Bitcoin (BTC) Donations Flow In After Julian Assange Arrest

Published on December 11, 2010 by Cryptovest Staff

WikiLeaks, a controversial project, received both financial and morale boost from the Bitcoin community.

Following the arrest of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange in London this April 10, the Bitcoin (BTC) community immediately showed its support as donations in the WikiLeaks wallet piled up. Donations started coming into one of the newly disclosed donation wallets, which already holds upward of 6 BTC. The amount nearly doubled in the past days, with donations triggered by the arrest.

One of the known addresses of WikiLeaks has already collected more than 4,000 BTC over the years, after most major payment processors in the USA blocked the accounts of WikiLeaks.

The digital asset community has aligned some of its interests with the WikiLeaks agenda, including an anti-authority stance. The controversial site has received polarized views, with some seeing it as a key to the freedom of speech, while others reject the site’s transparency efforts as a form of treason, or a way to push foreign policy agenda.

But WikiLeaks is also seen as one of the sites that gave visibility to Bitcoin in its early days. The creator of the Bitcointalk blog, @CobraBitcoin, remarked that Bitcoin owed to WikiLeaks:

https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1116317753860853760

The messages within cryptocurrency related social media point to support for WikiLeaks and disapproval of the tightening censorship, seeing the arrest as an attack to the opportunity for free media reporting. Now, Assange awaits a decision on deportation to the USA.