It was a global headline - Julian Assange, the former editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, had his plea deal accepted and his sentence was reduced. His next trip is to Saipan and then back to his native Australia. However, his financial burden is far from over, despite five years in prison and a deal that did not grant him full amnesty. His fiance, Stella Assange, revealed that this journey to freedom will personally cost Julian a staggering $520,000 . The family are urgently appealing for funds to cover travel costs and support his recovery after a grueling ordeal.
While any donation is valuable and anyone interested in donating should check out the above link as an option, some note that the donation platform can only accept credit/debit cards and bank payments and asks if there is a Bitcoin address where they can donate. Now, the BTCPay POS setup allows one to generate an on-chain and Lightning Network invoice for the Assange campaign. His half-brother Gabriel, who I interviewed previously, arranged this. I confirmed the address using the same account I conducted multiple interviews with, including phone calls. I confirmed that they received a small trial donation by generating an invoice on the BTCPay instance they sent me. Once the invoice is generated, one can pay by copying the generated LNUrl or scanning a QR code from a Bitcoin/Lightning wallet.
BTCPay has become a popular way to process payments as people look to fully benefit from Bitcoin’s flexible, decentralized and censorship-resistant properties. It shows the power of Bitcoin beyond the custody of big banks and ETFs. When HSBC froze the bank accounts of protesters, the newspaper Hong Kong Free Press had previously used BTCPay to accept Bitcoin donations. The Human Rights Foundation also uses BTCPay for fundraising.
It’s no surprise that there’s a new option to donate in Bitcoin, as Julian Assange and his family have long been part of the Bitcoin tapestry. Julian spoke to Satoshi about accepting Bitcoin donations for Wikileaks. That was when PayPal froze the funds destined for Wikileaks. Julian has also spoken about his deep passion and writing about Bitcoin, such as in a Reddit AMA where he wrote: “There’s a lot about Bitcoin in my book – about my thoughts on it and WikiLeaks’ history with it. Eric Schmidt and I discussed it for a while, and I’ve included a lot of notes to expand on my point of view. It's a fascinating and complex topic, so I can't cover it all." Julian also claimed to have made a 50,000% profit on Bitcoin in 2017. Since then, Bitcoin's price has increased from the beginning of 2017 (around $1,000) to today by about 60 times (around $60,000).
His family also used clever techniques like putting Wikileaks war logs on the Bitcoin blockchain to continue his legacy. Now that Julian is out of prison, the legacy tied to Bitcoin can continue. Bitcoiners can now support Julian and his family by donating to the on-chain version of BTCPay using Bitcoin or the Lightning Network.
