Topic: Bitcoin: The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists (Read 3137 times)

im sure after a couple month you worked it out by now
it was about the CSW vs COPA case
where CSW falsely insinuated prolonged involvement with cypherpunks, and adam back had to give evidence of his limited communication with the real satoshi to debunk the CSW false claims of communication depth which CSW falsely claimed to had involvement in as (falsely) satoshi

Thank you for your input, cygan. I added the emails to OP, at the section you suggested. I thought for a while where they would fit best and the section you recommended was very suitable. But I added the emails a bit lower within that section, as I wanted to preserve the header with the image of Times and the quote from Satoshi.

Please take a look I hope the place where I added the emails is good and they are linked nicely with the part about Satoshi's discussion with Martti Malmi.

what do you think of this suggestion?

Thank you JJG for this input... much appreciated... Thank you cygan as well, since you noticed the OP has a reference to that article...

And, speaking of OP, I would kindly ask cygan this: where do you think it would be best place to add the emails share by you in the earlier post? Where in OP should I put them? Since you cam with this (very good) proposal I would be flattered if you'd share also where I should add these emails. So feel free to share how the respective new paragraph of OP should look like, and I will add it I am more than certain you will come with a good idea and I'll be flattered to add your paragraph to OP.

i have deliberately linked my post without a link, because the whole manifesto (with the corresponding link) from Eric Hughes has already been deposited by GazetaBitcoin in his op

Since there is no link contained in your post, here's a 2015 article on the topic. My way of attempting to communicate something like: "link or it didn't happen"

small side note:
31 years ago on march 9, 1993, Eric Hughes published a cypherpunk's manifesto called 'Cypherpunks write code.'
let's celebrate it and continue to uphold this philosophy

I understood that Adam Back was connected with Satoshi and some people believed he was the real Satoshi... What I did not understand was why such papers were taken to a Court of Law. A Court of Law should involve a trial, in my opinion, which implied, eventually a trial where Adam Back was involved.

I read the article but I did not see any reference there about such trial... only that the emails were taken to a Court. So I was wondering what is the reason for this... Did anyone sue Adam Back? Did authorities require him to present the emails for some reason? There is nothing stated for what led to the emails being presented to the Court...

i think the reason for this is that Adam Back has long been suspected of having been involved in the creation of BTCitcoin.
these published e-mails will probably dispel this suspicion...

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoin-adam-backs-complete-emails-satoshi-nakamoto

Thank you cygan! I will try to find a proper place for adding these to the OP.
Are you so kind though, to share what was the context for presenting these emails into the Court of Law?

Adam Back's full email history with Satoshi Nakamato was entered into the court records today - this includes a total of 5 emails that i would like to share with you here
the first email was sent from SN to AB on August 20, 2008


@GazetaBitcoin perhaps you should include these important 'documents'/'evidence' in your op and supplement it with them

the following image is currently causing fresh speculation in the BTCitcoin and crypto community about the true identity of the mysterious BTCitcoin inventor. the image shows an interesting, albeit questionable, translation of the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto' into japanese katakana and hiragana characters, which, when interpreted as latin letters, should result in the name 'Hal Fin(n)ey'
the speculation surrounding the characters is the latest chapter in the long history of detective work surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. it shows that the search for the inventor of BTCitcoin is often driven by the hope of finding a clue in every little detail - i hope we never find out who SN was...

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! And I apologize for the delayed reply but I completely forgot about it.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that Hal was Satoshi. I read many articles about Hal and also multiple statements he made and he seemed very honest... Besides, after I read his post from the forum I became convinced there is no chance for him to be Satoshi. The post in question is this one and it's a must read, from my perspective: Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney).

I also recommend to everybody to merit that post, as it is, in a way, Hal's legacy...

yesterday the well known Jameson Loop published a very interesting blog article about the legendary cypherpunk Hal Finney. with this article he presents his research results, and supports his claim that HF was/is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

https://blog.lopp.net/hal-finney-was-not-satoshi-nakamoto/

First of all, I apologize for not being present inside my own thread for a while. I was out of country and I had only my phone with me, so it was impossible for me to write long posts using the phone. Anyway, I am back now



I remember this. I saw this years ago, on gwern's website.

In fact, it seems that DDmr found already the source:


I remember I studied well gwern's website, being very well impressed about the materials presented there. With that oocasion I also found out that gwern was also active on our forum and it's sad that they ceased being active here...


Most likely, the author acted like an amateur and did not care to verify the source of the information. There are so many acting like this in our days...

Yesterday I saw an article (*) that typified the disclosure as recent, and it got me all kicked-up to see what it was all about. Reading the content of the email, much like JJ, I thought it rang a bell.

The truth seems to be that the email was disclosed years ago (although I can’t pinpoint exactly how many). Bitcoin.com has had the email content on its site since at least mid 2021 since at least mid 2021 and I believe I saw 2020 articles referencing it too.

If the source is the same as I’ve placed below, I’m left wondering whether the author used AI to aid his writing, or he simply used old information and planted it without paying attention to the content and the reference to "recent" it enclosed.

(*) https://finbold.com/this-is-the-first-known-satoshi-nakamotos-email-whats-inside/

Edit: 2016 thread here referencing the email:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13718422

The "discovery" of the emails may date back to 2014, as depicted here:
https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto

I am pretty sure that I had seen something like that previously.. I cannot remember exactly where.... or maybe I just heard such an e-mail had been sent without actually seeing the contents.. like what is being shown in your cited image.

a recently surfaced email now reveals more about Bitcoin's previously little-known origin story. it is the oldest known piece of writing from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. a message from august 22, 2008 to Wei Dai.
for his part, Dai had been working (as mentioned by GazetaBitcoin in this thread) on a digital cash system called 'b-money' since 1998. apparently, SN was inspired by this, which is also confirmed by the e-mail. in it, the Bitcoin founder asks for the publication date of the b-money page so that he can quote it in his soon-to-be-published work.

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! It is a very important article.

As a matter of fact, I also had it bookmarked for months now (maybe even more than 1 year), as I intended to write a topic about Cypherpunks and I thought that some information from this article may be useful for my purposes. (I did not write that topic yet and I don't know when I'll do it, but it is still on my to-do list.)

However, I had this article saved from CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/04/09/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks. Apparently, Jameson Lopp is also a columnist at CoinDesk. At first I thought the CoinDesk article was pure plagiarism, as it looks 100% identical with the one you shared, but I noticed afterwards that it's the same author.

In any case, this is a very good reading for anyone interested to learn about Cypherpunks.

came across this great essay written by Jameson Lopp today. as the title says, this is about the rise of Bitcoin and the cypherpunks, how it all started and what led to the fact that we now can't get Bitcoin out of our heads and out of the whole world anymore

https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks/

and if you are a bit too lazy to read the whole thing, you can also listen to it (narrated by Guy Swann): https://www.lopp.net/media-archive/presentations/Bitcoin_Audible-Bitcoin_and_the_Rise_of-_the_Cypherpunks.mp3

Of course, I appreciate the short film too, but it seems that there is a lot of foggying of ideas by frequently using terms such as crypto and blockchain and trying to suggest that there is a kind of amorphous concept (crypto/blockchain) that exists and bitcoin just happens to be part of it.

I think that it would be much better to be a bit more bitcoin focused and to use the word bitcoin a whole hell of a lot more and to avoid using the term crypto and blockchain, except to the extent to which they might be putting those ideas in the context of bitcoin.

There are so many folks out there who really need to understand bitcoin better, rather than attempting to appear smart by talking abut crypto and blockchain, when it hardly means very much.. so in that sense, there are likely ongoing needs to attempt to be more purposeful in the use of language - even if the substance of the movie (documentary) might not end up changing very much, but only to be a bit more clear regarding what they mean by crypto/blockchain rather than assuming people know what they are talking about, including that even regular bitcoiners might become a bit unclear what they are talking about when they are failing to give a bit better context to their use of some of their vague terms in which blockchain and crypto seem to be the most frequent ones that need to be clarified, even if it is a relatively good short documentary like this one or when those same terms (crypto/blockchain) then end up being even more vaguely referenced in other contexts, whether mainstream media or some shitcoiner pumping their scam project in terms of their proclaiming themselves to be part of the (crypto/blockchain) movement rather than merely an affinity scam.. and perhaps some of the ethereum folks are involved in these bullshit propagations too.. but they are not the ONLY ones since there are ethereum imitators who also foggy the topics in terms of promoting their own scam nonsense.. which again will frequently end up deemphasizing some of the important aspects that both distinguish bitcoin from those other shitcoins and even ending up suggesting that maybe some of the other various shitcoins are somehow similar to bitcoin because they are all part of a "valid movement" blah blah blah.

Yes.. I will concede that the affinity scam language can many times end up seeming like subtle and unimportant points and even battling over nothing - even while at the same time a lot of people do end up either getting confused about what is bitcoin or lured into nonsense because even a lot of seemingly smart people present these matters in vague ways by using vague terms (including mostly but not limited to crypto and blockchain).

