User:Dusan Barok/Bitcoin bits, trivia and anecdotes (cont.)

First part of the page is here.

Community

Satoshi Nakamoto

Stayed anonymous, never posted anything in Japanese. His PGP key was created just months prior to the date of the genesis block. Seems to be very familiar with the cryptography mailing list, but there are no non-Bitcoin posts from him on it. He has used an email address from an anonymous mail hosting service (vistomail) as well as one from a free webmail account (gmx.com) and sends mail when connected via Tor. In 12/2010 disappeared from Btc forum. [3] [4]

"If you read his posts and code carefully and have some sense of these things, the impression you get is that Satoshi is likely an Oxbridge-educated computer scientist, maybe a graduate student or lecturer at a British university (or, marginally less likely, someone in industry with a bit of time on his hands. possibly Google, since some Googlers, depending on their circumstances, don't work very hard). It's very unlikely that he's American or Australian. It's inconceivable he's natively Japanese, at least without having emigrated very early. Also, i doubt he's quite a libertarian, and he wasn't generally distracted by Austrian-school ideology. I recall many times where he cut through various common misinterpretations of menger, for example, but not from the perspective of someone grounded deeply in economic terminology or fallacies. Rather, he just called it out or ignored it as inapplicable to the questions he was answering. (The particular monetary policy behind Bitcoin doesn't seem ideological but, rather, based in marketing and a sense of what would promote adoption. Indeed, early messages from Satoshi suggest that Bitcoin's appeal to libertarians was largely a marketing manoeuver.)" [5]

Speculation: is this him? [6] (date corresponds with the work on Btc), [7]

Project developers

Project lead, Gavin Andresen [1]

• Satoshi Nakamoto (id 3 at Bitcoin Forum)
• Gavin Andresen (224), Amherst/MA; Clearwing company; bitcoin.org, freebitcoins.appspot.com, Clearcoin; [8] interview
• Martti Malmi (4), aka sirius-m, Bitcoin Web Developer, installed Btc forums and wiki at bitcoin.sourceforge.net (13.6.09), made Btc Linux client (12/2009)
• Amir Taaki (1931), aka genjix, UK
• Pieter Wuille
• Nils Schneider
• Jeff Garzik (8866)

[9]

Early adopters

Beta testers from Bitcoin mailing list

• Hal Finney (2436), 10.1.09, [10]
• Dustin D. Trammell, +-16.1.09
• Nicholas Bohm, +-25.1.09, Salkyns, Great Canfield, Takeley, Bishop's Stortford, UK
• Jeff Kane, +-30.1.09
• Martti Malmi (4)
• Tyler Gillies, *15.8.09, onechristbody.com
• Liberty Standard, +-23.10.09 (flagged on forum)
• Mike Hearn, +-24.10.09
• Eugen Leitl, +-26.10.09, leitl.org, ativel.com, postbiota.org
• Dan Mahoney, *21.5.10, system admin, gushi.org, "i plan on accepting bitcoin currency for web-hosting that I run, because it sounds cool."

Old times (late 2009), [11]

