September 5, 2020
Conspiracy theorists in London mingled with X-factor stars and Barbie impersonators with a sea of people who didn’t like being ordered around paraded in Trafalgar Square last Sunday at the climax of Anti-lockdown March.7
Across Europe, their sentiments are richly varied and intensely felt. Parallel parades also took place in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Zurich last week, and it comes with tens of thousands protestors expressing an assortment of complaints, namely:
- Disaffection with the handling of coronavirus crisis
- Fears about compulsory vaccinations
- Anger about the mandatory wearing of face masks
- Absurd ideas that the pandemic was a hoax broadcasted by 5G offices
One placard screamed, “Don’t Blockchain Our Babies! World Economic Forum,” it belongs to an unconcerned-looking protestor, who sits on one of the stone lions protecting Nelson’s Column. “We do not consent to your technocracy,” declared another. In the front, previous X-Factor participant Chico gave a talk to the crowd.
Digital Identity’s coming
Simon Dolan, a British Entrepreneur, and multi-millionaire were one of the march protesters and founded the liberty-loving organization Keep Britain Free (KBF); it is a group of individuals with a handful of grievances, this includes compulsory vaccinations and the government’s management of the coronavirus.
When being asked about blockchain, “No idea, I’m afraid,” Dolan answered.
Being a Donald Trump fan, Dolan made headlines recently when he called for a judicial review on the symmetry of the UK Government’s retort to the coronavirus. On the other hand, he emphasized that he is not a fan of the prospective government-backed digital scheme ID.
“What is most relevant from the blockchain perspective is that [the UK government is] trying to identify and remove legal obstacles to the use of identity technologies, and that would include blockchain-based identity technologies,” a security and privacy IT specialist, Ian Brown, stated.
The UK Government’s Privacy Advisory Group, where Ian Brown works, explored digital identity during the call for proposals for its digital identity service Verity.
While he’s not a blockchain enthusiast, Brown said that the policy government is pursuing will open the door to blockchain-based ID structures. It was also reported that these plans are part of Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister Dominic Cummings’s aims to “revolutionize the use of data across government.
Babies Chained
It also turns out that there is indeed a project on blockchain-based identity solutions that target young children proposed by the World Economic Forum.
A nonprofit advocating for blockchain-based universal identity, World Identity Network (WIN), was launched in 2017 on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island. It is working on the world’s first pilot to use blockchain technology to aid the battle against child trafficking.
At first glance, one would think that the project would excite conspiracy theorists. The QAnon cult is fighting a war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles. So this means that they favor a blockchain-based plot to stop child sex trafficking.
However, the QAnon crowd hates Branson. QAnon believes that he is a child sex trafficker and was listed among the hundreds amongst hundreds of celebrities in Jeffrey Epstein’s “Little Black Book.” It is as bad as the fact that Branson is acquainted with Bill Gates, who, according to the tinfoil hat crowd, the major beast of all.
Another famous conspiracy theory is that Gates wants to use the vaccination programs as a cover to lay microchips into newborns; it uses RFID technology to tracing and monitoring them. The conspiracy theorists might be thinking that blockchain will be added to the plan.
David Birch, author of “The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony.” said,
“Whether it’s the blockchain, Bill Gates or bots, it is simply an emblem of modernity that the QAnon crowd focus their anger on,”
Confusing Conspiracies
Branson-based blockchain aside, it is a bit bizarre that the “don’t blockchain our babies” protestors contrast a technology that is so well affiliated with their desires for privacy, liberty, and zero censorship.
The owner of anarchist messaging board 8chan (now 8kun), Jim Watkins, was in the reports last week, as the odds on favorite to be QAnon himself. His son, Ron, gives him some blockchain.
Watkins junior thinks blockchain could play a vital role in a self-protective arrangement to avoid free-speech platforms like 8kun from being de-platformed. Nevertheless, his experiments with it to date haven’t precisely roasted out.
However, he is not giving up; Project Odin, his latest project, includes 8kun’s users to run front-end nodes that support the website. But it is due to launch very soon.
“I can’t remember if Odin has blockchain implementations or not. It’s been a few months since I looked at the code,” said Watkins.
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