Thanks cygan for this friendly bump and also for the short movie!

I believe this is the shortest Bitcoin documentary I ever watched  It has only 4 minutes and 37 seconds yet it managed to capture some interesting parts from history of Bitcoin! That was fun to watch 

wanted to bump this unfortunately already forgotten but always interesting thread again because there is on twitter a very entertaining film (~5 minutes) which shows the history of our digital gold BTC:

https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1665680905300525056?t=tzQFWuhf3g_FF7Vs5hLUcA&s=19

We can but try!

This topic also had some interesting links (some repetition, "Meet the Extropians" is a good read) ...

Cypherpunks - 1992
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/cypherpunks-1992-5163467

I agree that the sense of Bitcoin is anarchism and libertarian. Bitcoin is a digital currency that doesn't care about the country and the central bank. Monetary control, including exchange rates, rests entirely with the cross-border user community. The ideology of bitcoin is to remove money from social control, as well as the government.

Thank you for your suggested links, BitcoinFX! As usual, you bring a lot of precious information for all those interested about Bitcoin, its history and about remarkable figures of the past which contributed one way or another for bringing to light what came to be known as Bitcoin!

h/t @BitcoinMemeHub on twitter.

" Brilliant easy to watch series on the history of CypherPunks  including #Bitcoin by @jimepstein "
- https://twitter.com/BitcoinMemeHub/status/1333289056470372357

Cypherpunks Write Code ...

Before the Web: The 1980s Dream of a Free and Borderless Virtual World (Pt.1)
- https://youtu.be/YWh6Yzr12iQ

Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny
- https://youtu.be/n4qonsvSgAg

When Encryption Was a Crime: The 1990s Battle for Free Speech in Software
- https://youtu.be/lv8OFSWZkGs

Bitcoin and the End of History
- https://youtu.be/HDKQulqVCQg

To be honest, I envy Ratimov from this point of view. I wish I could also be unbanked. My wife is unbanked but I can't be, at least not at the moment, as I'm forced by the employer to receive my salary on a bank account. But I'm trying to limit the interactions with the bank(s) as much as possible. For example, in the very day when I receive my salary I cash out all my money and I spend it only in cash form. I didn't want to have anything to do with the banks since decades, since highschool. I always wanted to have control - full control over my finances without having any kind of third party placed between me and my funds. I guess I had a native Cypherpunk vision on this subject, as I had this ideology with decades prior hearing about Cypherpunks. For many years I was able to stay away from the banks but not anymore. But if I'd be given the option to receive my salary in cash I'd close my bank account in the next second...


I don't think the criticism is related to their fees lol. The criticism is related to their centralization of BTC and I fully agree with that. It is similar with the criticism toward eToro or Revolut, where you don't even own the cryptocurrency, but CFDs... Read again what Ratimov stated:



Financial freedom? This is how things should be! This is what Cypherpunks fought for. This is what Satoshi fought for. Because it's their money, not banks' money, not governs' money, not a third party's money...

Mate, we can go back and forth arguing this out but at the end we won't be able to come to an agreeable conclusion,  you know why! Because we are human and are allowed to have different opinions, views and choices,  now you said you have cut off with bank since 2018 but from 2017 or so downward the banks have served you and provide you with all financial services at the time when you needed them most.... now you don't need them anymore it is your choice.

One of the reason why many people criticise banks and payment system like PayPal is because of their high fees..... and you also agrees that cryptocurrency fees are also high...... but you still use them anyways because you are in control of your funds, but remember whatever have advantage also have disadvantage (if all individuals in the world have absolute control over their funds i can't imagine what it will result to)

You said a person will learn cryptocurrency if they choose to but the problem is many people are not willing to learn only interested in price and speculation,  I totally agree, for now people are more concerned about the price than the tech, this is because crypto is not widely used, even the big players in crypto all have same interest,  that fact is undeniable,

PayPal offer to educate people who would not have ordinarily want to learn crypto on their own, i see it as the beginning of crypto journey for people,  from there they can decide to do more research if they want to and make their own decisions base on PayPal services and other crypto service,  they are not tied down so it is a free entry and exit.

Perhaps you are right in some ways but this type of thinking is only for those who have deep knowledge about crypto and the importance of having your personal wallet, even though in practice this is not mostly applicable to all the users in crypto (their are millions of users who still prefer to keep their crypto asset in exchange rather than in their personal wallet and this is after knowing about all the risk involve) in the case of PayPal, this is mostly relating to the average joe who have less knowledge of all this things you said and still want to be in crypto regardless,

And if your perception about "not your key, not your money is that strong" then i guess you have no funds with any financial institution, because as far as i know, financial institution are directly in control of people's funds and billions of people all over the world are still trusting them with their funds, we can not deny the fact that bank still plays a vital role in our spending, if not all then most of our cards are attached to a bank,
PayPal may have their own way of providing this service but bottom line is they recognize crypto and are willing to provide the service to people, and since they are willing to educate people in this regard then i don't think they will be misguided after all.    

This may be very well the end of PayPal and also of the banks. Once they accept Bitcoin they'll also prove that they are afraid of it. But this fear should be properly understood by individuals and not to go straight to banks and PayPal. Instead, understand to avoid them!

Also, incase you missed, check my previous post, which is an answer to the alternative IDs idea you suggested.

even though I agree, I still think this represents a win: someone at Paypal is noticing a trend towards Bitcoin, and responded "...but we need to do something! Anything!"

This is basically the beginning of the end for Paypal, and this move serves as their confession that they know it too

Allowing someone else, albeit an individual or company, to store cryptocurrency on your behalf is neither the dream of cypherpunks, libertarians or crypto-anarchists.

Not your keys; Not your coins!

Possession is nine-tenths of the law
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law

Topic: Why you should not use Paypal for Bitcoin
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-you-should-not-use-paypal-for-bitcoin-5283645

Seriously i think the days of banning crypto are behind us, with this new development of PayPal providing crypto service to it's customers starting with USA customers, i want to believe the negative perception about crpto in general is reducing otherwise while will a company like PayPal decide to support crypto, now they have realize that the use of digital currency is inevitable, the more government device a means to eradicate crypto the more the awareness grow,
it really doesn't matter what the government do or say, the fact remains crypto is here and not going anywhere, it is time they start to have a re-think, make plans towards crypto acceptance, it is said "if you cant beat the you join them"  government are losing control.

Decentralized IDs or free market IDs are indeed a necessary step for rendering governs as irrelevant. At the moment there are many types of IDs which alternate the govern-issued IDs but they function at a small scale and they are centralized, being issued by various entities (mostly companies). For example, let's take the access badges that so many companies issue for their employees. Such badges function as alternate IDs: they authenticate the owner of the badge, they show a picture of the possessor and also the name. Other similar alt-IDs can be considered the cards with points, vouchers or various discounts offered by some companies to the loyal customers. These cards also function as IDs as the customer can be properly identified in a database by the company and in the database are stored his / her name, address, a history of the shopping made, the points earned, the vouchers used and so on.

And yet, governs don't object to any of these IDs. Why? Because they are not considered official authentication documents at a worldwide scale. An employee of McDonald's which has a badge issued by the company is recognized inside the company, but is not recognized if he travels in another country and tries to authenticate with that badge in front of another individual. These IDs are used at a small scale, are not recognized outside the company which issued them and, most important, they are centralized. That's why governs allow them: because the mean no danger to the governs.

On the other side, the crypto-anarchy approach proposes something completely different: alternative IDs which are worldwide recognized, at least inside a web of trust. The problem and a possible solution were forseen by Tim May almost 30 years ago:


We need to prove to the world that governs' false fears of the four horsemen are, indeed, false. And we need to develop the web of trust. When these will happen, we will be able to authenticate everywhere with alternate IDs: and these will be our True Nyms.

How it started?


How it's going?

Non-interactive zero-knowledge proof ...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge_proof

Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing ...
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DP-3T/documents/master/DP3T%20White%20Paper.pdf



(Schnorr/taproot/tapscript)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnorr_signature
- https://decrypt.co/45138/bitcoin-is-getting-two-major-improvements-in-historic-code-update

The above section is, to me, a vital piece of the crypto-anarchist puzzle

Bitcoin allows us to sign arbitrary messages (using bitcoin addresses in the Diffie-Hellman the key-pair concept) quite easily, but was really not designed to function as a general purpose public keypair.

PGP was. Despite the recent setbacks to PGP (the older key-server tech that let everyone fetch each others public keys is completely broken), it remains a powerful technology; the security of the whole internet literally depends on PGP keys, as near enough every server runs an operating system that uses PGP to check the authenticity of security updates. The reliability of the internet would be quite different if servers couldn't do this (any alternative mechanism would also rely on the authors of the operating software providing a signed hash of the security update payloads, and PGP has long been the standard tool for the job). Bitcoin also relies on PGP, the hashes of every release binary are signed with the PGP key of Bitcoin Core's repo maintainer, and both commits to the code repo and sometimes even repo comments are PGP signed.


