Canadian trucker protests have been in the news for weeks now. The truckers were able to do fundraising and get money in cryptocurrency. As events unfolded, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act and enacted a new policy. This policy had to do with freezing accounts related to digital currency to stop donations.
Experts say that decentralized digital currencies like BTC and ETH cannot be frozen in a network. What the government can do is flag specific wallet addresses tied to digital currency. Once this is done, they can request that crypto exchanges and companies processing payments to freeze the funds.
The Canadian government wants the protests to be done and the protestors to stop occupying the streets of the capital, Ottawa. So far, the government has managed to shut down the Gofundme page of the Freedom Convoy. It has also tagged 34 addresses which are thought to be linked to fundraising attempts, specifically with crypto. According to some reports, Canada’s law enforcement agency has sent letters to crypto exchanges and banks to stop facilitating transactions for the listed addresses.
According to developers and others in the know, it is not possible to freeze a BTC or even ETH address. The only way to stop activity is to use force or threaten prison time to get the private keys to a crypto account. Every crypto account uses controls requiring multiple signatures to access an account. According to Jesse Powell, Kraken CEO, people who worry that their crypto funds will be frozen should keep crypto funds on platforms which are not centralized. There have been instances where funds have been frozen after companies received law enforcement requests.
