On Feb. 22, bitcoiners rejoiced when the financial banking giant Fidelity was handed the ‘Lightning torch’ as the Lightning Network’s social experiment was passed on to its latest bearer. Then, two days later, the new Lightning torch holder made the decision to exclude passing it on to a cryptocurrency executive from Iran because of U.S. sanctions. After a few words were exchanged between the torch holder and onlooking cryptocurrency supporters, an argument erupted over the debacle. The exclusion showed that a good portion of the community believes it is wrong to censor individuals over arbitrary laws and invisible borders.
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Iranian Bitcoin User Excluded from Receiving the Lightning Torch
Over the last few weeks, Lightning Network (LN) supporters have been passing a small fraction of bitcoin back and forth to each other using the ‘Lightning Torch,’ a social experiment that has generated a lot of attention. LN fans were pleased when crypto luminaries like Changpeng Zhao and Erik Voorhees participated, but supporters grew even more ecstatic when the CEO of Twitter and Fidelity Bank held the torch.
However, on Sunday, Feb. 24, the torch holder at the time, Peach Inc. developer Vijay Boyapati, decided to exclude Coinex executive Ziya Sadr from Iran because of financial sanctions.
“I really wanted to send it to Ziya Sadr but US law makes it very risky for me as a citizen — Very sad that two peaceful people cannot transact with each other across the world because of the state,” Boyapati stated after being asked to send