Forum users

Forum.bitcoin.org

• 3 satoshi, admin, *19.11.09, last 13 dec 10
• 4 sirius, admin, Btc client developer (see above), Martti Malmi, *20.11.09, FI, active, owner of Bitcoin Exchange, owns the server that bitcoin.org is hosted on
• 6 nandnor, newbie, *4.12.09, last 5 june 10, 3 posts
• 10 Xunie, global moderator, *9.12.09, active
• 11 madhatter, newbie, *9.12.09, last dec 09, 1 post
• 12 nanaimogold, full member, Shane Smith, *9.12.09, active; nanaimogold.com, Nanaimo/CA - Nanaimo Gold Digital Currency Exchange, trades with 7 digital currencies, exists since 2005 already??, "not affiliated with any of these payment systems mentioned."
• 13 SmokeTooMuch, hero member, *10.12.09, active, DE, @2009: "back then it felt like listening to some technology-socialist-anarchist-liberalist gurus."
• 14 The Madhatter, hero member, *10.12.09, active, bitcoin4cash.com
• 16 xuO4k04c6Ng, newbie, *12.12.09, last july 10, 1 post
• 17 The Doctor, newbie, *18.12.09, active, sysadmin @ DC/US, part of HacDC hackerspace DC/US, 1 post, blog: drwho.virtadpt.net, about.me/drwho/
• 21 AgoraMutual, newbie, *1.1.2010, last jan 11, 9 posts, US
• 22 RogerRabbit, newbie, *12.1.2010, last jan 11, 10 posts
• 24 dwdollar, global moderator, *15.1.2010, active, bitcoinmarket.com
• 26 NewLibertyStandard, sr. member, *19.1.2010, last mar 11, Valentina Izmailova (possibly fraudulent) and IP 67.212.80.94 (possibly proxy) steals money from friendly Bitcoin users by stealing your email password by sending a message with the subject "Your account will be suspended".
• 27 riX, jr. member, *20.1.2010, active, SW
• 30 BitcoinFX, full member, *1.2.2010, last oct 10, bitcoinfx.cz.cc - Independent Bitcoin Exchange Service.
• 33 m0mchil, full member, *5.2.2010, active, POCLBM - python OpenCL bitcoin miner
• 143 laszlo, global moderator & full member, 22.5.10 bought pizza from Jercos for 10k Btc [12]
• 224 Gavin Andresen, admin, Btc client developer (see above)
• 338 mizerydearia (aka necrodearia), Milwaukee/WI, author/coder of witcoin.com, IRC Bitbot, Stats Control Panel, MtGox Market Bot, please.bitcoin.me, and the Bitcoin Gentoo Ebuild; interview
• 489 mtgox, full member, *7.2010, inactive (as of 3/11), Jed, 6.3.11 sold mtgox.com to MagicalTux [13]
• 490 ByteCoin; pro Btc alternative
• 491 kiba, bitcoin.it (1 of 3); organised pledge and letter to EFF; [14], soulplaying.com (TODO manager with RPG elements)
• 904 zooko, Zooko O'Whielacronx, twice failed in deploying DigiCash, in 11/2008 tried third time. p2p-hackers list (since 6/2006, did not exist as of 4/2009); develops Tahoe-LAFS secure decentralised filesystem (praised by EFF)
• 1598 bitcoinex, hero member, *7/2010, RU, owns bitcoinex and its btcex exchange, ~11.5.11 DDos'd MtGox exchange, "By the way, I am announcing collecting donations for the ddos of mtgox for decreasing exchange rates!" [15]
• 1931 genjix, Amir Taaki, hero member, Btc client developer; bitcoin.it (1 of 3); Britcoin (*26.3.11); [16]; writings; genjix.net; talks esperanto (; game developer; studied computer animation, [17]
• 1954 Wei Dai, author of B-money, [18]
• 1986 matonis, themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com, "I am an Austrian School economist from George Washington University focused on expanding the circulation of nonpolitical digital currencies. My career has included senior influential posts at Sumitomo Bank, VISA, VeriSign, and Hushmail."
• 2033 Bruce Wagner, Sr. member, *10/2010, NYC; BitcoinMe.com; OnlyOneTV.com; [19]; 11/2010 organised Btc NYC meetup
• 2134 MagicalTux, full member, Mark Karpeles, born ~1986, *11.2010, Tokyo/JP, 6.3.11 bought MtGox.com from id MtGox ("Jed is still looking over us for now"); involved in bitcoin.it, KalyHost webhosting and vps; K.K. Tibanne (Japanese company, since 2009); /blog.magicaltux.net; owns mtgox.com domain; jp.linkedin.com/in/karpeles; "Here in Japan I pay taxes on bitcoin income based on the equivalent JPY value at date of sale." interview; as of 3/2011 works on QBitcoin (Qt-based C++ bitcoin client written to provide a better API and internals) which is planned to be launched in 1-2/2012(?!)
• 2167 slush, Marek Palatinus, mining.bitcoin.cz - first mining pool of its kind
• 2436 Hal, Hal Finney, author of RPOW; "I started using Bitcoin the first day. Satoshi sent me 10 btc within a day or two" [20]
• 2538 mndrix, Michael Hendrix, CoinPal.ndrix.com (suspended after Paypal’s action against his account), Coincard.ndrix.com (converts Bitcoins into PayPal payments and pizza), JJGames.com/pages/bitcoin, VGPC.com; interview
• 3046 Nefario, global moderator & hero member, (Doctor) Nefario, founder of BitcoinGlobal & CEO (first btc company), GLBSE founder & coder, Bitdrop; owns bictoinweekly.org, [21]; interview; "i'm sth of a cypherpunk"; discovered Btc in 10/10; teaches English @ uni in China; 6/2011: "there are about 5 people other than myself working for BitcoinGlobal, with roughly 10 persons as shareholders including myself"; 6/2011: "working beginning on nomico.in and CryptoCloud over the next few weeks"; CryptoCloud "is to be a cloud based computing platform (ala. Amazon AWS) that is hidden in cypherspace (inside the darknets I2P or Tor) so that their location cannot become known."; Nomico.in "is to be the implementation of the anonymous exchange, requires CryptoCloud"; BitDrop: decentralised, package delivery service that's paid for with bitcoin; [22]
• 3771 molecular, sr. member, DE, *1.2011, bitpoll.dyndns.org/, [23]
• 5856 Jered Kenna (Tradehill), *Tradehill (8.6.11) with two partners ("El Nino" from San Francisco's spanish BTC show; the other is professional developer); [24]
• 7314 Vitalik Buterin, *3.2011, newbie, Toronto/CA, Abelard School student, bitcoinweekly.org staff writer, wrote about GLBSE and new capitalism
• 8866 xf2_org, jgarzik, Btc client developer (see above), bitcoinwatch.com, Btc is not anonymous and we need to collaborate with state; xf2.org; garzikrants.blogspot.com; facebook.com/jgarzik; [25]
• 8872 cuddlefish, creator of Ubitex (one of two first companies at GLBSE)
• 9498 s; Btc is vulnerable to attacks
• 9552 vinced, *Namecoin 18.4.11
• 11756 backopy, *Blackmarket 11.6.11, [26]
• 12472 unk; early miner; Btc is vulnerable to attacks
• 14218 ComputerScientist; pro Btc alternative
• 16131 jutajata, works on Brazilian exchange [27]
• 18274 andes; pro btc alternative

