Lyudmyla Kozlovska, the founder and president of the Open Dialogue Foundation, told me at Bitcoin Amsterdam that her bank accounts in Belgium were terminated in 2018. In her telling, it did not stop with her: her volunteers lost their accounts too, and family members, lawyers and her accountant were cut off with her. In her words, “this is when you discover Bitcoin”, and it is why she now tells people inside Western countries to keep privacy technology as their plan B.
The foundation describes its mission on its own site as defending human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and supporting Ukraine. Its projects range from political prisoners and politically motivated Interpol cases to a campaign against financial exclusion. Kozlovska is Ukrainian, and she has done this work, she told me, for 17 years. I opened our conversation on day one at the SugarFactory with a simple why: why do we need defenders? She answered for almost five minutes without a break, which I pointed out to her on camera, and the rest of the interview grew out of that answer.
| What you need to know |
|---|
| 1Lyudmyla Kozlovska is the founder and president of the Open Dialogue Foundation, a human rights foundation whose projects cover political prisoners, Interpol cases and financial exclusion. She told me she has done this work for 17 years. |
| 2In her account, her bank accounts in Belgium were terminated in 2018, and volunteers, family members, lawyers and her accountant were cut off too. In her words, "this is when you discover Bitcoin"; the foundation now accepts donations in bitcoin. |
| 3Her argument: privacy technology, bitcoin included, should be a plan B inside Western countries as well. Used without that knowledge, she says, bitcoin leaves everything visible on chain. |
| 4My read: she has more reason than most to call bitcoin an escape route, and she still made the condition the point: it protects your privacy only if you know how to use it. |
The full conversation runs just under eleven minutes.
Human rights now run through data
Her starting point is that online and offline life can no longer be separated. Every action on the internet connects to the physical world, she said, and therefore to our human rights. Being Ukrainian makes that concrete for her.
I’m Ukrainian and for us fighting for freedom, for human rights, it’s not abstract. It’s a matter of survival, it’s a matter of existence.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
That frames how the foundation’s work has shifted. She calls it a migration, from protecting rights in the physical world to protecting them in the digital one, and it rests on one idea.
Data is the main thing and it’s also a basis of our human rights. If we cannot protect our data, it means we cannot protect our human rights.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
She broke a normal life down in one sentence: “You travel, you transact and you communicate.” All of it runs through messengers, email and cloud services, and in her words “everything can be compromised if you don’t have protection of privacy”. For anyone who holds bitcoin, the middle activity deserves the most thought, because a transaction history is personal data too.
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Cheap crime, expensive privacy
The sharpest line of the interview was an economic one. She brought up kidnappings and said the risk reaches well beyond the crypto space: “It’s about every single person who has some kind of wealth.” Then she named the imbalance.
The crime right now is very cheap. And the privacy tools are very expensive.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
The tools are also too little known, she added. She sees her own job as defending privacy tools “as an infrastructure for human rights protection in front of regulators”, and she listed the proposals she has in mind: chat control in private messengers, age verification for social media, and a “digital ID for your phone where all your data aggregated in one place”.
Chat control is the nickname critics gave the European Commission’s 2022 proposal on child sexual abuse material online, which in its original form allowed detection orders requiring messaging services to scan users’ communications.
Her answer to all of it is something every citizen can act on: “So it’s so important to know your rights, to support defenders, and also to understand whom you vote for.” If your legislators and your regulator do not protect your privacy, she said, you are exposed, and she asked who is going to help you then.
The morning the accounts were gone
She knows this from the receiving end. “I live the life,” she said, and described herself as a victim of what she calls transnational financial repression: the “weaponization of financial, cyber security, national security laws” by more than nine states over the past decade, in her count. She is clear about the reason.
And all because I was very successful in releasing political prisoners in many countries.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
The foundation has helped free hundreds of political prisoners in different countries, she said, and they are not always the activists you would picture. She mentioned the family member of a philanthropist who had paid for lawyers in political cases, and “internet providers who refused to cut off internet during biggest protests”. It cannot take every case, so it chooses the ones where “we see historical change”, because one release gives others hope.
What is the point to fight for freedom if nobody will come to support when you need it the most?
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
Then came the part of her story that brought her to a bitcoin conference. In 2018, she said, her bank accounts in Belgium were terminated, which she attributes to that same repression.
And one morning I wake up and I said, okay, what I’m gonna do? My bank account terminated, my volunteers account terminated, my family members, lawyers, accountant.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
A philanthropist who invested in the foundation and sponsored its activities was cut off as well, she said. She sees a purpose in cutting off everyone around a person.
This is a point for authoritarian regimes. They want you to cut off, so you are paralyzed. You have no way how to survive, how to communicate, how to defend yourself.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
“And this is when you discover Bitcoin,” she said. When I asked how people can support the foundation, her first answer was bitcoin: “They can do donations through Bitcoin.” Its How can you help page has a bitcoin option. She has set out the wider pattern before, in written testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives, and the foundation has published a report on transnational financial repression against philanthropists and donors.
A plan B only works if you learn it
She did not oversell bitcoin. Right after naming “privacy payment technology based on bitcoin if you know how to use it” as the answer to a closed account, she spelled out the condition.
If you don’t understand this, you can use bitcoin, but then it will be all available on chain. You’re not protecting privacy.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
Our own guides make the same point about reusing a public address and about consolidating coins: a public ledger rewards the people who know how it works and exposes the ones who do not.
Her conclusion was aimed at the room, at people in Western countries who may assume they will never need any of this.
You need to have it as your plan B inside Western countries.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Open Dialogue Foundation
She wants that knowledge shared at home as well. Learn the strong sides and the weak sides, she said, because every technology has both, then teach your family and friends: “this is how you’re gonna be protected”. The same day she also spoke on the Orange Stage, on the panel Expanding Sovereignty Principles: Bitcoin, Hardware & Beyond, which is listed in the Bitcoin Amsterdam agenda.
If you want the cases behind her argument, the foundation’s report on financial repression and its page on financial exclusion and the BTC Coalition are the place to start. If you hold bitcoin yourself, her advice begins with a step anyone can take: find out what your own transactions reveal on chain, and then explain it to the people you would want to protect.
Read next
- All our Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026 interviews and coverage, updated as each conversation goes live.
- Michaƫl van de Poppe of MN Capital on a bank lockout in Paraguay, which he calls the whole case for self-custody.
- Mauro Lorenzo Halve of the NVC on why Dutch crypto firms want regulation to stay proportionate.
- Oleg Andreev of Safely on Flame, a network he says will be protected by burning bitcoin, with private payments among its goals.
- More from day one: Justin Doochin of BTC Inc on why bitcoin is the central focus of the event, Fred Forsberg of Bitcoinist on mining from a phone app, Martin Masser of ChangeNOW on how little the Binance incident moved bitcoin, and Kelly Ann Collins of SheCrypto on the women in crypto who may go unseen.
- Privacy as security: Common S3nse 2026 in sixteen interviews, our earlier series on privacy tools and the people who build them.
- Open Dialogue Foundation: en.odfoundation.eu and @ODFoundation on X. Lyudmyla Kozlovska on X: @LyudaKozlovska.
I recorded the interview with Lyudmyla Kozlovska at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026, at the SugarFactory in Halfweg, on 5 November 2026. Quotes are verbatim, with filler removed. Cryptofocus is a media partner of Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026; I moderated a panel there on 5 November and am the MC of the Orange Stage on 6 November. Nothing here is financial advice.
