21 in 21: Rainey Reitman on Transaction Denied and Financial Censorship

Rainey Reitman joins 21 in 21 for a conversation on financial censorship, free speech, and her new book, Transaction Denied: Big Finance’s Power to Punish Speech. Rainey co-founded Freedom of the Press Foundation and serves on the board as president. She also spent 11 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, first as Activism Director and later as Chief Program Officer.

Drawing on years of work in civil liberties advocacy, Rainey explains how lawful speech can still lead to frozen accounts, denied payments, and exclusion from the financial system. She also shares how these issues connect to journalism, whistleblowers, privacy, and Bitcoin’s promise, and limits, as a censorship-resistant tool.

Links to Book:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/04WK0Qek

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/lists/transaction-denied-big-finance-s-power-to-punish-speech

Audio: https://www.audible.com/pd/Transaction-Denied-Audiobook/B0FJZRQXXR?source_code=AUDORWS0718179KY7

A portion of every book sale goes to support Freedom of the Press Foundation.

“In her timely and necessary book, Reitman illuminates the shocking and widespread censorship exerted by the American banking system, details how Orwellian financial surveillance and control has become the norm, and makes a powerful case for why we must push for change if we want to preserve freedom and privacy in the 21st century.”

— Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer, Human Rights Foundation

Follow:

https://x.com/RaineyReitman

https://x.com/FreedomofPress