Cryptographers

Bitcoin users include Hal Finney (fan since 11/2008, user since 1/2009), Wei Dai (since 2/2011), Julian Assange (WikiLeaks accepts donations since 6/2011). Nick Szabo commented on Bitcoin extensively (first mention 5/2009).

Ben Laurie (links.org; *Lucre; *Apache-SSL; founding director of Apache; in 1999 code his own ecash system): "If you are going to deploy electronic coins, why on earth make them expensive to create? That’s just burning money – the idea is to make something unforgeable as cheaply as possible. This is why all modern currencies are fiat currencies instead of being made out of gold." [28]. "Bitcoins are designed to be expensive to make: they rely on proof-of-work. It is far more sensible to use signatures over random numbers as a basis, as asymmetric encryption gives us the required unforgeability without any need to involve work. This is how Chaum’s original system worked. And the only real improvement since then has been Brands' selective disclosure work." Did not take into account the Btc's novelty of P2P architecture, and absence of central authority.

Accidental millionaires

Survey: Your total Bitcoin assets. [29]

Early miner video, [30], [31]

As of june 5 2011, 100 top btc addresses own 30% of economy (2 mil BTC, 36 mil USD); 5 addresses are USD millionaires [32]

"I make $30k/month thanks to Bitcoin. What should I do?" (owns 73k btc) [33]

Free software and free speech organisations accepting donations

Organisation	Bitcoin community pledge	Accepts bitcoin from	Donated amount (as of 18.7.2011)	Donation page	Account
EFF	[34]	8/2010	3500	removed	[35]
Tahoe-LAFS		8/2010	240	[36]	[37]
I2P	[38]	12/2010	4300	[39]	[40]
Riseup		1/2011	25	[41]	[42]
Freenet		2/2011	540	[43]	[44]
Torservers		4/2011	50	[45]	[46]
FSF	[47]	5/2011	320	[48]	[49]
WikiLeaks		6/2011	400 + donations to one-time addresses	[50]	[51]
CCC	not responding

EFF

EFF chairman found out about Btc from sirius (Martti Malmi, btc developer) in early august 2010. He liked the idea and forwarded it to colleagues.

Pledges for eff donations since 8/10 (to be donated as soon as someone act as escrow): [52] (in 9/10 there were 630 btc at escrow account).
Letter: [53].
Final letter sent 28.8.10: [54].
13.9.10 EFF writes back, they are interested.
7.10.10 EFF announced they will include Btc at their "ways to help" page ("it isn't possible to integrate it with our membership donation forms") [55].
4.11.10 Rainey Reitman joins EFF as Activist director. Free Bradley Manning & privacy activist.
9.11.10 Btc appeared at helpout page [56].
Summary: [57].
12/2010 EFF publicly mentions Bitcoin in connection to Wikileaks (call for action at their homepage and street rally). "It's shockingly simple to get bitcoin up and running on your computer." [58]
20.1.11 Reitman: Bitcoin - a Step Toward Censorship-Resistant Digital Currency: "Our cold hard cash is now shepherded through a series of regulated financial institutions like banks, credit unions and lenders. User can exchange Bitcoins directly with other users or merchants — without the currency being verified by a third party such as a bank or government. Current money systems now increasingly come with monitoring of financial transactions and blocking of financial anonymity. A peer-to-peer currency could theoretically offer an alternative to the bank practices that increasingly include sharing information on their customers who don't actively opt-out, and who may even then be able to share data with affiliates and joint marketers. [..] Bitcoin is particularly interesting in the wake of recent events that demonstrated how financial institutions can make political decisions in whom they service, showcased by the decisions of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and Bank of America to cut off services to Wikileaks. Bitcoin, if it were to live up to the dreams of its creators, might offer the kind of anonymity and freedom in the digital environment we associate with cash used in the offline world." [59]. 25.5.11 Btc removed from EFF site: "we have determined that legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties." [60], [61].
20.6.11 EFF announcement: "We don't fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system. Bitcoin raises untested legal concerns related to securities law, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection and money laundering, among others. And that’s just in the U.S." [62].

