Bitcoin surge a boon for white nationalists: study

The increase in Bitcoin’s value over the last few years has made several prominent white nationalists rich, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center study.

The legal nonprofit identified over 600 far-right extremists with cryptocurrency holdings. 

Several prominent white supremacists, like Andrew Auernheimer and Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer and racial pseudoscientist Stefan Molyneux, were early adopters of Bitcoin, providing them with significant windfalls.

Tens of millions of dollars worth of value have been accumulated by far right figures overall through cryptocurrency holdings, the SPLC’s investigation through blockchain analysis software found.

“Nothing is inherently criminal or extreme about it, and most of its users have no connections to the extreme far right,” the study notes. “However, the far right’s early embrace of cryptocurrency merits deeper analysis, due to the way they used it to expand their movement and to obscure funding sources.” 

Cryptocurrency, which is more commonly used as an investment vehicle than a replacement for legal tender, has grown in popularity swiftly in recent years.

That popularity growth has spiked the value of many tokens, including bitcoin, dramatically. 

A single bitcoin is now worth roughly $47,000; Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents, who supports creating a white “ethnostate,” purchased almost thirty when they were worth less than $10 a pop, according to the SPLC.

Cryptocurrency provides a valuable payment method for white supremacist figures who are banned from using traditional credit cards and major apps like PayPal or Stripe.