Nicolas Guillou, French Icc Judge Sanctioned by the Us and “debanked”
Key topics
The US sanctions against French ICC judge Nicolas Guillou have sparked a heated debate about the implications of "debanking" and the role of cryptocurrencies as a potential alternative. While some commenters, like tgv, dismiss Bitcoin as "utter shit" due to its environmental impact and association with illicit activities, others, such as OutOfHere, argue that cryptocurrencies can effectively lift restrictions on those sanctioned, like Guillou. The discussion reveals a deep divide between those who see cryptocurrencies as a viable solution to financial censorship and those who believe the banking cartel will ultimately suppress any real alternative. As commenter alecco ominously notes, the powers that be may even resort to confiscating alternative stores of value, like gold, to maintain control.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
11m
Peak period
136
Day 1
Avg / period
22.9
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Dec 30, 2025 at 6:13 AM EST
13 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 30, 2025 at 6:24 AM EST
11m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
136 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Jan 9, 2026 at 11:20 AM EST
2d ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
Arguments about amount are immaterial to me. Cash transactions of say $500k are physically doable in many systems.
And cash transaction don't require burning the Amazon, of course.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Those who call Bitcoin utter shit always have an agenda and insecurities rooted in a feared loss of status.
Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
This sort of fallacy, of widening a category such that the initial meaning is lost, and then advancing an argument on that false category, is something I'm seeing a lot more these days in political topics. But I'm not sure I have a name for the fallacy.
It's like people that argue that the US civil wars was "actually" about states' rights and economic differences rather than slavery. It wasn't a war about the concepts of states rights in general, it was about the right of states to do one thing: legalize slavery. It wasn't about the idea of economic differences in general, it was about one specific economic difference: chattel slavery and whether those slaves get paid and have economic freedom.
American interests. (America, like China and Russia, is not subject to the ICC.)
Being subject to ICC is not related to my question or your answer, what was your reason for including that paranthetical?
Not really. The poster you're agreeing with specifically stated that "nothing has fundamentally changed" and that the US has been "using human rights as an excuse". I don't know if you're completely unaware but Trump is definitely not using human rights as an excuse when sanctioning the ICC judges or whoever fits his fancy. In fact, he's not even using international law as an excuse as the term "human rights" actually means something under the UN. That is the change. And it's just as likely he'd do it if it was in his interest but not American interest. That also would be a rather fundamental change.
The original poster is absolutely correct in this. Whether the excuse is human rights or something else, the key point being made is that its intention is to advance a geopolitical cause behind an excuse. It doesn’t matter what the excuse is.
The article specifically states that there are some 15,000 sanctioned individuals, many of which are IS and Al Quaeda members. These actors are often considered non-state terrorists. If you wish to dispute the article's claim that these actors represent the majority of sanctioned individuals feel free to do so, otherwise please explain how much practical pressure sanctioning the rest of the lot-- those compromised mainly from the top brass of authoritarian regimes -- could have effects remotely comparable to sanctioning an entire country composed of millions of people. Those sanctioned individual are also the people least affected by sanctions, since they have direct access to their countrie's financial and natural resources and could care less whether their daughter's visa or mastercard works at that fancy ski resort in the Austrian Alps.
Trump is sanctioning ICC judges because their rulings are complicating his blatant direct personal enchrichment and his family business's real estate dealings for the "Gazan Riveria", which he wants implemented unopposed. It is just silly to say that this amount of in-your-face direct personal enrichment angle having an oversized impact on American foreign policy is just your regular American geopolitical machinations, as you would have to argue that the USA has always been a banana republic no different than any other.
Look up who the US has sanctioned historically, and what the geopolitical objective was. Someone is always being enriched, question is who.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
Terrorism is shooting 16 jewish people, including a 9 years old kid, on a beach in Australia. That's terrorism.
Now Israel may have committed warcrimes: which is what the ICC is condemning Nethanyaou for. The ICC is, as I understand it, not condemning Nethanyaou for terrorism. And, notably, I haven't seen israeli soldiers brining back young palestinian female who shat their pants into Israel and I haven't seen all of Israel applauding.
