Leopoldo López: Open Source Technology and Decentralized Resistance | 2025 Bitcoin Policy Summit
Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist. He founded the Venezuelan opposition party, Voluntad Popular, and served as mayor of the Chacao municipality in Caracas. In 2014, he was arrested on trumped-up charges for leading peaceful, nationwide protests denouncing Nicolás Maduro’s regime and sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison. At the 2025 Bitcoin Policy Summit in Washington, DC, he presented on how open source technologies like Bitcoin and Nostr decentralize and empower resistance to authoritarianism. In an age of growing authoritarianism, his talk is a reminder of why technologies like Bitcoin are so important.