Canada commanded all banks and currency platforms to freeze funds. The order includes digital currencies, but a self-custody wallet explains that it is not possible.
The High Court of Justice of Ontario, in Canada, revealed an order to digital currency providers to freeze the funds of the users that got involved with Freedom Convoy.
This information got reported by Nunchuk, which highlighted on February 18 that it faced the order and cannot act in accordance with the order due to the nature of a currency like Bitcoin.
Nunchuk revealed via Twitter apiece of the document. It reads that the court orders that any bank, financial entity, money service business, fundraising platform or website, the cryptocurrency network, or exchange immediately stop the traffic with funds and prevent any transference with its assets.
In addition to ordering that the funds get frozen, it also needs that such financial bodies send them all the data they possess about their stock of users. It highlights that it orders the immediate delivery of records, including the nature, value, and location of any fund or assets.
The Court of Canada recognized that the order is a precautionary procedure of Mareva. This legal term is a freezing order that prevents a user from carrying out transferences while his assets are under prosecution. This decision got made by the government to stop the financing in dollars and bitcoin of the Freedom Convoy movement.
Freedom Convoy is a protest carried out by truckers in Canada three weeks ago that aimed at calling for the removal of vaccination requirements against covid-19. Since then, the demonstration has not stopped expanding and has even crossed borders. This demonstration is also forming itself in different nations worldwide.
Some of them are carrying out activities in countries like France, Finland, Australia, and Spain. The movement has collected more than USD 10 million in funding that it never got to receive because the Canadian government suspended the donation by describing it as encouraging illicit activities.
That is why Freedom Convoy chose to gather funds in bitcoin, a type of currency that the government could not freeze if it got transferred without third parties.
Centralized bitcoin exchanges could freeze funds, block them and send vital data to the government Unlike Nunchuk, the CEO of the centralized exchange Kraken, Jesse Powell, highlighted that, if the Canadian government requires data from its clients, he will have to give it 100%.
In addition, they could freeze the funds they want and establish a blockage on them. This sequence shares many similarities to the situation in Argentina in 2001 regarding the famous Corralito. In this regard, Jesse Powell said that if there is a concern about not keeping funds with any centralized/regulated custodian.
He said they could not protect those funds; instead, users could carry out operations with cryptocurrencies only in P2P trades. P2P is a peer-to-peer service that allows users to exchange their cryptocurrencies and national currencies without an intermediary. With P2P, users avoid going to a bank or exchange to carry out operations with money.
By: Jenson Nuñez