If we are to neuter government power still further, removing their controlling grasp on ID systems is essential. While PGP is not perfect, it is highly functional and proven in several important ways, and over a huge stretch of time (essentially since the modern commercialization of the internet in the 1st half of the 1990's). If we are to continue the manifestation of crypto-anarchy and cypher punk culture into the mainstream (in which Bitcoin is the 1st major success), then understanding the need for decentralized IDs, that allow us to prove who we are and that our messages are authentically our own, then PGP (or some successor tech) will be inevitably a part of it.

Already government power is weakening, and that of their self-emancipated neo-serfs increasing (hence their desperate attempts to reassert that power in exploiting the circumstances of the 2020 pandemic). They are clearly afraid of what will happen. Trust between people is being attacked, and cryptographic tools (like Bitcoin or PGP) are among many powerful tools we can use to make sure they cannot attack decentralized power.

That's because none of these users understood the anarchic and libertarian ideology of Bitcoin, which is here to help them to render governs as irrelevant through its decentralization. Without having any idea of what they're doing, these users contribute to governs' efforts for centralizing something which was born decentralized. They are actively contributing to ruining their chance (and ours as well) to freedom and liberty. To anonymity and financial privacy.

By the way, in case you find useful, you can add also to the translated topic this post of mine, where I tried to make a comparison between Bitcoin and its ancestors features. JayJuanGee asked me if I can make such comparison and, as far as I know, it's one of its kind. I could never find anywhere on the Internet such comparison and I did it manually

I updated the OP with two translations: one was made by me, in Romanian, and the second one was made by Ratimov, in Russian. That was a huge and unexpected surprise for me. Thank you Ratimov!

It’s just been that way since years, or should I say from the beginning lol; those in power are always oppressing the poor people that they are ruling. Since I was born my parents kept complaining about the bad government we had in our country, and till today we are still complaining about that bad government, and as time goes on things seems to be getting even worse and no solution to it. Do you know the most annoying thing about this? Everyone that goes into power seems to be corrupted.

I have seen politicians that started out good, but once they have been given that power, they all start changing and becoming evil as the first.

After keeping the topic for 2 months in the Begginers&Help board, I'm moving it again to Bitcoin Discussion board, for more visibility.

Does anyone know how to say this expression with other words, thus it can be understood better by non-English speakers?

I just noticed that I received 1 merit from a very old forum member - Paperweight. While I'm glad that happened -- that such an old forum member found this writing of mine and considered it being qualitative, I am also happy to see that such an old forum member is still active. People like him are rare, very rare, as most of the old forum members (2009 - 2011 era) are not using the forum (or their old accounts?) anymore.

@17:00

https://overcast.fm/+LNqca2EDU/17:00

This below-linked podcast that came out today reminded me of this thread, in terms of talking about bitcoin precursors and the problems that were attempting to be solved in the lead up to bitcoin.

Unchained: Why Bitcoin Now: The History of Digital Currency - Ep.185

The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists includes fungibility.

Those guys have already planned everything from the start of every new revolution they always have some counter plan. they just have some hard time countering BTC no matter how they put negative news about it, there are some people who always trust bitcoin and the price is still remaining on top. I think this is the reason why they adopt it now instead of boycotting it in the mainstream. Since they cannot stop the popularity and the demand. Not all the time things are going according to plan there is always be a time like this where they're plan has failed to erase BTC from the people's mind.

I decided to move the topic for a while in the Beginners & Help section, as some of the users of this board may not visit also Bitcoin Discussion board. I think I'll move the topic from time to time between the two boards, in order for the thread to have the chance to be read by as many members as possible.

Sure, we probably do not learn those kinds of financial matters in school because of systematic desires for consumer and debt culture, even though some kinds of financial strategy matters can be learned too, including if adults were to learn to live within their means and to incorporate some kind of savings/investment practices.

So, if young adults begin to attempt to save 10% of their income, then after a while the 10% begins to add up, and they might thereafter begin to learn how to invest, too.... and then realize that diversification of investments should be across different kinds of asset classes, and that is one of the problems with attempting to diversify within crypto when almost every single non-bitcoin crypto seems to be largely dependent upon the performance of bitcoin - so does not seem to be adding much value to actually include some other crypto - except maybe for gambling purposes... or maybe having some inside information that could cause pumpening (which also could end up blowing up too, if not getting in and out at the right time).

It's crazy just how many people actually think you have to diversify by buying MORE altcoins. Somewhere along the way, people lost their heads and forgot that putting Bitcoin as PART of your investment portfolio is your way of diversification, NOT putting it all in Bitcoin and then spreading it among altcoins.

I think the lack of financial education is what's the real problem here.

There are NOT too many people who would recommend putting 100% in bitcoin or any other possible investment, and I tend to recommend people who have at least a 4-year investment timeline (preferably longer) to put 1% to 10% of their quasi-liquid investable assets into bitcoin...

Of course, each person has to tailor their investment, strategy and planning, whether we are talking about bitcoin or any other investment to their various personal circumstances that could also affect how they invest including whether they employ lump sum investment, dollar cost averaging, buying on dips or variations of such strategies to accumulate, maintain, liquidate.. depending on where they are at, in terms of their own specific circumstances including risk tolerance, cashflow, other investments, etc.

Seriously, if I can keep all my money in Bitcoin I would have done that by now, just that I am having problem with the volatility of Bitcoin. I prefer all these new age digital banking than the banks that we used to use before. But it’s not possible for me to keep my money in Bitcoin, the price can go down at any time, I just invest and save little bucks in it that wouldn’t get me worried if they should drop.

Banks are really doing things that are frustrating people these days, and I am starting to not like them. Although I’m also worried that Bitcoin is not 100% anonymous and won’t give us complete privacy, and I don’t like Monero.

With apologies for the late reply, I present you a sort of a chart, hoping this is what you asked I had to spend a lot of time to imagine to to place all this information in a proper manner and the below picture is the best my (limited) imagination could come up with. If there is anyone which has a better idea, I can offer the information from the picture in an editable form. In order to create this chart I used Excel and then I saved the selection as a picture, but I still have the Excel file if anyone needs it.

Please let me know if this form is what you needed.

Thanks for considering my questions, GazetaBitcoin.

I surely do not want to cause you to engage in any additional work that you are reluctant to do unless you are interested in such possible way of looking at the matter (in a kind of heuristic, pun intended... Anticipating: I know the spelling is different   ), and I was just mentioning how I had thought about the matter in my head.

A chart might not end up being very complicated, but could cause the matter to be more easily seen, and I am not the greatest at making charts, either... but such a hypothetical chart might merely contain the various predecessor currencies including bitcoin on the top horizontal header line, and then a list of various features across the left side, and then check marks (or other kinds of marks) regarding if such features had existed in predecessors and if they exist in bitcoin (or used to exist in bitcoin or came into existence later in bitcoin).

I was thinking about something like the chart that is contained in the password manager comparison page linked below, even though I have seen some comparison charts that would go into more detail, maybe even about software, even though I don't have any examples of such charts in front of me at the moment.

https://www.password-pros.com/visitsite?gclid=Cj0KCQjwo6D4BRDgARIsAA6uN1_aWevEojPURfz8XXgy7Hs7vGFm6_2Oua8ufTqXg0Ne29eTk64sCg4aAoHYEALw_wcB



Well...........


after a bit of deliberation.....



I am going to plea the 5th....



Under-the-breath Disclaimer (statement against interest):  This subject matter does not seem to be going in the direction that I had previously hoped.  

I usually prefer to create 27 words where 18 words would have done just fine, so that tends to be my inclination.      hahahahaha

JJG can certainly help you there!

I understand what you are asking, but I don't know about the existence of such chart... I also don't know anything about the existence of such comparison. I'll try to make a comparison, although it will not be easy But it will be a text-based one, as I'm not too good with charts They require imagination and mine is pretty limited lol. But after I'll make the comparison, maybe you or someone else could try also to create a chart.

It will take a while though, as I have to find the proper words for explaining everything. As far as I know this is an uncharted territory, as this thing was never made before Therefore I will try to be very cautious, in order to describe the differences between Bitcoin and its ancestors in a vivid manner.

I am not unsatisfied with your various answers and explanations, but I had been hoping for a kind of short explanation that presents the matter in a kind of layman way.. It could be that I am kind of looking for a chart to show features of various previous systems to show which features each of them have and to see that bitcoin has many of the same features, but maybe even more.  I wonder if such a chart might already exist?

Frequently i hear that with bitcoin, satoshi did not really invent anything new, but instead satoshi was able to combine a lot of different prior inventions and technologies in such a way that no one else had done previously.. so maybe there were not too many new things within bitcoin, but just the implementation and combination of what had largely already existed in one form or another, but there also is a bit of genius in terms of applying those technologies together.. and especially, for example, I had heard of the two week difficulty adjustment as being one of those very powerful mechanisms that might not really had existed in prior systems, so maybe difficulty adjustment every two weeks is not any kind of powerful invention, but it really makes bitcoin powerful in terms of how the difficulty adjustment is applied (and creates incentives).. within the context of other bitcoin features.  