I also haven't seen Israel taking hundreds of civilian hostages.
Israel is at war for its survival: it's a tiny country surrounded by islamists who have a deep hatred for jews. And in addition to the very well known and obvious sheer hate many islamists have for jews, there are also a lot atheist anti-semitic people all around the world.
We're literally talking about billions of people around the world hating on 10 million jews in Israel.
Tell us what you really think: do you believe jews are allowed to have just one tiny country on earth where they can expect their teenagers to enjoy life at a music festival without getting raped and executed?
I'm not jewish but I know I'm next. I know those who are persecuting the jews won't stop there once they are done with the jews.
And he's asking some valid questions, why was israel allowed to be created and why are we supporting it's continued genocidal expansion.
Unfortunately he's wrong referring to the zionists as jews, they never really followed a religion, and the palestinians are the most real "jews" in terms of genetics
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Itamar-Ben-Gvir
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like a gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent.
Only 33% of the population opposed it the second time (when it was already clear what their Dear Leader is like), so it's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they're gangsters and fine with that. Even here on HN they're blithely saying "might makes right"...
As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
Two wrongs don't make a right, nor does the second wrongdoer make me more sympathetic to the first.
Frankly, none of the oil wealth in Venezuela has been doing anything to improve the life of the average Venezuelan, and that is a terrible state of affairs. It has only served to drown the corrupt rich in their own champagne. Would Maduro be where he is if he were not a dictator robbing the poor of his own country of the benefit of their own natural resources?
I have great sympathy for the nation of Venezuela and its people, but also for the rule of law -- both internationally, as this was surely an illegal action, but also the rule of law internally in Venezuela for the past long while. The ICC didn't start investigating Venezuela for nothing. The people of Venezuela deserve better.
I have very little sympathy for the oligarchs, Maduro, any number of corrupt related subordinate officials and facilitators that led to the exodus of millions of Venezuelans and the precipitous decline inside Venezuela, in terms of everything from national finances to civil rights to economic opportunity for the average man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_i...
I am not at all sympathetic to anything the Trump administration is doing. I don't believe any of it makes much sense, not even from the perspective of greed or stupidity, but I don't need to go into all of that right now. That has no bearing on my lack of sympathy for the ex-Government of Venezuela.
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something susipiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could negate such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Trump's been doing a lot of "inconceivable" things with the US's international relations.
Trump himself makes this difficult.
He has already done things that a reasonable outsider would expect to be mere bluffs. And also TACO'ed backwards, turning things he's done into, effectively, theatrics.
I've seen far right regimes in Europe -Spain- siding up with the Communist Cuba because of the common backgrounds over politics.
And the Cuban regime itself under Castro mourning over Franco's death. As crazy as it sounds.
You can. But if Russia is threatening American troops in Europe, irrespective of the local framing, that’s a nuclear proxy war.
The US has the most advanced software and CPU's, the EU has sofisticated and pretty complex industrial hardware not even seen in the US. China, well, it's China, the factory of the world.
The example you gave isn't too surprising if one believes authoritarians attract authoritarians.
Which would be put down before it even could start.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
I think its also about the moral ambiguity itself and perhaps even the meaning of life in my opinion.
Because like, I really think that world has its flaws but at the end of the day, this is perhaps still the most rarest moments in the whole universe when we think about it
So I'd much rather do work which benefits other humans that I enjoy (although I sometimes think of it from, I would probably want to do something after retirement, maybe I get retire early or not suppose, but if I can already make the thing I want to do as retirement as job [computer related] and they pay really nicely, why not just do them right now)
It's a shame to me that tech right now feels so inhumane. I don't want really a billion trillion dollars. I just want "enough" and I want to perhaps help people once I get that "enough" not this hyper growth-focused almost will sell you snake-oil kind of tech
Perhaps most people don't have that definition of "enough" or they have materialistic desires or fame desires which one wants to get through money but I don't have many of such desires but I don't really know why people want to be so materialistic.
Like take Elon Musk, richest man in the world, Man, his ego is really fragile. Donald Trump feels like having a really fragile ego to me as well.
