FREEDOM OR DIE!
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November 1945, in the city we now known as Surabaya became one of the bloody witness of Indonesia’s long war to reach freedom, Bung Tomo’s symbolic shout becoming historical, “Freedom or death”.
It was not just a phrase. Bung Tomo wanted toconvinced the Indonesian people that surrendering to colonialism was not, and never an option. It is better to die, than to live and be colonized.
But the truth is, even until today, we are not yet free from colonialism.
Colonialism has now changed its shape and is increasingly modern. From what was previously a state to colonize, control, and exploit other countries. Now is in the form of a party that colonizes, controls, and exploits other party or individual.
It can be said, the party being controlled does not have the freedom to what it owns.
In the colonial system, the colonized country was very vulnerable to exploitation. Exploitation is taking advantage of for personal gain. Not much different from the new form of colonialism. The controlling party has the opportunity to take advantage of the controlled party.
The practice of colonialism occurred in various industries. The form is often invisible, pseudo, even those who are controlled feel they have freedom. But they’re actually not. Without exception, the industry that many consider a revolution has become a source of exploitation…
Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is a revolution against the traditional financial system. The initial vision of the creation of crypto through bitcoin was to eliminate the central role and not be controlled by anyone (decentralized). The loss of the central role and control of a party is what makes crypto revolutionary.
But in practice, there are still many parties who have a central role and control over crypto. One of the biggest influences is the Centralized Exchange.
Simply put, CEX is a place to buy or sell crypto assets. When we choose to use CEX, CEX will have full access and control over our assets. This makes CEX vulnerable to abuse or misappropriation. And these practices are facts that occur in the field.
For example, let’s say the very recent case of Liquid Global, a CEX from Japan, was hacked with a loss of IDR 1.4 trillion. It’s not the only one and obviously not the first time either, there have been dozens of CEXs who have experienced the same thing with a total loss of billions of dollars. And that is only from the hacking side, not to mention the impartial policy, for example, when one of the CEX giants, Binance, prohibited its users from withdrawing their assets and even unilaterally frozen their user accounts.
Was that the only misappropriation of CEX? Nope. The assets traded on CEX are assets that are profitable for the CEX. If an asset is unprofitable, or ‘problematic’ according to CEX, then CEX can easily remove the asset from the sale and purchase list unilaterally. This has happened to Bittrex, which banned the trading of three crypto assets on their platform.
Ironically, CEX is still the main choice for users, to sell and to buy crypto assets specifically in Indonesia. There are more than 6.5 million users who transact using the CEX platform. This means that those 6.5 million users have the potential to experience hacking, impartiality policies, and practices that are detrimental to them.
This then becoming the base of our realization of how important a decentralized platform that gives complete control to the user.
Nothing will feel like the right time if its not now, the time when we move from a platform that is controlled by one party (modern colonialism) to a platform that gives ourselves complete control of our own assets. Platforms that do not take policies unilaterally. A truly, DECENTRALIZED platform.
The revolution must begin immediately.
We realize it will be a long journey, long battle, won’t be blood but lots of sweats and sacrifice will be made. It will be just a modern war to reach a literal freedom. Bung Tomo’s spirit will be a beacon, when we give up and despair, “It is better to die, than to live but be colonized”.
The spirit of ‘freedom or death’ is a spirit that we must strive for. And we will continue to fight for that spirit, until each individual has complete control over what they should have.
Fight with us!
Ngurah Rai, Matulessy, Sudirman
Indonesia Heroes