So, maybe there is no real short explanation to what I had been attempting to ask that makes sense when delving into some of the technicalities for what bitcoin fixed at the time of bitcoin's launch and how it was fixed and whether we even knew that certain bitcoin technical features were a fix at the time of launch versus finding out later after bitcoin went live for a while, and then ONLY realize that the bitcoin plane had to be fixed further while it was flying because there were problems with the original set up that needed to be fixed....

If we are mostly trying to figure out what was put into place upon bitcoin's launch rather than how it might have changed after launch, maybe even a synopsis regarding both the deficiencies of certain earlier proposed money systems that bitcoin fixed.  Although, I don't believe that a chart would limit bitcoin development towards only at launch, because some features would have been added to bitcoin at a later date.. or maybe even removed from bitcoin at a later date.. but still could be shown in a chart.

Something like the below, but maybe not everything would need to be in the chart because once the features are shown, then the question of bitcoin fixing it may or may not need to be added to the chart because there are likely variations to the features too, both at the time of bitcoin's launch and down the road:

b-money -  had this, this and this feature and defects, and bitcoin fixed this this and this through these mechanisms

bitgold had this this and this feature and defects, and bitcoin fixed this, this and this through these mechanisms

hashcash had this, this and this feature and defects, and bitcoin fixed this this and this through these mechanisms

Bitcoin had this this and this feature, and maybe a chart would show if the features overlap and whether bitcoin has all of the features of the previous projects and even show if bitcoin chose not to implement some features that might have been present in some of the earlier projects.

Maybe my thinking is too narrow or I am merely a bad student, but summaries of features was kind of how I was thinking about the question when I originally asked it, so even though I got some further history and context for bitcoin's various features, and even though you did describe several of the changes/improvements, GazetaBitcoin, I am still not quite sure if I understand the answers to my question in a way that I could outline the answers in a summary form (to show that I actually learned the answers to my questions) about which projects bitcoin had built upon and fixed and how bitcoin fixed those earlier projects.

I never thought that the creation of Bitcoin is a story as complex as any convincing spy story during the Cold war era. In my opinion, governments will continue to impose some semblance of control over its citizens and that this control will be used depending on the goals of those in power. There is a difference in making law abiding citizens and making those who wants to oppose the government because of their perceived oppression. Sometimes, in certain parts of the world, the ones who wants to fight for freedom are the ones supporting the government and in some areas, the big businesses are also the ones supporting the angry opponents of government. Very complex world we are living in.

I am coming back on this question, and this time I'm going to explain it also using Satoshi's own words, as maybe my own explanation was not clear enough.

In an email from November 3rd, 2008, he explains the flaws of HashCash:


The following is a list of his statements for solving the double spending problem.

For example, in a post on P2P Foundation website, he wrote the following:


More details about the solution for the double spending can be found in the white paper and in the emails he sent on the cryptography mailing list. As an issue of note, it is very interesting that he referred to the author (himself) using the term "we", which suggest either that he used the royal plural or that he referred to a team working on Bitcoin. I didn't notice that before. I knew that it is debated if Satoshi was a person or a group of people, but seeing how he used the term "we" in the white paper suggests there was more than one person.

White paper quote:

Email from November 2nd, 2008:


Email from November 8th, 2008:


Email from November 10th, 2008:


Email from November 10th, 2008:


Email from November 11th, 2008:


Email from November 14th, 2008:


Email from November 14th, 2008:


Email from November 15th, 2008:

---

Please let me know if my previous explanation plus these quotes explained properly the question.

Satoshi envisioned a *digital cash*. Cash transactions between two individuals aren’t broadcasted on any ledger where other people and government can keep tabs on it. Plus in the white paper it specifically states that he wanted to circumvent any government or third party to be a part of censoring transactions, I don’t think Satoshi was that concerned about it being “accepted” or not.

Sure you can reuse addresses, but that doesn’t fix what’s wrong. Tracing every transaction makes Bitcoin unfungible, period.

Even Satoshi proposed the idea of ring signatures a long time ago because of this realization before he disappeared.

Sorry for the delay in answering this... The answer to this question is not an easy one and I had to think a lot on how to put things in a proper manner here, in order to be easily understood by any reader.

In order to understand how Bitcoin overcame the problems presented by Bit Gold and b-money, let's first analyze these problems.

Regarding Bit Gold, let's use as reference its white paper and Nick Szabo's blog entry related to his invention. Some of the problems are emphasized by the author. I highlighted below just two of his observations.


However, Bit Gold's biggest issue is best explained on Bitcoin Wiki:


On the other hand, b-money had its own flaws, part of them being also admitted by Wei Dai. Let's use the description from weidai.com. You can see there that Wei Dai actually made two proposals (both related to b-money), not just one.


The first solution was based on the possibility that all the network participants held a copy of a same ledger, similar to Bitcoin protocol. Also similar to Bitcoin, there was no central authority needed for b-money, the protocol was decentralized and the network users would update their own version of the ledger after each transaction. But this first proposal of b-money did not solve the double-spending problem, as the transactions could not be broadcasted through the entire network.

The second solution for b-money was a client-server approach, where the servers would be the ones holding the ledger. The servers were entitled to publish the transactions while the clients were responsible for verifying the correctness of the information provided by the server.

---

Bitcoin took the best from all the previous proposals. With other words, we can say that Satoshi learned from the mistakes made by his predecessors and made sure that he won't repeat them. He used HashCash, proof-of-work, 0 central authority, public/private keys and a distributed ledger - which came to be known as the Blockchain (although this term was never used in the Bitcoin white paper). But his innovation was that he used the chain of signatures which link with hash functions every coin (transaction) to its previous owner (author) in an unbroken chain which ends at the generation of the respective coin. Practically, nobody can falsely allege that he owns a coin, as the real owner can sign a message from the transaction which attributed the coin to him, proving that the other one is an imposter. And the importance of this invention can be seen now, many years after Bitcoin was launched, as you know: CSW is trying in vain to steal Satoshi's identity and also to convince people that he owns several of Bitcoin's first addresses -- addresses which are supposed to belong to Satoshi; actually no matter to whom they belong, it is certain they don't belong to CSW as he is unable to sign a message from them. Furthermore, he was ridiculed by the real owner of such address, which signed a message from his address, saying "Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn't have the keys used to sign this message.". Furthermore, the recently moved 50 BTC from the address created in 2009 (movement observed also by many forum users) were contained in an address previously mentioned by CSW as belonging to him. The movement of these coins by their real owner proved that he didn't control that address.

This concept, which proves 100% the real owner of a coin, was not present in the previous electronic money proposals.

Excepting all these, Bitcoin also managed to avoid the 51% attacks. As Satoshi had forseen the need for proving the ownership (described above) and many other technological (but also political and ideological issues) which could appear after offering his brilliant invention to the world. He also anticipated that Bitcoin could become the subject of various types of attacks, one of them being the so-called 51% attack.

For those which don't know, a 51% attack represents an attack to the network, the attack being performed by a miner (or a group) having more than 50% of the total hash power of the entire network. In such cases (which in Bitcoin network's case the chances are astronomically low of occurring), the respective miner would have absolute power over the protocol, including but not limited to: stopping other miners from finding new blocks, find all the blocks by himself and obtain all the mining rewards, rewriting the blockchain history, double-spending etc. (more details can be found on Bitcoin Wiki).

Satoshi knew that such attack could occur and implemented two methods for mitigating the risk, as it follows:

1 He detailed an incentive in the white paper meant to keep honesty among the network participants: "The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest.  If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins.  He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth.".

Besides, regarding double spending and attacks, the white paper also details the following: "We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU proof-of-worker. As long as a majority of CPU proof-of-worker is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure."

2. The second measure was not based anymore on users' honesty, but rather on code: Bitcoin is programmed to make it more difficult the process of finding new blocks as more hash power is brought inside the network. Practically, the more the nodes are, the more difficult the mining process gets. And, as a consequence, as the network expands more and more, it would be way more difficult for an attacker to control more than 50% of the network's hash power^*.

Regarding this second solution, laszlo (the pizza guy) alleged in recent CoinTelegraph article that Satoshi told him at some point that he has coded a mining software for GPUs and he was prepared to switch the actual (at that moment, of course) CPU miner to the GPU software, if he really had to defend the network. Of course, the defense would mean to raise exponentially the difficulty, as the GPUs have much more computing power than the CPUs. Laszlo, which according to his topic from May 2010 might have been the first developer (excepting Satoshi) of such mining software for GPUs, could have said the truth or could have lied in the interview. But what's certain is that Satoshi had two ways for avoiding these attacks in Bitcoin network, this being an aspect where Bit Gold and b-money were vulnerable.

I hope the above mentioned explanation answers your question.

