Reason #8,934 We Need Decentralization and Censorship-Resistant Crypto

The whole point of private, decentralized cryptocurrency as a payment method is it disintermediates third parties that are either charging fees or pushing a partisan agenda. Any partisan agenda.

TradFi is the antithesis of this. It allows government actors and private entities not part of a transaction to interfere, to take sides, to drain away percentages and generally muck about where they have no business. It allows government or non-state actors to socially engineer and put their thumb on the scale over issues both important and picayune. It allows the stifling of dissent and the persecution of anyone going against the prevailing narrative.

Few companies embody the TradFi model as much as PayPal, which has a long history of marrying payment processing with political activism.

A gay rights organization was deplatformed by PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo, only to discover on Thursday that pro-pedophile organization Prostasia continues to be on good business terms with the multinational financial technology company.

Gays Against Groomers, an organization comprised entirely of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even transgender people, launched in 2022 and has had meteoric success at attracting followers to their cause exposing the harms done to children by some radicals hiding behind the LGBTQ banner. Gays Against Groomers wrote early on Tuesday that PayPal and Venmo had dropped them for “violating” their user agreement.

“The fact that an organization comprised solely of gay people, with trans contributors as well, is being banned from the largest payment processors in the country for opposing the sexualization and mutilation of children is shocking, to say the least,” said Jaimee Michell, the Gays Against Groomers founder.

“On top of that, we discovered tonight that while we have been banned, an organization that literally runs a support group for pedophiles is able to use PayPal’s services. It tells you all you need to know about the state of our society right now,” Michell added.

The gay rights advocacy group is the latest to be targeted by PayPal for challenging dominant leftist narratives surrounding sex and gender. Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, writer Ian Miles Cheong, and recently the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, run by conservative editor Toby Young, have all had their accounts permanently closed by PayPal without notice.

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Attracting even more drama, PayPal last week threatened to pull their sponsorship of the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team if owner Robert Sarver remained part of the franchise at the end of his suspension.

In a statement, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman pointed to his company’s “strong record of combatting racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination,” and said Sarver’s conduct is “unacceptable and in conflict with our values.”

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There has been a notable increase in user bannings after PayPal partnered with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2021 to “fight extremism and protect marginalized communities.” According to their press release, the ADL said the collaboration “launched a research effort to address the urgent need to understand how extremist and hate movements throughout the U.S. are attempting to leverage financial platforms to fund criminal activity.”

We’re not necessarily taking a side in this particular issue. And that’s the point. Whatever our feelings on these hot-button issues, it’s none of our business. That’s the Silvermint promise – censorship-resistance and decentralization to the core.