Ontario Superior Court of Justice asked self-custody crypto wallet provider Nunchuk to disclose and freeze users’ bitcoin, here’s the team’s response

One of the compelling arguments in support of Bitcoin is its anonymity. But that was put to test this week after the Canadian authorities sanctioned 34 crypto wallets tied to Trucker’s Freedom Convoy.’

On Thursday, The Ontario Provincial Police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ordered all regulated financial firms to stop facilitating any transactions from 34 crypto wallets tied to funding trucker-led protests in the country.

Then the situation escalated yesterday when the Ontario Superior Court of Justice asked self-custody crypto wallet provider Nunchuk to freeze and disclose information about the assets involved in the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy 2022 movement. Nunchuk is a Bitcoin wallet that allows you to manage your bitcoin securely from multiple devices.

Nunchuk shared the Court’s request for information in a post on Twitter. “Yesterday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sent us a Mareva Injunction, ordering us to freeze and disclose information about the assets involved in the #FreedomConvoy2022 movement. Here is our official response,” Nunchuk tweeted.

After being ordered to freeze and disclose information about assets involved in the protests, Nunchuk’s team replied with the official response that further underscores the difficulty and challenges of censoring and enforcing bans on the use of cryptocurrencies.

“Dear the Ontario Superior Court of Justice,

Nunchuk is a self-custodial, collaborative-multisig Bitcoin wallet. We are a software provider, not a custodial financial intermediary.

Our software is free to use. It allows people to eliminate single points of failure and store bitcoin in the safest way possible, while preserving privacy.

We do not hold any keys. Therefore, we cannot freeze our users’ assets. We cannot prevent them from being moved. We do not have knowledge of the existence, nature, value and location of our users’ assets. This is by design.

Please look up how self-custody and private keys work. When the Canadian dollar becomes worthless, we will be here to serve you too.”

Yesterday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sent us a Mareva Injunction, ordering us to freeze and disclose information about the assets involved in the #FreedomConvoy2022 movement.

Here is our official response. pic.twitter.com/iuxliXhN5y

— nunchuk_io (@nunchuk_io) February 19, 2022

Founded in 2020, Nunchuk’s multisig technology solves Bitcoin’s single-key problem by enabling decentralized ownership, making Bitcoin custody much more resistant to accidents and attacks. Unlike other exchanges that provide single-key wallets which could lead to single points of failure, Nunchuk protects bitcoin owners with multiple keys so the loss of any one key will not compromise their funds.