Topic: The Cypherpunks and the road to Bitcoin (Read 199 times)

I think Satoshi probably branched away from slightly from this way of thinking,
I believe he created a Bitcoin for everyone, not just for the sake of creating a project,
he brought the code into the open.

The evidence is the forum, bitcointalk.org, created to include anyone who wanted to
support and be part of the project.

Satoshi built Bitcoin from earlier versions of Digital Cash, Ray Dillinger states in this
article that the trust factor was removed from Bitcoin making it trustless, Satoshi
was building something for everyone, for the good of everyone.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/id-known-what-we-were-starting-ray-dillinger/

We are just the beneficiaries and earlier adopters, I doubt you will find a cypherpunk here, not really the same audience.
Some consider a cypherpunk a person who participated on the mailing list and others consider a person if he/she advocates cryptography, but:
quote: "Cypherpunks write code"

Julian Assange, Philip Zimmermann, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, Nadia Heninger are real cypherpunks, cryptography purists.

They create projects for themselves and for those who may be interested, they don't need your trust and don't care. If someone needs a tool he is free to use their works, and as for the trust he is free to review the code himself, that's the advantage of open-source

So does this mean any supporters of Bitcoin may it be a hodler or a miner can be counted as a cypherpunk? Or are we just considered beneficiaries of it if we don't do any kind of action to promote Bitcoin in social or political way? Yeah the names of your list has done a lot of things for cryptography and they pave way for us people to benefit from it but without us we couldn't say that they will have success if we didn't believe in what they are doing in the first place especially the early adopters of Bitcoin where they are basically trust a project who has zero value from the start. Maybe showing support for Bitcoin can be counted as being an activist of cryptography.

Before the cypherpunks, there is something interesting to read about to understand the ideology. The Anarchy's history and it started well before the crypto-anarchists movement, probably 150 years ago in reaction to the industrial revolution and capitalism. I've read stuff from 1840 from the founder of the mutualist philosophy Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. If he was still alive, people would speculate he's Satoshi ^^

There is a book I can recommend you to read Neither God nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics but I believe there is a documentary video if you don't want to spend some bucks to buy it

edit: found it in video

No Gods No Masters A History of Anarchism Part 1 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ-utvfgK8Q
No Gods No Masters A History of Anarchism Part 2 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77GKgbUGJK0
No Gods No Masters A History of Anarchism Part 3 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6pysEKlg0Q

And while I'm at it
Anarchism in America (1983) - Documentary on the American Anarchy Movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHGl9a8BcqI

Trust and Privacy is necessary in regards to our financial dealings, at
any time the bank can stop us from accessing our own funds.

they dont have enough cash to cover our deposits, if we all demanded
our funds at the same time we wouldnt get it.

I think they just wanted to blame something for the drug issue. Since its been so long and nothing has been said about it, why not blame the new guy right? Especially since they are going the wants of the government.

On the side of the government though, without us offering privacy, they'd have a pretty darn hard time managing our info and our safety. On their defense that is, doesn't mean that they are (possibly) not doing anything shady with out info. Still, Privacy is really hard to fix or hard to determine which side is right, since pretty much everything is decided through selfish reasons.

Well, its the concept of how you would only trust yourselves. Privacy is kind of a imaginative thing. As selfish as we are, Privacy only applies to what we want to acknowledge it to what suits or fits us the best, with the common populace, Privacy is a good thing, and means that the government should not be able to track any kind of data that are of our own ownership. For the government, Privacy could go die for all they care, but not in a bad way, since they want to ensure the safety of everyone else. This really contradicts with some peoples view, which makes talks regarding privacy kind of difficult to bring up.

Correct, the idea behind the long development of digital cash is
centered around privacy and trust.

The vast majority of people waiver their privacy to gain free
e-mail and entertainment, we place too much trust in Banks
and governments.

The drugs thing is overplayed, drugs are also bought with
cash, trying to shut down Bitcoin will not put an end to the
drugs trade.

I like how Eric differentiate privacy and secrecy. Sometimes, Bitcoin is being misunderstood because of its privacy. It is associated with illegal drugs and other contraband that are flowing secretly. Privacy is not bad. Secrecy could be bad. Privacy is a right of every individual. Secrecy is not. 

Privacy will always be debated on as both sides of the fences (the pro and the anti) will not be giving up their convictions and felt duty to defend what they think should have been and what must be. The government will always be at odds with these people and with cryptocurrency as an industry, for many reasons especially in the time when information and data can be valuable and can be carrying a price tag.