---

^* It happened in Bitcoin history for an entity to have more than 50% of the total hash power, but fortunately no attack occurred. In 2014, Ghash.io had 55% of Bitcoin's hash power, for almost 24 hours. Fortunately, Ghash.io agreed to reduce its hash power in order to ensure the community that it has no intention of a 51% attack.

Excepting Ghash, I also remember that at one time an individual miner had on his own more than 50% of Bitcoin's hash rate. If I remember well, it was the GPU mining era. But I really can't remember his name, in order to mention it here. If any other forum member remembers this incident, please share this miner's name and I'll update my post. However, I am certain that I read that a while ago, but no matter how hard I search now on Google, I don't find anything anymore. I also remember that in the respective article which I read years ago, the miner was mentioned by his nickname, if that helps.

Conclusion

A 51% attack could have been performed in the past at least one time (two times, I my memory is correct), but fortunately it didn't happen. Ghash and that individual miner were not interested in such attacks. But at that time the network was way smaller than it is now. In the present is almost impossible to assist at such attack on Bitcoin.

There could be a better thread for my question, yet I would like to raise a question that came into my head while I was reading OP, which I understood attempted to suggest both an ideological underpinning to bitcoin that was achieved through technological progressions and/or improvements to what ended up being bitcoin.

So, when you described b-money in OP, you suggested that it seemed to have a lot of bitcoin's attributes but it was both subject to sybil attacks, but also suffered from the problem of NOT being coded or implemented.  Bit Gold was also subject to sybil attacks, and I am suspecting that the network of proof of work was not decentralized enough in bitgold so it ended up having potential  hashpower manipulation vulnerabilities?

A question came in my thinking regarding what aspects of bitcoin exactly helped bitcoin to overcome the deficiencies of b money and Bit Gold?  Surely, bmoney was not coded, so the lack of coding or implementation causes a considerable amount of disadvantage to figuring out how it may have possibly played out or even further developed based on having code that would have to run if it were attempted to be coded and thereafter run - even with the computing power and network (internet) limitations of the late 90s and early 2000s. 

Did bitcoin overcome the sybil attack angle (even if not really completely eliminated) by making it costly to attempt to sybil attack because of proof of work and the time chain of subsequent blocks that would cause going back each block more and more expensive to attempt to undo the earlier established blocks.. so in that regard, if you have miners who are already attempting to put resources into solving the next block through their hashpower, any sybil attacker not only would have to attempt to maintain hashpower to solve the next block, but would have to continue to maintain hashpower at a kind of 51% level to be able to go back in time for each subsequent block that is mined while competing with all the other hash power? 

So, I am not sure if that resolved some of the issues of the earlier proposals?  Of course, wei dai had said that he was not exactly excited about the strict supply of bitcoin, and surely some kind of prolonged tail emissions would cause different issues in terms of coding. Implementing the code does likely cause a lot of the theoretical questions to have a much more likelihood of better understanding how they might play out in a variety of scenarios.

I am not sure if what I am attempting to describe is making much sense, and maybe there is a thread, an article or series of posts out there that actually address my curiosity about bitcoin's development that causes it to build upon other ideas but to be able to become much more likely to be successful as compared to its predecessors that most closely resemble it?


This post in a bitcoin prehistory thread (that I browsed through) gives a seemingly good overview description, too.

Here's one article that I found on the topic, but I am really thinking that there must be much better articles and discussion out there.

Something about "... living under facism masquerading as social democracy. (see page 1 posts) ...

- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54642739

"Rules of Fight Club
1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB."

... and perhaps something about censorship is bad because ... #### ## ### ### ##### ## ## ########## ########.

...

This one is a great read ...

Read the First Chapter of the KLF’s Bonkers New Book, 2023: A Trilogy
- https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/read-the-first-chapter-of-the-klfs-bonkers-new-book-2023-a-trilogy/

Nope not off-topic - excerpt(s);

"... Before the 2013 crash, AmaZaba were already considering a move into using Bitcoins as their main trading currency. The Bitcoin movement is very much adopted by the young and alternative. So it is no surprise the Occupy Movement adopts the Bitcoin wholesale as a way of trading internationally among themselves. The fact that Bitcoins are an international currency that has nothing to do with the financial markets or any "big bad" nation states is perfect for both Occupy and a global online retailer like AmaZaba. Occupy and AmaZaba are to be a perfect marriage and the dowry is paid in Bitcoins..."

"... Who is running the Occupy Movement is a bit less clear: some say it is just some teenagers drinking cider in a tent; others say it is someone in Helsinki called Hannu Puttonen..."

...

Free the Network: Hackers Take Back the Web
- https://youtu.be/Fx93WJPCCGs

...

HAR 2009: Why Tor is slow 3/6
- https://youtu.be/WJD1hDKDqlo?t=297

Tor - Incentive Mechanisms !?! HAR 2009
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1981287

...

Topic: Whois Satoshi? Known Satoshi IP addresses? ...
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/whois-satoshi-known-satoshi-ip-addresses-5155191

...

-punks!

NOFX - Dinosaurs Will Die *NSFW* *Explicit Lyrics*
- https://youtu.be/TPKQSQSVVos

 

First of all, please stop offending the Cypherpunks! Their were called Cypherpunks, not Cyberpunks! You should know that...because it is a part of the history and, as a crypto enthusiast which I believe you consider yourself, you should know their name. And the name is also stated and explained in the OP:


Second of all: Bitcoin is not just a currency. "I can't see how this currency will help for dethroning the governments and the rich elites." One step at a time.


One way of governs' oppression is through fiat money - those money which can be traced, for which you pay taxes. People's honest work is subject of taxation by the govern. For your honest work you must pay to the govern. Why? Because these money keep the govern alive. Your money! This is one of its control methods. Disable it and the govern will have less power. Of course, it still has other control methods, but this is one of them which, if dismantled, will make it less powerful.


Lol that's impossible. If it would ban mining and trading then the govern will do a great prejudice to itself: because it would force the users to use Bitcoin the way it was meant: anonymously. The govern doesn't want to ban it because it hopes to (1) centralize it (and, as a consequence, control it) and (2) earn some money from the users. So: even if the govern would want to ban Bitcoin, it would be unable to do so; if somehow it would, then this move would be for the benefit of Bitcoin.


That's because everywhere in the world the 1% makes the difference. Everything big started will small steps at a time.


And that small minority made a revolution! When more people will be aware of Bitcoin's power, they would realize they can be free with its help. Re-read this:

Link please.

What does it reveal if you do not re-use Bitcoin addresses or when you use Mixer services? Satoshi never said... "I will make Bitcoin 100% anonymous" ....he knew it will never be accepted by governments if it was. That would defeat the whole goal, if governments banned it, because criminals would have had a field day with it.

Bitcoin can only be disruptive, if it can replace the oppressive financial system that was built on government manipulation. The whole point of Bitcoin is to replace a currency that are printed like toilet paper to pay for bailouts and corrupt government actions. 

Oh really?

If this were true then bitcoin would not exist at all so Welcome to the NEW reality.

The ultimate dream of cyberpunks,libertarians and anarchists is to throw away governments and any form of power and oppression.Bitcoin is just a currency and I can't see how this currency will help for dethroning the governments and the rich elites.The US government can almost completely destroy Bitcoin by banning crypto mining and trading.
99% of the crypto users are all about making money.They don't care that much about ideologies and political statements.
The whole cryptocurrency community is moving towards more government regulations,so I cannot say that the big majority of Bitcoin and altcoin users are anti-government anarchists.
The real conflict is between the naive idealism of a small minority of cyberpunks vs. the reality.

Actually, this is the real magic of Bitcoin. Satoshi slapped the govern in the face by creating Bitcoin in this manner. It's a feature, not a bug. It's a brilliant design, not a vulnerability.

Why is that so? Because the govern needs to know all the financial transactions. It needs to know how much money are in every pocket. Satoshi gave the govern what it wanted and still kept the privacy. You want to see how much money (BTC) are transacted? Take a look, the blockchain is public. You want to know the wealth stored in every pocket (wallet)? Feel free to find out using the blockchain.

But the users are secure, as the govern can't know their true names. Of course, while using Bitcoin as it was designed. By not revealing their identities to various third parties, such as centralized exchanges. If people don't care about their privacy and offer their personal information to third parties, then it's their problem, not Bitcoin's nor Satoshi's fault.

unpopular opinion alert*

Unfortunate Bitcoin does more to reveal info about your past transactions by default; requiring you to opt in for any privacy... fantastic store of value for all cryptos, but I would argue this isn’t what Satoshi had in mind.

This could use a bump.

Utah Data Center
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

Ad libitum ... ?

- https://youtu.be/DoeNbZlxfUM?t=501

...

My only quibble with that quotation is the no one should want to live under either.  Fascism, socialism, communism, "social democracy", authoritarianism, collectivism etc are all very similar, just substituting who is doing the controlling.  A limited, constitutional republic (with enumerated powers, like in theory the US is supposed to have) protects people's freedoms and rights from tyranny of the majority.