I really don't understand what's the point of having all these billions of dollars? Yes nobody is offering me a billion dollars but I'd rather just take "enough" and then give others to some projects I want to help smh
Also logically, it doesn't make sense to lie to me that much. To me trust seems the most valuable resource and the easiest way of generating and securing trust for a long time is being honest. And this helps me grow into a better person (who has his flaws) but still honesty mostly helps I guess idk.
I think we all just want our lives to have meaning in one way or another but it would be so much better if the sources of generation of meaning were human and not inhumane stuff as I was saying
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
The expression should not be understood to mean that might makes things morally just. In the weak form it means the strong can do what they want because what are the weak going to do about it? The stronger form of the expression is the idea that strong players set up the rules (legal code, etc) and as such they rig the rules in their favour.
It is easy to express opinions about how things should be, but only with power can you make them so. There's of course the fractal complexity of who gets to decide how to spend the power budget of a nation, but that is besides the point. We may decry the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, China and the United States, but what good are our cries if we have no power to improve the lives of those affected? Am I saying this to whine about how powerless are we? No, I believe this should be the motivation, the call for greater economic development so that we can attain the power we feel like we need to make a positive change in the world. If not, we will be subjects of those who wield more power - and this isn't even advice exclusively for Europeans. You either build power in groups that are inclusive, or you steal power and form exclusive groups. The quality of life that most of the free world has been enjoying stemmed from the former, and it is the latter groups that will put us back into the dark ages.
Is this cynical? If so, I can confidently say I am a cynic.
Beautifully explained.
And I want to ask is there anything we can do bottom line about it?
I think like stricter rules against corruption should be in check, but that requires the govt. to do something and I feel like govt.'s themselves are being corrupt
It's this cyclical loop and I don't know if there is rather anything that we can do to break out of it.
We have the rights to vote, but those end up being squandered in most/all countries with corrupt politicians, those right to vote aren't really used mostly to bring real change, maybe a different name perhaps
At the end of the deal, its more so an faith in overall humanity that we can figure out what's right for all of us but we just fight over petty differences sometimes.
Do you guys have faith in overall humanity in aggregate? At times I feel like some instances restore my faith whereas others reduce it so its all just feelings for me perhaps.
Regarding your comment, its very interesting, where have you shifted now if I may ask or more details about it?
I am not really American but I still hear that its startup culture is well although with all of the other downsides we have mentioned, it does become moot.
A lot of people feel like the system is unfair but they want to be on the other side of unfairness rather than making the system fair from what I've observed. And this observation kind of fits globally sometimes imo
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
I was discussing this with my cousin today and about how here in my country, we have multi party system. Sure, there is still two major parties but there are definitely small parties as well and we were discussing that even India should move towards more decentralization akin to switzerland.
I really hope we have a more decentralized option and where people from all around the world feel that their vote, in fact, does matter.
What interests me about this comment is the statistic that 50% of US consumer spending comes from people in the top 10% of earnings (first google link, probably not the best source: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/top-10-of-wealthy-american...)
So while the US might look like a really juicy market, I start to wonder how much juice is in the lemon?
Why the dependency to sell to the US if 90% of the US population doesn't have the free cash to buy things?
Yes, I know I'm stupid, and look at all the cheap stuff americans buy; I've seen the miles of warehouses from companies like 5 Below. My concern is how long this lasts?
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
The War in Ukraine is dampening trade with Russia. The EU is struggling in their trade relations with the PRC even more than with America right now, and fears them more than they fear us. A trade deal (“Mercosur”) with South America is in the process of potentially blowing up, and if it’s not passed in its current state, Brazil is looking to walk for the remainder of their President’s term in office.
So the EU’s options are limited.
The problem I see is the risks are not under the EU's control. We may face becoming much more insular regardless of what any of us outselves actually want.
Trump is behaving in a manner not consistent with EU nations retaining indepdendence and sovreignty. And also betting the future of USA on economic development plans (and military plans) that do not seem realistic.
That’s also not a viable option for the EU, or more specifically: the constituent nations of the EU. They’re as dependent on trade as we are, maybe even more so, and so we are stuck in this relationship where we constantly piss each other off in various ways, and believe me when I say it goes both ways.
