Pablo Escobar. Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. Rick Ross. Household names, each and every one of them; drug lords collectively responsible for punting billions of dollars’ worth of narcotics. Yet their crimes pale in comparison to those their prosecutors have been perpetrating for years. After decades of fueling proxy wars and trafficking, the US government has powder on its hands – a combination of gunshot residue, cocaine, and heroin. Those same agencies that would decree what the public can and can’t do with their cryptocurrency have broken every rule in the book.
Bitcoin, Drug Barons, and High Hypocrisy
In a 6×8 feet concrete cell in a Colorado penitentiary, prisoner 18870-111 meditates silently. He will perform this daily ritual another 18,250 times in his lifetime, which shall be expended within the confines of his cramped enclosure. The 34-year-old is serving life without parole, officially for operating a sprawling drugs marketplace. Unofficially, his life term isn’t for drug trafficking however – it’s for doing so without cutting the US government a slice of the action. His name is Ross Ulbricht and his crimes are a drop in the bucket to those perpetrated by the three-letter agencies whose fingerprints are all over his prosecution.
Even if one takes the view that drug dealing and money laundering are unlawful – and there are many, particularly in the Bitcoin community, who would demur – the hypocrisy of law enforcement is breathtaking. Many of the officials who would lock up dealers for life think nothing of committing the very same crimes. Sometimes these are rogue agents operating alone, such as Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, who helped bring down Ross Ulbricht while committing even more egregious crimes and tainting the evidence trail. But the most serious cases of government-orchestrated malfeasance see orders taken from the very heart of the so-called deep state.