The following thread is probably of interest to this topic, as unbelievably we have not yet fully ascertained the exact origin of the word cryptocurrency ... I seemingly have the first iteration of the word on this forum, although I saw it first used on bitcoin.org (unsurprisingly) ...

Re: Who coined the word "cryptocurrency" ...
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.51504401
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.52786029

The links to the other research papers on digital cash should also be of interest.

...

Dan Held's recent twitter storm on Hal Finney was very interesting and insightful indeed ... 1/ to 83/ ...

- https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1244655439024779265

Bitcoin certainly wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for Hal Finney's work and input.

...

I will dig out some more relevant content when I can find the time.

Thank as well for spending the time and reading this topic. I am so happy to see so many people here interested in history, libertarianism, anarchism and crypto-anarchy! I also recommend you to follow all the hyperlinks inserted thorough the text, as you'll find there even more valuable information.

This essay was very important for me, being my 1000th post and I put a lot of efforts in writing it, making the proper research, finding the quotes together with their sources, proof-reading and so on. However, the result makes me so happy: seeing it raised so much interest!

GazetaBitcoin, The reminder about what is really important is refreshing, thank you! With all the greed and focus on short-term gains it is nice to see people interested in learning from history.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. --Benjamin Franklin
I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. --Steve Martin  

Wow man. That was a hell heaven of information. I never really cared to read about the early versions of digital money.
Though I knew about hashcash and digicash, I didn't have any idea about b-money and I was happy to read about it and how Satoshi contacted WeiDai regarding it. Thanks for sharing such a great article and I am sure it will help a lot of people like myself and give them more knowledge about the earlier digital financial system.

Thank you as well. I am glad that you find this topic interesting


It may be, but that is the state economy. For people it would be better, without being robbed everyday for their honest work.


Yes... you can not help people by force, if they don't realize they need that help... All we can do is to spread the word as much as possible and hope that some will understand...


Thank you!


Thanks for spreading the word.


Thank you, BitcoinFX. Based on your replies, I believe you share the crypto-anarchic ideology Feel free to share more information on the subject, if you have more. Your suggestions are very interesting as well.

This is the only time that I have realized the importance of liberty from the creation of these cryptocurrency made before the implementation of the bitcoin network and bitcoin itself.

I don't know if it's just me who is thinking that bitcoin was being used to evade taxes that is being imposed on people who are having an online businesses to make a living on their own. Because if the use of bitcoin promotes freedom from being oppressed by the government in terms of monetary policies -- then it is our job to persuade and educate the masses why the use of bitcoin really matters.

Won't the economy be affected?

About 9 years after b-money, we have Bitcoin that has really changed the world. There are many generations of cyberphunks and developments of cryptographics, digital money but only bitcoin makes a revolution for our world. Initiated by Bitcoin, the world has the technical term, cryptocurrency.

Honestly, I have not yet knownn most of stories you collected and presented in OP so thank you. I am going back to OP for reading it now.

I honestly don't believe in or stick to any particular worldly ideology. What matters to me is what is right. We could find flaws in the above ideologies or others that aren't mentioned here. Whatever works, and is really right/safe is acceptable to me.
However, I think in all the ideologies, there could be some that are abit closer to the truth, but get spoilt by mistake, errors, disadvantages etc.
 We need something very good or close to perfection. I believe we can achieve perfection with the help of our CREATOR.
Truely decentralized system would behave more like a hard-to-kill living thing/being(unless destroyed by GOD)... that's one of the reasons I like it alot.

Said right, but this is not a fight that should be left for a one man alone.
You cannot fight for everyone alone, you can only fight for yourself in a situation like this and that’s the best you can do.

I am saying this because there are still people out there who still like the way they are living and they are not ready change it and go for something else. When you tell these people about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, they are the ones that will tell you that they are not interested or they will just call it a scam so that you wouldn’t pressure them to be part of it. So, I just do things for myself, if others are ready to be part of it, it’s up to them.

Linking this to the Monero thread.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54633230

Indeed.

This wired article is also an excellent read ...

Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the Anarchist Bringing Encryption
- https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/

Moxie is quite an inspirational fellow and 'original' cypherpunk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk - his blog post 'The Money Machine' should be essential reading for any Bitcoiner IMHO (hes not satoshi though) ...

The Money Machine
- https://moxie.org/stories/money-machine/

...

On KYC ...

Myself, having a background in retail Forex (and e-currency / crypto-currency) I know that KYC actually causes more real world 'problems' than it solves ...

Aside from the pitfalls and 'controversies over this legislation/regulation/policy' see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer ...

Companies often do not store 'customers' identities and/or documents securely, malicious actors will often disseminate (sell / re-sell) the collected information for use in identity fraud etc.,

KYC only really benefits 'criminals' in this regard and/or the people who 'control' the mainstream financial system.

The requirement is literally an apocalypse to ones individual right to privacy ...

- https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Apocolypse

"apocalypse noun

Something disclosed, especially something not previously known or realized:

disclosure, exposé, exposure, revelation."

i.e. the dissemination of private and/or personal information.

...

The first Bitcoin Exchange rates site actually featured videos on 'Privacy and Money' ...

- http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/video/7787146/Us+Now+Film

Privacy and Money
- https://youtu.be/BTRFuWtxawM

...

What happened ?

The 'cypherpunks' prepared for a future against facism.

Most people think they are living in a social democracy.

I would argue that, for the main part, we are actually living under facism masquerading as social democracy.

...

More 'cypherpunks' ...

rop, frank: Ten years after ‚We Lost The War‘
- https://youtu.be/P4k7RKx4OQM

I think that changing the system is possible, if people wouldn't let the greed to rule them. To be more precise, instead of constantly exchanging BTC for fiat, use just BTC. If everybody would use only BTC, the govern would permanently be defeated and crypto-anarchy would flourish. But keeping the greed to a zero level is very, very hard.

Changing the system is only possible if crypto manages to become something more than it is now.

Thank you for sharing this interesting link, BitcoinFX. It depicts a part of the history. It is said that who doesn't know the past, doesn't have a future and I consider important to study the past of crypto, the previous attempts of brilliant minds to bring liberty and privacy to the people, in order to limit the govern' oppression.

"History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes", said Mark Twain once and he was so right! The state feels that it is losing the power, the control, and it puts all its efforts in trying to keep this control. It is trying to centralize what was meant to be decentralized, it tries to regulate Bitcoin, which was born to be free and to set people free. These attempts are done with all possible means and long arms of the state: banks, law enforcement agencies and, since a while ago, with the unexpected help of the centralized exchanges. The state did not create the centralized exchanges, but their apparition is a great help in trying to control Bitcoin.

The owners of centralized exchanges created these companies only because of greed. And greed is a very exploitable human weakness. The owners want money from transactions and they get money. But the govern speculated that, forcing them to obtain licenses for dealing with money. And in order to obtain licenses, the exchanges have to offer their clients' data to the state whenever it asks for such data. Practically, the exchanges betray their clients, they offer them as a tribute to the state for being allowed to function in a so-called legitimate manner.

Let's not forget what happened to Coinbase clients, when the exchange was coerced by the govern to offer the personal data of more than 650.000 users!

In Romania, the law was changed during the pandemic. The govern solved any other nation's issues and was free to focus on the law related to crypto exchanges during the pandemic. All good. How was the law changed? The exchanges will receive license only if they are offering to the govern all their customers' personal information! Practically, the govern does not need anymore to go into a Court of Law with the exchange in order to obtain this information. The new law makes to be way more easy to collect the personal information of the users.

Herewith, DEF CON 18 - Moxie Marlinspike - Changing Threats To Privacy ...
- https://youtu.be/DoeNbZlxfUM?t=71

Touches on the 'Crypto wars', Cypherpunks and crypto-anarchy.

Onward.

Reserved.

Governs are oppressing people for centuries. One of the first forms of such oppression was born during the Roman Empire, 2000 years ago. Time has passed, but this practice remained. The methods are various, including direct taxes, indirect taxes, inflation, censoring access to information, indictments, prohibition, slavery, unfair trials, collecting personal information and using it against honest people. However, all these lead to the same supreme goal: the power has to stay in the hands of the elites, while the poor has to work for the benefit of the elites. People fought back, but empty handed most of the times. This epic battle which lasts since ancient times is best described by Murray Rothbard as "the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power".

One way for obtaining freedom and liberty was through private money, but governs don't agree with such competition. And the governs have monopoly over minting coins also since the Roman Empire. However, people's desire for private money started centuries ago and the history tells us that in many occasions private money existed in various forms.

The illustrious economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek, winner of Nobel in Economic Sciences in 1974, raised a very legitimate debate in his masterpiece Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined: "[...] cannot help wondering why people should have put up for so long with governments exercising an exclusive power over two thousand years that was regularly used to exploit and defraud them". Another emblematic figure which sustained the need of private money is Murray Rothbard.