Part of the issue if that as you move up the value chain your list of potential trading partners shrinks, as lower-income partners aren't viable.
Look at GDP per capita (I picked nominal, for export consumption purposes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Europe's options for high-value exports at scale are... who?
each other. Intracontinental trade has always been a large part of Europe's wealth.
Merz is actually doing a masterclass in beggar thy neighbors policies right now. It's pretty surreal to see them somehow stuck in pushing sell side policies when they have no one to actually sell to.
Trump policies look extreme because tariffs are often seen as crude and outdated but it's very much a continuation of economic hostility rather than a novelty.
I think your main point is valid, but it would be more compelling if you'd taken a few seconds to read it before submitting, to catch this double-negative.
Military might has plenty to do with bluffing. That's what politics is all about.
But when the music stops and the ball drops, US and EU aren't going to war with each other any time soon. So measuring military might doesn't really matter.
Or it could just end with mutual total nuclear annihilation of course.
Edit: now if they were to attack the eu over a decades long interference campaign with its member state democracies, funding anti eu parties, stoking separatist sentiments, and covertly subverting the fundamental pillars of its liberal democracies, on the other hand…
If EU countries commit to a conflict, Russia has no chance. It makes nuclear escalation a real risk though.
Poland alone has a population comparable to Ukraine, and a significantly larger economy.
If anything, the US society is more divided today.
Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.
Didn't Trump have the army attack democratic cities earlier this year?
The US military cannot be used to perform domestic policing functions (Posse Comitatus Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act ), except in times of insurrection or when state unable or unwilling to suppress violence that threatens citizens' constitutional rights (Enforcement Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_Acts ).
Hence Trump's continual (and false) claims that the cities he's targeting are lawless and dangerous places.
The above applies to federal US military forces. The laws specifically exclude the US Coast Guard. Non-military federal forces (FBI, ICE, etc) are also excluded.
It also, in the more complicated quirk, excludes state military forces (i.e. "National Guard" units). These forces can be activated under a variety of different legal frameworks (see https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Resources/Fact%20Sh... ), some of which allow their use for domestic police functions (Title 32 and SAD), because they're still under the command of the state governor (who can use military forces to perform domestic policing functions inside their state or a neighboring state).
There's also a special exclusion for Washington, DC, as technically the president is sort of its governor for many purposes.
Given that background, what actually happened...
- Trump activated National Guard units under Title 10 (aka federal active duty service), because this doesn't require the consent of a state's governor
- Trump then deployed these units to several cities, some with the support of Republican governors and some without the support of Democratic governors
- The administration's legal team realized performing policing functions with the above forces was on extremely shaky ground
- Therefore, they mostly claimed (loudly) that they were deploying "the military", but in actuality used them for extremely limited, non-policing purposes (picking up trash, talking to tourists, guarding federal buildings, guarding other federal agents performing law enforcement functions)
- After state governments sued, the courts generally agreed the deployment was unlawful ( https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supreme-court-rejects-trump... )
What the US needs is to invest right now in fusion technology and learn the damn Math right. Hint: hypercubes and physics.
They have it easy:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-fourth-dimension-scientists-gl...
https://wt3000.substack.com/p/scientists-just-built-a-fourth...
They don't need a war to feed the industry, they need the balls to evolve themselves as the Chinese did. First from pure Maoism to Deng Xiaoping, and next from coal to clean energy. It's a decades bound plan, but if Beijing becames clean it would be one of the greatest things for China (and the world) ever.
Programmers with concepts such as the Hamming distance and nodes in a network are pretty much ready to understand the further reasons of my comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topolog...
Hint: rotating/translating objects will be cheaper than moving over time.
But also Europe (besides Ukraine) doesn't have much to gain from fighting Russia. They're happy to assist in air raids in North Africa / Middle East for energy reasons (see Libya) but it's fighting for practical purposes.
The table can also be turned against the US. Despite the endless complaints about Mexico sending drugs & drug dealers into the US it's not like we are doing effective (or drastic).
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
295 more comments available on Hacker News