumbents. These, with insane amounts of entrenchment and influence in the banking and payment sectors, try to pick and choose who can and cannot receive.
They also hold and send money within their hyper-monitored systems based on political or personal beliefs
The propensity of conventional financial institutions to arbitrarily close user accounts can greatly encourage the use of cryptocurrency.
If JP Morgan’s efforts against Ye and PayPal’s attempted activities against its user base are any indication, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin offers an extremely high level of value when it comes to centralized institutions, the community says.
Hoskinson states:
“Banks market crypto with their actions after Kanye West, JP Morgan fallout.”
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson spoke out in reaction to the above photo of Kanye West wearing a cap bearing the name Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Cardano founder said that US banks are actually helping market cryptocurrencies better than industry players, according to an Oct. 17 tweet.
Not only that, it appears that several traditional financial institutions have recently cut ties with various individuals and institutions without giving a specific reason.
Portuguese banks have closed the accounts of several cryptocurrency companies, including CryptoLoja and Mind the Coin, without giving any reason. The same scenario occurred in the US, with JP Morgan Chase closing the account of Uniswap founder Hayden Adams last year without notice or explanation.
Before that, it closed Bitcoin miner Compass Mining’s accounts in 2019.
In addition to these traditional financial institutions, PayPal was recently accused of a now-deleted disinformation policy that would fine users up to $2,500 for misinformation.
Meanwhile, several sex content creators revealed that traditional financial institutions such as PayPal, Venmo, Circle, Square and Cash App had prevented them from using their services because it violated their terms of service.
Financial censorship favors crypto
The propensity of traditional financial institutions to arbitrarily close user accounts may increase cryptocurrency adoption.
Protesters in Canada and Nigeria had used the censorship-resistant nature of cryptocurrencies to their advantage as traditional financial institutions cracked down on their fund-raising activities.
Ukraine had also been using cryptocurrencies for fundraising for the purpose of defending itself against the Russian invasion of the border.
Kanye West and free speech advocates need Bitcoin
Actions like the one JPMorgan Chase took against Ye and attempted by PayPal before they were forced to save face are an invasion of free speech. Of course, JPMorgan Chase and PayPal didn’t stop Ye or PayPal customers from expressing their opinions.
But moves like this attack free speech in a more insidious way, encouraging self-censorship by individuals who are afraid to express their opinions because they don’t want to be de-platformed and demonized.
This kind of control is exactly what the incumbent power structure wants: to try to eliminate free speech through the political process. It therefore follows that in the realm of money – how people hold it, how they receive it and how they send it – Bitcoin is the new system that can work.
Because it is built to prevent the power structure from pushing for a future built on self-censorship as a means of self-preservation.