Between 1700 and 1900 various private coins circulated in United States. The first private coin from the US history is the Higley copper coin, minted in 1737 by the Higley family. Maybe the most popular ones are the Bechtler gold coins (first being issued in 1831), known for having a greater purity than the coins issued by the state. The San Francisco company Moffat&Co also wrote a page of history during the gold rush, with its minted coins. One of the most wanted coin was the Brasher Doubloon, minted by Ephraim Brasher in 1787. Other notable private minted coins to mention: Morgan Dollars, Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles, Barber Quarter. Of course, the govern didn't agree with the private mints but what is certain is that at various points in time the private minted money existed. These coins were used at a large scale, no matter the states efforts to shut them down.

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Libertarianism and anarchism



Years have passed and the state kept banning the private money through any possible mean. The oppression grew even stronger. But people's wish for liberty became stronger as well. In the past, they used to express these ideas through liberalism, which later evolved into libertarianism. The first forms of libertarianism appeared between 18^th and 19^th centuries. The modern libertarianism, started since 1950 was spoken by great minds, such as  Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman or Hayek. According to Rothbard, "The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the "nonaggression axiom." "Aggression" is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion". At large, we can say that libertarianism was focused on individual rights, limitation of the govern, encouragement of free market and peace.

One particular side of the libertarianism is the anarchism. Although this movement is more radical, it is still oriented towards individuals. Basically, the anarchism presumes a govern-free society, free individuals, which are not governed by laws, but by free agreements. The "anarchy" term itself means "absence of government". However, the anarchism should not be associated with violence: it never was about violence and it will never be. A great explanation on this matter is given by the Canadian theoretician L. Susan Brown: "While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition than a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation".

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Crypto wars



We leave behind the years 1950 and enter the technology era: ARPANET, the ancestor of Internet, is born in 1967; microprocessors are evolving based on Moore's law; personal computers (PCs) are launched in 1975; World Wide Web is launched in 1989. Cryptography was flourishing with Friedman's brilliant mind. But all these technological developments were not meant for public (yet): the state just discovered a new way of oppression, maybe the most dangerous one - the surveillance. Which was a continuous process for invading people's privacy. If an individual is spying his neighbor through the window he may face a Court of Law; if the govern spies an entire nation there is no problem. If a normal person tries to find the financial transactions of someone else he may be sued; if the state wants to find out all financial transactions of every individual there is no problem.

Technology offered a great weapon to the govern and it started to use it at full capacity, in order to have full control, mainly through agencies such as NSA. Governs' permanent hunger for information about citizen became a hunger for big data: each individual is conditioned by govern-issued documents. You can not give birth without a govern-issued ID, you can not get married without a govern-issued ID, you can not die without a govern-issued ID, you can not prove your identity without a govern-issued ID, you can not access hospitals without a govern-issued ID and so on. And all this information is recorded in databases, which are controlled by various arms of the state; ultimately, they are controlled by the state.

During these harsh times, in 1975, Whitfield Diffie invented the public-key cryptography, bringing the brilliant tool to the public. The govern reacted, offering its help to "keep secure" people's private keys. This never happened and from these moment the crypto wars have begun. In 1977 RSA encryption algorithm was invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman; the algorithm was using the public-key cryptography. NSA's next move was to ban public access to Diffie's invention and the export of encryption algorithms outside the US. NSA director Bobby Inman became worried because people could access encryption technology which, until that point in time, was used only by the agencies. A 1993 article from Wired leaked an address sent by Inman in 1979, warning that "non-governmental cryptologic activity and publication [...] poses clear risks to the national security". The encryption algorithms were considered classified information and protected by Federal Regulations, such as ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations, 22 CFR 121-128). Exporting them could lead to 10 years in jail. As a response, the public printed a few lines of the RSA code on t-shirts and the agency warned that wearing these kind of t-shirts while traveling outside the US or exporting them would mean jail time for the "offenders", as these kind of t-shirts were considered "munitions". Those wearing tattoos with RSA algorithm were also considered as offenders. Maybe that was the first time when the govern feared that it may lost the control. This fear can be seen in the name of the address issued by Inman: "iSky is falling".

John Gilmore, a brave young man, stood tall in front of the agency. The same Wired article quotes him emphasizing: "Show us. Show the public how your ability to violate the privacy of any citizen has prevented a major disaster. They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens—to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency."

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Cypherpunks and crypto-anarchy: "Rebels with a cause"



Fast forward to 1992. A group of three code enthusiasts and cryptographers, formed by Timothy C. May, John Gilmore and Erich Highes, discover that all of them have a similar vision about govern's surveillance and censorship. All of them had deep knowledge in Computer Science. May used to work as a chief scientist at Intel, Gilmore spent years at Sun Microsystems prior starting his own company, while Hughes was a programmer and a mathematician. They started to see each other at Gilmore's office, in San Francisco Bay area, trying to find ways to protect people's privacy through cryptography. Soon, another enthusiat joins them: the hacker Jude Milhon, also known as St. Jude. She finds also a name for the group: by combining the words "cipher" (related to cryptography) and "cyberpunk" (which is a part of the science fiction genre based on dystopian reality and anarchy) she invented the name "Cypherpunks".

The group evolved and many other have joined. For keeping in touch they launched a mailing list; the mails archive can be found on Metzdowd.com and Cypherpunks.venona.com. At peak, it had about 2000 subscribers.

Cypherpunk's ideology took libertarianism and anarchism to a whole new level: crypto-anarchy. "A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy", stated Tim May in 1988, in what came to be known as a masterpiece in Cypherpunks literature: "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto".

"Cypherpunks write code", emphasized Eric Hughes, in "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto", another illustrious writing which represents a piece of history. And through code, they wanted to offer people privacy. They wanted the public to have free access to cryptography. Other points of interests were online anonimity, game theory, secure file sharing, reputation systems, free market and civil disobedience. Steven Levy, the author of the above mentioned Wired article, called them with a term impossible to translate in a foreign language: "techie-cum-civil libertarians".

Another big desire of the Cypherpunks was to create electronic cash. A form of untraceable money which could stop the govern's surveillance over the financial life of the individuals.

In time, many enthusiasts sharing this ideology adhered to the group. Among the most notorious ones, we can mention Philip Zimmermann, inventor of PGP, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, Jacob Appelbaum, the developer of Tor and Hal Finney, the developer of PGP 2.0 and Reusable Proof-of-Work. Other remarkable Cypherpunks can be found here

DigiCash
Some of these cryptographers started working on this dream they had: electronic cash. And they had a role model: Dr. David Chaum's DigiCash. David Chaum's work represented an inspiration for the Cypherpunks group and he can be called the grandfather of Cypherpunks. His writings (such as "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms", "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments" or "Security without Identification Card Computers to make Big Brother Obsolete") proved he was thinking way ahead of his time. In 1989 he already managed to launch the electronic money company DigiCash Inc. The company offered to the public the eCash payment system and the CyberBucks coins, which were based on blind signatures. The proposal was actually applied in real world payments, being adopted by several banks, such as Mark Twain Bank from St. Louis, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Norske Bank and Bank Austria. Other big players became interested in Chaum's creation: Visa, Netscape, ABN Amro Bank, CitiBank and ING Bank. Even Bill Gates tried to embed DigiCash in Windows '95. Unfortunately, these last mentioned players never signed the contracts with Chaum. In the end, in 1998, DigiCash Inc. went bankrupt. People were not attracted to use the system. Chaum's proposal was also above of its times.

The Cypherpunks thought also that the failure of DigiCash Inc. was determined by the fact that it was based on a central authority. The key to success was a totally decentralized form of money.

e-Gold

A similar business was developed between 1996-2009 by the company Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc. This company started a subsidiary named e-gold Ltd. for operating electronic gold. The users could remotely transfer gold between them, in grams or troy ounces units. The business was flourishing, having at peak about 5M users. Many exchanges adopted this electronic gold and the users could also transfer it through their phones. However, in 2007 the owners were accused by US govern for operating money without a license. The owners pleaded guilty and they were found guilty (in 2008); the exchanges were closed. For admitting that they broke the law and for accepting that they need a money operating license, they received easier charges. However, according to the US law, as they were found guilty, they were not allowed to obtain such a license and e-Gold ceased to exist.

HashCash


In 1997, Dr. Adam Back came with a proposal on the mailing list called HashCash. It was an era when Internet spams (especially email spams) started to be a serious problem. The problem came into big companies' radars, thus a first step was taken in 1992 by IBM, with a proposal named Pricing via Processing  or Combating Junk Mail. The IBM researchers proposal will be named somewhere in the future as Proof-of-Work.

Adam Back's invention was not based on the IBM proposal; however, it had many things in common. HashCash concept presumed a Proof-of-Work procedure for limiting the email spam and DDos attacks, based on a cost of each email which, in the end, would make the spam to be too costly for being used. Later, HashCash will become a part of Bitcoin's engine, being also mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper.