I am always fascinated with the prehistory of Bitcoin and the many men who somehow contributed to the creation of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto. I am sure that we should also remember these names and have them be immortalized in the history of cryptocurrency.

Glad to see that Craig Wright is not listed here -- and I am just kidding!

where to go after that post and links, i can understand there are countless threads of investigation and learning that can be done.
everyone who considers and values their privacy and bitcoin owes a lot to these people for doing us a service.
isnt this what its all about? gaining back some privacy and control

As with any form of research there are many avenues leading away from any one point so I have
tried to keep on a single avenue leading to the formation of Bitcoin. I will leave it up to each reader
to create their own journey and create their own paths in the complex and extremely interesting
area of cryptography, resistance and power reclamation, This post is merely a whetting of the appetite.
 
On my journey back to the foundation of Bitcoin and before I am learning about the key players in the
development of Bitcoin, the key players who no doubtedly influenced Satoshi’s idea and probably helped
indirectly without knowing they were contributing to it, but of course this is not proven and along with
countless other theories has been debated to death.
These key people were members of “The Cypherpunks” who were a group made up of computer scientist,
programmers and developers heavily interested in Privacy and cryptography, for the benefit of
anyone who was interested. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk

The person who really started the ball rolling was David Chaum who wrote in the 1980’s various papers,
these were described as “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete”.
Already by this title we can see the origins of Bitcoin.

By the early 1990’s Chaum’s ideas had brought about the formation of the Cypherpunks and the release of
the Cypherpunk Manifesto by Eric Hughes. The manifesto opens with this first powerful line
” Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy.
A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is
something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”

With the formation of the Cypherpunks a new chapter in “Crypto Wars” began. Intelligence
agencies from the U.S and the world have been at odds with the Cypherpunks and have waged
a war of decrypting information ever since encryption was used by the public.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

The following key points in the cryptography/Cypherpunk timeline shows how they were making
developments on what David Chaum’s transaction systems ideas had sparked and which most definitely
created the stepping stones to Bitcoin.
1997 – HASHCASH is created by Adam Back and is formally referred to as “"Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure"
1998 – BITGOLD is created by Nick Szabo. This was a decentralised digital currency which was never launched.
1998 – B MONEY essay is created by Wei Dai and referenced a type of “proof of work” system to create an anonymous and distributed digital currency.
The next notable leap towards Bitcoins launch came in 2004 when Hal Finney created the first Reusable Proof of Work [RPOW],
an early version of what Bitcoin is based on, Proof of Work [POW].

Jump forward to 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto was working on Bitcoin he reportedly invited Adam Back and Wei Dai to help with the creation of Bitcoin…

2008 - 18th August - bitcoin.org domain name was registered
2008 – 31st October - a link to the Bitcoin whitepaper was posted
2009 – 3rd January – Bitcoins Genesis Block created

My Key People in order of appearance

David Chaum
Pioneer in Cryptography and privacy-based technologies and creator of ECash
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum

Eric Hughes
One of the founders of the Cypherpunk movement, created the first anonymous remailer and author of The Cypherpunk Manifesto.
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hughes_(cypherpunk)
Manifesto: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Adam Back
Inventor of HashCash, a POW system similar to Bitcoin, Invited by Satoshi to be involved in the creation of Bitcoin
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back

Nick Szabo
Cypherpunk, a pre-Bitcoin developer of “cryptocurrency” and involvement in the creation of Bitcoin
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickszabo4

Wei Dai
Author of B Money, Invited by Satoshi to be involved in the creation of Bitcoin
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Dai
Bitcointalk Posts: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/wei-dai-1954

Hal Finney
Cypherpunk, Creator or RPOW, PGP 2.0, Involvement in the creation of Bitcoin and the first person to receive Bitcoin tokens from Satoshi
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist)
Bitcointalk Posts: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/hal-2436
Twitter: https://twitter.com/halfin

Satoshi Nakamoto:
The anonymous person or persons, male and/or female who developed and created Bitcoin
Wiki Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto
Bitcointalk Posts: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/satoshi-3
P2pfoundation posts: 11/02/2009: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source
Whitepaper, e-mails, posts & more: https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/

To continue your exploration I recommend that you visit the Bitcoin Prehistory Thread
created by VB101 > https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-prehistory-5126554