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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

From the Law of Unintended Consequences [theregister.co.uk]:

Endurance couch-surfer and WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange has thanked US authorities for the banking blockade that made it hard to donate fiat currencies to his organisation, because it inadvertently enriched the organisation.

The blockade first appeared in 2010, after the United States expressed its ire at WikiLeaks' publication of diplomatic cables. Not long afterwards, Mastercard and Visa stopped processing donations sent to the site.

WikiLeaks sued [theregister.co.uk] and won [theregister.co.uk] against Visa, but the blockade persisted. The organisation therefore sought alternative funding including Bitcoin.

Which brings us to an Assange Tweet from Sunday, as follows.

My deepest thanks to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCard, Payal, AmEx, Mooneybookers, et al, into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @WikiLeaks [twitter.com] starting in 2010. It caused us to invest in Bitcoin -- with > 50000% return. pic.twitter.com/9i8D69yxLC [t.co]
        — Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange) October 14, 2017 [twitter.com]

> 50,000%?

Original Submission