As I step onto the airplane leaving Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, Norway, the load and heat of the previous week settles into my chest.
The Oslo Freedom Discussion board will not be a convention. It’s not a summit. It’s one thing tougher to call and even tougher to explain — a convergence of braveness, reality and defiance that burns by the noise of the trendy world and provides you no alternative however to hear, really feel and act.
For the second time, I depart this metropolis extra satisfied than ever that one thing unstoppable is rising. That amid the censorship, surveillance and state repression spreading throughout the globe, there’s a countervailing pressure rooted in humanity, accelerated by expertise and led by those that’ve already paid the worth for talking out.
The Discussion board doesn’t commerce in empty optimism. It delivers a distinct form of hope, cast from lived expertise and stitched collectively by individuals who have been at nighttime and nonetheless select to see the sunshine. A hope borne from the tales of people who’ve lived by the worst an authoritarian regime can do and nonetheless select to combat for the liberty of others. The experiences shared have been arduous. At occasions, devastating. However they weren’t supplied for pity. They have been calls to motion.
Simply days after she was kidnapped, blindfolded, tortured, and sexually assaulted in a Tanzanian jail cell, Agather Atuhaire stood in entrance of a crowd of strangers and instructed her story.
Her voice didn’t tremble.
The Ugandan journalist and lawyer had traveled to Tanzania in solidarity with fellow East African dissidents, solely to be disappeared in a black van alongside Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi.
And but, towards all odds, she got here again. Not simply to her house in Uganda, but additionally to the stage in Oslo, the place she spoke calmly and clearly about what it means to inform the reality below a dictatorship.
Her presentation, “The Digital Free Speech Crackdown in Uganda,” laid naked the authoritarian playbook: social media blackouts, propaganda campaigns, surveillance of journalists and the sluggish monetary asphyxiation of unbiased media. When the federal government doesn’t like a narrative, it merely blocks the platform or web site. When a journalist digs too deep, they disappear for some time. Or endlessly. Atuhaire painted an image many battle to even think about.
And but, after the whole lot, she didn’t simply recount these struggles. She regarded out on the crowd and thanked the open supply builders and contributors who write code and create instruments that make it attainable for activists like her to talk, transfer cash and arrange below regimes that need them silenced, or worse.
(Ugandan journalist and lawyer, Agather Atuhaire, speaks in the course of the Freedom Tech observe on the 2025 Oslo Freedom Discussion board.)
From Iran, unbiased Bitcoin educator Ziya Sadr reminded us that monetary privateness will not be a luxurious however a essential lifeline for these dealing with the monetary repression by oppressive rulers. Sadr’s detainment in the course of the 2022 Ladies, Life, Freedom motion following the homicide of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian regime is a testomony to that. With out monetary privateness, activists’ actions, connections and funds are uncovered to a regime outfitted with widespread monetary controls and a complicated, restrictive web firewall that rivals even China’s.
The end result is without doubt one of the most repressive digital environments on the earth. And if that wasn’t sufficient, the Iranian rial foreign money has misplaced greater than 80% of its worth in just some years.
Towards this backdrop, Iranians are utilizing bitcoin as undebasable financial savings, and to purchase digital providers like VPNs with a purpose to entry the open web. However even that act, simply reaching the skin world, requires a degree of privateness most of us take without any consideration.
In his presentation, “Securing Lifelines: The Bitcoin Privateness Crucial,” Sadr shared that many Iranians flip to Bitcoin Coinjoins, a privateness approach that breaks the hyperlink between Bitcoin transaction inputs. Coinjoins protect consumer transaction privateness and, extra importantly, defend Iranians from the surveillance and retaliation of a regime who punishes anybody attempting to entry data past its tightly managed digital areas. The usage of Coinjoins is turning into tougher as international authorized strain mounts towards open supply builders, and within the aftermath of the Samourai developer arrests, privateness protocols like Whirlpool are unworkable.
Right now, Sadr is studying extra about extra Bitcoin privateness instruments, together with Paykoin, a privateness technique that permits two customers to contribute an enter to a Bitcoin transaction. Payjoin breaks frequent chain evaluation heuristics and conceals the sender and receiver of a transaction in addition to the cost quantity. Then there’s ecash, a type of digital money backed by Bitcoin that allows very non-public, on a regular basis funds with the custodial trade-off of trusting mints (entities that challenge and redeem ecash tokens) to retailer consumer funds.
The continued improvement of those protocols is essential for Iranians, who dwell below a authorities that not solely tracks and surveils digital conduct, but additionally imposes computerized fines on girls for violating hijab guidelines and manipulates foreign money trade charges to revenue off residents’ financial savings. For tens of millions in Iran, bitcoin affords a final line of protection towards a collapsing foreign money, intrusive surveillance and complete monetary repression.
(Unbiased Iranian Bitcoin educator, Ziya Sadr, speaks in the course of the Freedom Tech observe on the Oslo Freedom Discussion board.)
Venezuelan opposition chief Leopoldo López took the stage on the 2025 Oslo Freedom Discussion board not as a politician, however as a witness to what occurs when a state turns its establishments into additional tendrils of its repression machine.
After Nicolás Maduro stole Venezuela’s 2024 elections, López watched hundreds of his fellow individuals — activists, college students, journalists, opposition members and legal professionals — get arrested, disappeared or compelled into exile. The regime blocked entry to social media, revoked passports, criminalized dissent and used the monetary system as a way of controlling the inhabitants.
Amid this digital repression and Venezuela’s 162% inflation charge, López sees bitcoin (decentralized cash) and Nostr (decentralized social media) as lifelines. When dictators shut down the web or freeze your checking account, alternate options which might be open supply, decentralized, uncensorable and accessible change into extra necessary than ever for the survival of democracy and freedom.
