3 Years Of Financial Freedom

Ahoy Pirates!

Time flies when you’re surrounded by hearty mates and good times. Hard to believe that it’s been 3 years in a blink of an eye. We celebrate Pirate’s 3rd Birthday today!

We started out returning the power of privacy to the users, empowering them with the option to opt out when they choose. Over this time, we strengthened Pirate Chain with dPoW, and reduced the risk of user data leakage at access points by building in Tor compatibility and created a privacy-focused bootable operating system, Ghostship. We’ve built the world’s first fully private economy centered around Pirate Chain. The ARRRmada today is over 150 merchant ships strong, all proponents of privacy, advocating the use of $ARRR for payment.

We gave the world its first private-by-default mobile wallet that gives users the power of surveillance-free peer-to-peer money transfer. NLIFE Casino generously gifted the community Pirate Casino, a fully verifiable blockchain-based casino using $ARRR for casino chips. Perhaps most anticipated is the arrival soon of wARRR (wrapped ARRR), a service provided to the Pirate community and the cryptocurrency world to trade in DeFi or GameFi without linkability to their core finances and identity.

The Community

Perhaps the proudest achievement in all these years, is the growth of our community. From a rag tag crew of developers and community volunteers exactly 3 years ago, we have grown to a formidable and undeniable force of 64,690 (as of today). The voice of Pirates championing privacy across social media is pervasive. More impressive, the ubiquitous presence of Pirates across the far-flung reaches of our planet, raising the Black, flying the Pirate Chain flag as a united voice standing up for privacy and for humanity.

The Pirate Chain Flag

Lack Of Privacy Connected To Abuse Of Power

“Tyranny is the root of poverty, war, and torture.” ~ Human Rights Foundation, on the tyranny of oppressive authoritarian regimes.

In today’s world of wanton capital surveillance and an impending authoritarian panopticon enabled by transparent central bank digital currencies, the unparalleled and unbalanced power of states to scrutinize, pass judgement and compel individuals to conform is clear and present.

“The thing that makes it so profoundly different is about the data that gets connected to money. I see this as a world where it’s not just that you pay using your iPhone to swipe at the ticket barrier, it’s that all of your activities are now observable, of which your financial activities is just one, of the many things you get up to. And there are many parties, from private companies to governments that are now able to read what they can sell to you what kind of behaviors they can manoeuvre you into or manoeuvre you out of because money itself becomes a surveillance system.

Especially when we move into sovereign digital, where the government itself begins to issue money, and we see this already in China with the DCEP. And I’ve been trying to help people understand, just think of this is a surveillance system disguised as money. And therefore this has profound meaning for democracy, for personal human freedoms, for your rights, and I’m not just talking about whether you should be under surveillance, I’m talking about whether it’s appropriate to take the accumulation of all your behaviors and make judgements about you based on it.

[Image courtesy of NothingElseARRR (Discord)]

The digitization of money

For me, the digitization of money is like putting a grid over the entire world that geolocates not only what you spend and where at what time, but it begins to gather information about why did you buy this at this particular time how you can be influenced to do it again or not do it again. I see it as part of a larger phenomenon which is broadly called surveillance capitalism. Although the Chinese are pioneering the way and their version of more autocratic capitalism. So it’s not just that the money is digital, it’s that its connected to a broader sieve of information gathering about every person and the use that data to impose outcomes and often without people having any realization whatsoever that they are being influenced by these mechanisms.” ~ Dr. Pippa Malmgren, Macrovoices podcast ep258, https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-tv29x-10b8c7e

Much akin to the non-governmental organizations that advocate for human rights, the health and safety of children, dolphins or rainforests, our Pirate Chain community has evolved beyond the interests only of a technologically advanced cryptocurrency group, to become a human rights champion. The Human Rights Foundation protects freedom of speech, freedom from slavery and the right to acquire and dispose of property in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes.

Our Pirate Chain community is an exemplary model of a grassroots collective defending the basic human right to privacy. This is our charge, for our financial privacy today, for our freedom tomorrow.

By Fleet Commander Wookie

[Image courtesy of NothingElseARRR (Discord)]