An Open Letter About Bitcoin, and some other stuff, to FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

An Open Letter to FinCEN, The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

October 29, 2023

Bitcoin Block Height 814,440

Dear Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,

Recently it has come to my attention that FinCEN may soon attempt to impose some new restrictions on users of cryptocurrencies, in general, and Bitcoiners, in particular. I understand that before you decide how to proceed, you have an open comment period. This letter constitutes my open comments.

I’m sorry to admit that it has come to this, but in the name of peace and stability, we must not only ban people from using Bitcoin, but from using all tools. While it is true that tools are used by a lot of humans, for cutting vegetables, making shoes, as well as other applications, there are always going to be people who use tools for illegal and nefarious purposes. What’s more, many people conceal their tools from plain sight. Such obfuscation allows them to make even more mayhem. And concern for very occasional mayhem is far more important than any utility that tools may present. From now on, anyone who uses a tool of any kind should have to file identity documents with his or her central government’s Skill and Intentions Office, witnessed and re-registered annually, at least.

Additionally, sadly, we must outlaw fire. Fire was a great discovery that helped us emerge from the primeval forest. We used it to fight off animals, disease, and fear. But, as we now know, there are just so many baddies who use fire to burn down houses, buildings, and people who were probably not witches. And fire is the weapon of choice of arsonists, even though they’re a very tiny percentage of its users. Maybe we can allow a few well-trained people to use fire, but they must be authorized, tagged, and tracked forever as registered fire-operators, in case they go mad and turn against society. Many permits will be required. And more permits mean more jobs. So that’s good.

We can’t do this all at once, but we must also eventually abolish free unregistered air, forever. Air assists the enemies of progress because it helps violent revolutionaries to breathe. Anything we can do to stop them must be done. To reach a state of harmony, all air users must prove themselves peaceful and mild, notarized in triplicate.

And bans and registries for tools, fire, and air will be just the beginning. Other so-called “innovations” will also need to be controlled, for the greater good: soap (keeps fanatics fresh), clothes (conceals weapons and affords villains modesty, when they should feel only shame), and, ultimately, things. Things are the real problem. If we keep allowing anyone and everyone to use things, willy-nilly, without proper thorough vetting and surveillance, criminals will surely use them for nefarious purposes.

One thing that must be swiftly perma-banned for general use: language. Language in the form of everyday speech? Absolutely. Criminals conspire with language. And language in the form of computer code is another grave danger. Code, currently protected under the United States Constitution as speech, can be a terrible weapon. The Bitcoin Network, which is a free and open-source computer protocol, built entirely out of code, is a damnable example of the power of free speech. It fosters liberty, commerce, and communication the world over. It is a tool for global trade, and a savings device that protects users from the debasement of their political currency units. It is anti-totalitarian technology and saves people from failing countries and economies. Bitcoin, being code, “is free speech, all the way down.” Therefore, free speech, language, and code must be banned, so that a tiny number of scofflaws can’t use it.

We should also eradicate, once and for all, the free and unchecked usage of passwords, privacy, thought, running and jumping, and definitely throwing. What we need are checkpoints, surveillance stations, motion detectors, retinal scans, and geolocation devices, set up in an unbreakable all-encompassing grid around the entire planet. People who mean well have nothing to hide. Good people will welcome the firm embrace of infinite tracking technology. Freedom is the problem. Freedom is way too free, and rogues always take advantage of it.

Even as I write this, school children are hiking in forests and frolicking on beaches with parents and friends, enjoying air and water without permits. Unwittingly, they support villainy. Chefs in restaurants who use knives without Stasi-style monitors open the door to treachery. And Bitcoiners, those troublesome troublemakers. They remind me of that scoundrel Walt Whitman, the American poet, who wrote:

“I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.”

The Bitcoin Network sings the body electric. The human body, and the body politic. Through the digital realm it connects everyone who participates in a digitized free flow of pure information. And for those of us who use it, our minds are ever bent towards liberation, invention, saving, conservation, and cooperative systems which make violence obsolete. Instead of these heady burdensome responsibilities, give us a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that grinds free will and innovation to paste.

We must disrupt and destroy fearful “optimism technology” like Bitcoin and any hope it brings to future generations. Once hope has been squashed under the fist of complete control we can have stability, borne of a peaceful surveillance state that catches and extinguishes trouble, however small, the moment it arises. In that future, hope’s close friend, honor, will be unnecessary. In summary, the worries of the few far outweigh the hopes of the many. And the numbing death of liberty will have been a tiny sacrifice, after all.

I quote Whitman again, from his book Democratic Vistas:

“I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilized lands, is not repression alone, and not authority alone, not even of law, nor by that favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the born heroes… but, higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.”

Ultimately, technologies of hope like Bitcoin teach people to rule themselves, with justice and compassion. And that is precisely what we don’t want. Right?

Very Sincerely Yours,

Cosmo Crixter (Bitcoiner?)