The Freedom Convoy Bitcoin Story

The only crowdfunded currency that actually reached the truckers.

stock photo; click for source

Honking for Freedom, the soon-to-be-released book about the trucker convoy by official spokesperson Benjamin Dichter, includes two chapters about Bitcoin. These explain, in an easy-to-understand-fashion, how close to a $1 million in Bitcoin got distributed to the truckers. (The equivalent of $20 million in Canadian funds raised through wildly popular GoFundMe and GiveSendGo campaigns were obstructed and intercepted by authorities.)

The Bitcoin story starts with an Ottawa resident known as Caribou. Here’s a quote from Chapter 29:

Throughout the first weekend Caribou talked to truckers. “I did two shifts a day,” he says. “I went out in the morning, came home, recovered [from the brutal cold], wrote some notes, then I did an afternoon shift. I would ask, ‘How can I help? What do you need?’ and they would say, ‘We need coffee. We need toilets. I would love to spend a night in a hotel room.’ I thought, ‘All right, I’ll raise some Bitcoin. Some people know how to bake cookies. Some people know how to get fuel. This is something I can do for the people sacrificing so much for Canadians, even if most Canadians have no idea what’s truly happening.’

The above snippet demonstrates once again that Ottawa residents were by no means a monolith. Despite being encouraged non-stop by the media to view the convoy as frightening and hostile, many locals saw things differently.

Caribou’s response was “How can I help?” This parallels Ottawa resident Michael Grandlouis’ efforts to personally welcome numerous truckers, and to show up with firewood minutes after the call went out.

Toward the end of Honking for Freedom, Benjamin declares:

Bitcoin was the only crowdfunded currency to reach the truckers — $800,000 worth.

…history will record that Bitcoin registered its first anti-authoritarian success in Justin Trudeau’s Canada.