Besides, Adam Back remains known for being the one pointing Satoshi Nakamoto to Wei Dai, after finding similarities between their electronic money proposals. There were just two individuals contacted personally by Satoshi in regard of Bitcoin: the first one is Adam Back; the second one is Wei Dai.

b-money


In 1998, another remarkable Cypherpunk came with an electronic money proposal: Wei Dai introduced b-money. The draft was based also on Proof-of-Work and it was presented in two versions. Unfortunately, b-money was vulnerable to Sybil attacks and Wei Dai did not finish his work. The proposal was never implemented.

And he never finished his invention because he did not trust anymore the utility on b-money nor the crypto-anarchy ideology. In a later discussion on LessWrong forum, he admitted: "I didn’t take any steps to code up b-money. Part of it was because b-money wasn’t a complete practical design yet, but I didn’t continue to work on the design because I had actually grown somewhat disillusioned with cryptoanarchy by the time I finished writing up b-money, and I didn’t foresee that a system like it, once implemented, could attract so much attention and use beyond a small group of hardcore cypherpunks". This allegation was doubled down in a discussion he sent to Adam Back and to the others Cypherpunks, proving that he did not believe in a practical application of b-money: "I think b-money will at most be a niche currency/contract enforcement mechanism, serving those who don't want to or can't use government sponsored ones".

However, although Wei Dai did not trust too much his invention, someone else did. A decade later, following Adam Back's advice, Satoshi Nakamoto contacted him for taking a look over his proposal of electronic cash named Bitcoin. They exchanged three emails. In the first one, from August 22^nd, 2008, Satoshi wrote:

"I was very interested to read your b-money page.  I'm getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system.  Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site.

I need to find out the year of publication of your b-money page for the citation in my paper.  It'll look like:
[1] W. Dai, "b-money," http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt, (2006?).

You can download a pre-release draft at http://www.upload.ae/file/6157/ecash-pdf.html.  Feel free to forward it to anyone else you think would be interested."

Wei Dai replied to this email. He wrote:

"Hi Satoshi. b-money was announced on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998. Here's the archived post: http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/11/msg00941.html

There are some discussions of it at http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/12/msg00194.html.

Thanks for letting me know about your paper. I'll take a look at it and let you know if I have any comments or questions."

But Wei Dai didn't analyze Satoshi's draft nor he came back with a response to Satoshi. He received on January 10^th, 2009 another email from Satoshi, informing him that Bitcoin is fully working:

"I wanted to let you know, I just released the full implementation of the paper I sent you a few months ago, Bitcoin v0.1.  Details, download and screenshots are at www.bitcoin.org

I think it achieves nearly all the goals you set out to solve in your b-money paper.

The system is entirely decentralized, without any server or trusted parties.  The network infrastructure can support a full range of escrow transactions and contracts, but for now the focus is on the basics of money and transactions."

Wei Dai did not keep the connection to Satoshi for reasons only he knew. Maybe he did not trust the Bitcoin potential or maybe he did not agree with a currency without a stable value. What is certain is that after years he regretted his action:

"I would consider Bitcoin to have failed with regard to its monetary policy (because the policy causes high price volatility which imposes a heavy cost on its users, who have to either take undesirable risks or engage in costly hedging in order to use the currency). (This may have been partially my fault because when Satoshi wrote to me asking for comments on his draft paper, I never got back to him. Otherwise perhaps I could have dissuaded him (or them) from the "fixed supply of money" idea.)"

Although without knowing at that time, Wei Dai remains in the history as one of the two persons personally contacted by Satoshi Nakamoto prior launching Bitcoin.

Bit Gold

Another proeminent Cypherpunk which tried a solution for a private form of electronic money was Nick Szabo. He was familiarized with the idea, working in the past with Dr. Chaum at DigiCash. In 2005, he went public with a proposal called Bit Gold. But he created the proposal since 1998. According to the white paper, his invention was supposed to "use benchmark functions, as well as techniques of cryptography and replication, to construct a novel financial system, bit gold, which serves not only as a payment scheme, but also as a long term store of value independent of any trusted authority". More details about this proposal can be found also on Szabo's blog.

Bit Gold was using Reusable Proof-of-Work but it was also vulnerable to Sybil attacks, similar to b-money. The concept never launched as a real life application and remained in the history as a blog post, as it faced too many technical difficulties for working in a real environment. However, the basic ideas behind Bit Gold inspired Satoshi even more for his masterpice - Bitcoin.

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Satoshi, the last (?) Cypherpunk



Picture Satoshi Nakamoto in the morning of January 3^rd, 2009. He just bought the newspaper The Times from the downstairs kiosk. Getting back to his home, he is drinking a hot coffee and reading the main title: "Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks. Still waiting for the genesys block to be found. What thoughts could he have? Maybe he whispered for himself "now this is way too much! The govern crossed any possible limit! But Bitcoin is here now...".

Nobody knows what he could think in that day. But what is certain is that on January 3^rd, 2009, Bitcoin's genesys block was mined. And stamped with the title of the main article from The Times.

The work at Bitcoin started almost 2 years before, in 2007. Satoshi, which also joined the Cypherpunks mailing list, must have assisted to what happened to e-Gold and to its owners. The state was clear about its intentions for private forms of money. The economic and politic context was bad, as the world was facing a huge crisis. Maybe Bitcoin was a personal dream of Satoshi. Or maybe the world context determined him to work at his invention. Whatever the truth is, the fact is that he followed this dream of the Cypherpunks, dream also shared by the libertarian ancestors.

Based on a libertarian and crypto-anarchyc ideology, following the concepts of his predecessors, Satoshi Nakamoto managed to create "a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party". The system "would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the burdens of going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted party is still required to prevent double-spending."

With other words, Bitcoin was the first electronic form of private money, which was able to finally eliberate people from govern's surveillence, as the funds could be transferred directly between individuals, without the intervention of any third party - such as the banks, which act as the long arms of the govern.


Satoshi's libertarianism is present in many of his words.

“The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of individual trades, the ‘tape’, is made public, but without telling who the parties were.”

Another good example on this matter is given in a 2015 article from The Verge, which illustrates his first discussion with Martti Malmi, which later will become the administrator of BitcoinTalk. Martti was also an individual with anarchic views, as he was member of the defunct forum anti-state.org. The article reads:

"In his first email to Satoshi Nakamoto, in May 2009, Martti had offered his services: "I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there’s something I can do," he wrote.

Before reaching out to Satoshi, Martti had written about Bitcoin on anti-state.org, a forum dedicated to the possibility of an anarchist society organized only by the market. Using the screen name Trickster, Martti gave a brief description of the Bitcoin idea and asked for thoughts: "What do you think about this? I’m really excited about the thought of something practical that could truly bring us closer to freedom in our lifetime :-)"

Martti included a link to this post in his first email to Satoshi, and Satoshi quickly read it and responded.

"Your understanding of Bitcoin is spot on," Satoshi wrote back."

Satoshi's answer is crystal clear about his vision. And his lesson should never be forgotten.

The same is true about him when we talk about sharing the Cypherpunks' points of interest - he gave people free access to Bitcoin, to the privacy offered by Bitcoin. Free access and ease of use of the cryptographic keys used by his protocol. Bitcoin was supposed (and succeeded to) fully change the free market. Ultimately, it was a form of civil disobedience. A method to take position in front of govern's money - the traceable money, the inflated money, the money which day by day lose their value, as govern's printers are constantly issuing new money.

He wanted to help people to be free again. And this was possible through Bitcoin. No bank and no govern could "milk" the people off of their money anymore with more or less sophisticated mechanism, such as taxes for transferring their funds, taxes for selling their products, taxes for selling their work power. Bitcoin is free for anyone and freedom resides inside it; if you want to have control over your privacy and finances, all you need to do is to embrace it.

Bitcoin was forseen many years, with multiple occasions, by Tim May. For example, in his 1994 essay Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities he said "Technology has let the genie out of the bottle. Crypto anarchy is liberating individuals from coercion by their physical neighbors—who cannot know who they are on the Net—and from governments. For libertarians, strong crypto provides the means by which government will be avoided".

Bitcoin is true and it is here to last. Sky started to fall since 1979 and it kept falling since then. The govern lost the war. Freedom is in our hands.

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And it is a sequel of my previous writing related to Cypherpunks, history and crypto-anarchy. The Cypherpunks' spirit lives through many of us. It is our duty to keep it alive. It is our duty to keep fighting for freedom and liberty!

References:
- Governs are coming for the traders!
- Cryptocurrency vs digital money issued by the state
- The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto - We all should read it
- Governs try to limit access of public to information and freedom since ages
- Phil Zimmermann's thoughts about PGP - We all should read them
- When the govern wants to hold your private keys
- The call for Julian Assange || The WikiLeaks Manifesto - We all should read it

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Translations (in chronological order):

• Română: Bitcoin: visul avut de Cypherpunks, de libertarieni și de crypto-anarhiști, translation by GazetaBitcoin
• Pyccкий: Bitcoin: Meчтa шифpoпaнкoв, либepтapиaнцeв и кpиптo-aнapxиcтoв, translation by Ratimov