“Decentralized resistance is the convergence of individuals, Bitcoin, Nostr, and AI.
Folks, it’s in regards to the heart and the tip of what we’re doing.
Courageous men and women who sacrifice their freedom, who take dangers, who’re prepared to combat for different individuals.
If it’s not about individuals, expertise wouldn’t be one thing price combating for.
Bitcoin is freedom cash. It’s decentralized, no one controls it, no one can cease it, it might transfer round with out borders.”
(Venezuelan Opposition Chief Leopoldo López in the course of the Freedom Tech observe on the 2025 Oslo Freedom Discussion board.)
For many years, Paraguay’s best pure useful resource, hydroelectric energy, has flowed in another country by worldwide contracts, fueling improvement in neighboring international locations like Brazil and Argentina whereas one in 4 Paraguayans remained trapped in poverty. Paraguay’s Itaipu Dam, one of many largest on the earth, has lengthy symbolized this paradox: a river of vitality diverted away from the very individuals who want it most.
Björn Schmidtke and Delia Garcete of Penguin Group are flipping that script.
In a landmark transfer, they secured Paraguay’s first 100-megawatt energy buy settlement, marking the start of a daring experiment to reclaim that vitality for the individuals of Paraguay. As an alternative of promoting it off to overseas powers, they use it to mine Bitcoin — and the proceeds go to Paraguay’s youth.
(Itaipu dam, Paraguay)
Out of the warmth of buzzing ASICs and the roar of the Itaipu generators rises Penguin Academy, a free software program improvement college that equips younger Paraguayans with coding, improvement and technical expertise. Over 10,000 college students have utilized, together with 800 girls; greater than 3,000 have already graduated. And over 85% of the graduates from their Code Professional program now work within the tech business.
What was as soon as wasted or exported is now being reworked into freedom and a future. By means of bitcoin, Paraguay’s stranded vitality is discovering its approach house.
Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur activist who has spent years elevating the alarm in regards to the Chinese language Communist Get together’s marketing campaign to erase her individuals. Through the Freedom Tech observe, she spoke not simply as a human rights advocate however as a sister whose sibling, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was kidnapped by the CCP in 2018 and hasn’t been heard from since. Her voice was calm, however her phrases have been heavy.
Abbas described a area changed into a digital and bodily jail. The Uyghur homeland, East Turkistan, has been deliberately reworked into one of many world’s most subtle police states, the place mass surveillance, facial recognition programs, police checkpoints, asset seizure, organized marriage, sterilization and compelled labor are used not simply to manage the Uyghur inhabitants, however to suppress them out of existence.
As Rushan describes it: “Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.”
Rushan made clear that financial management is central to the CCP’s technique. Uyghurs have their belongings and financial institution accounts frozen, their land seized and their properties stolen. They’re stripped of any capacity to save lots of, transact or construct generational wealth, and are compelled into government-run labor schemes below the guise of “poverty alleviation.”
Rushan reminds us that what’s occurring to the Uyghurs will not be summary. It’s a focused, systematic erasure carried out with weaponized expertise and monetary repression. Her sister’s disappearance is certainly one of tens of millions of silenced lives, however she refuses to let or not it’s forgotten. In Oslo, Rushan stood not simply as a witness, however her phrases served as a warning: When a authorities can monitor each transaction, surveil each citizen and management each motion, it doesn’t simply repress however completely dismantles the foundations of a individuals’s id, autonomy and future.
(Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas speaks in the course of the Freedom Tech observe on the 2025 Oslo Freedom Discussion board.)
For these causes and extra, you don’t depart the Oslo Freedom Discussion board feeling defeated. You allow reminded that reality is extra highly effective than propaganda, that code can defend life and that resistance isn’t simply attainable — it’s already occurring.
And if you happen to’re lucky sufficient to dwell in a spot the place talking freely or shifting cash isn’t a life-risking act, you’re reminded of the privilege that comes with that freedom and the accountability it’s important to stand with those that are nonetheless combating for it.
This 12 months, I felt a noticeable pulse of momentum round freedom tech. As we noticed above, human rights defenders and dissidents didn’t simply discuss in regards to the repression they endured. They emphasised the optimism in regards to the instruments that assist them peacefully combat again: Bitcoin, Nostr, privateness instruments, open supply AI fashions, uncensorable VPNs — instruments that work within the shadows, beneath firewalls, round embargoes and past borders. Instruments that construct a parallel system, the place the appropriate to transact, talk, arrange and resist can’t be revoked on the press of a button.
These are the devices holding actions alive, getting cash to dissidents and defending voices in danger. And behind each instrument is a quiet builder, a pseudonymous contributor or an open supply developer who might by no means take the stage however is simply as a lot part of the story.
The Oslo Freedom Discussion board is not only a gathering of voices. It’s a frontline, a spot the place the longer term is crafted by those that refuse to present in. And what emerges from that convergence is an easy, simple reality: Authoritarianism adapts, however so can we. With Bitcoin, with open supply instruments, with decentralized networks, with unstoppable braveness.
At 30,000 toes, effectively above the noise and borders they attempt to implement, one factor is evident: No authoritarian regime, regardless of how brutal or effectively funded, has ever succeeded in stamping out the human need to be free. The Oslo Freedom Discussion board is proof of that. And if you happen to’re paying consideration, it’s additionally a glimpse into what comes subsequent.
This isn’t the tip. It’s only the start of the following chapter. One written not by the highly effective, however by the free.
Onward.
