Julian Assange is back on twitter... I mean X. Here's the part of his story that belongs to anyone holding bitcoin. December 2010. WikiLeaks had just published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, and Washington was furious. So the money got cut off. Not by a judge. By the payment companies. Over the next two weeks PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and Bank of America each announced they would no longer process donations to WikiLeaks. No charge had been filed against the publisher. No court had ordered anything. A senator made some phone calls, the companies pointed at their terms of service, and a publisher's income disappeared in 14 days. Someone on a forum suggested WikiLeaks take bitcoin instead. Bitcoin's creator said no. On December 11, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote: "WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us." Within days he stopped posting in public. He never came back. WikiLeaks started taking bitcoin in 2011 anyway. In 2017 @JulianAssange thanked the U.S. government for the blockade: it had "caused us to invest in Bitcoin -- with > 50000% return." The swarm came. The network is still here. The companies that flipped the switch on a publisher can flip it on you, and they don't need a judge to do it. The one payment rail that never had a switch is the one Satoshi was afraid to test.