Anonymous

LulzSec: "Someone just sent over $7200 worth of BitCoins. Whoever you are... thank you... Balance: 7853.35 USD #Speechless" [63] [64]

WikiLeaks

Nakamoto calls for not to donate BTC to WikiLeaks: "It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us." (12/2010) [65] [66]

WikiLeaks 'approved' Btc and Namecoin on Twitter (9/6/2011)

Adoption and economy

Nakamoto: "It could get started in a narrow niche like reward points, donation tokens, currency for a game or micropayments for adult sites. Initially it can be used in proof-of-work applications for services that could almost be free but not quite." [67]

Services

Bitcoin service	Description	Launch	Operators
bitcoin-otc.com
bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin/logs/
bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/
bitcoincharts.com	exchange rates tracker
blockexplorer.com	transactions tracker
bitcoinweekly.com	articles		Nefario
forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?action=stats			sirius
bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/time-sales/	realtime view of mtgox trades/asks/bids
bitcoin.it	btc wiki		MagicalTux + Kiba + Genjix
bitcoinwatch.com			jgarzik
freebitcoins.appspot.com	free btc		Andresen
clearcoin.appspot.com			Andresen
ubitex.org	local btc exchange (enter GPS & negotiate via ubitex web interface)		cuddlefish
btcnearme.com	local btc exchange (enter ZIP code & negotiate via email)
tradebitcoin.com	local btc exchange (enter city & negotiate via skype/phone/..)
glbse.com	btc stock market		Nefario
smsz.net			MagicalTux
witcoin.com			mizerydearia
mtgox.com	btc exchange		MagicalTux
bitmarket.eu	btc exchange
dot-bit.org	decentralized, anonymous and open DNS system based on bitcoin
dot-bit.org/HowToRegisterBitDomains	or register.dot-bit.org; first registrar, 1btc/domain)
namecoin.us	free public domain name system (DNS) service and transparent gateway to the world of Namecoins (forwards wikileaks.namecoin.us to wikileaks.bit)
youtipit.org	for tipping online content, accepts btc
online-tipjar.com	for tipping online content, accepts btc and usd
bitcoinhop.com	auction
biddingpond.com	auction
bitcoinnews.com
bitcoinbulletin.com
blindbitcoin.com	crytographically anonymous bitcoin randomizer
coinhandle.com	"pretty" URL for your Bitcoin address
bitcoinlaundry.com
deepbit.net
thebitcoinsun.com	[68]
bitcoinservice.co.uk	upload any file, set a price for it and your customers can purchase access to the file immediately through bitcoin; 10% fee
ubitio.us	file sharing site. After uploading of the file you will be given bitcoin address where to send your invested bitcoins. Price to download will be set to amount you invested. You will get 70% share for each download.
bitcoiners.org	jobs	*25.4.11
bitgigs.com	jobs
bitqna.com	A question and answer site powered by bitcoins	*2/11
bitcoin-contact.org/?send	Send a message to a bitcoin user
spendbitcoins.com	A buying service in which purchases through Amazon.com can be made and paid for using bitcoins
bitcoin.meetup.com	& en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Meetups
api.bitcoinbulletin.com	BTC-Economy database has indexed ~6000 items for sale from approximately 100 websites
silkroadmarket.org	illegal items over tor
bitspend.com	btc shopping via newegg.com
tradehill.com	"Instant Bitcoin Exchange"	8.6.11	Jered Kenna
bitoption.org
bitbid.net	auctions
firstbits.com	shortcut for btc address
bitcoinex	btc exchange		bitcoinex
Britcoin	btc exchange	26.3.11	genjix
Blackmarket		11.6.11	Backopy
bitcoinplus.com/generate

more: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Services

Cypherpunk, Californian Ideology, and digital currencies

Cryptography

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto)

• mid-1970s: public-key cryptography by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman makes them heroes in crypto circles. Seminal historian of codes, David Kahn, argued that the Diffie–Hellman invention represented the most important development in cryptography since the Renaissance.
• 1986 Shamir + 2 colleagues (all three Israelis): "zero-knowledge proofs of identity" [p210] -> applied for patent -> reply from US Army: threat to national security & abandon the research, but after involvement of NSA okayed (they were afraid scientists will stop submitting their ideas).
• 1989 another ban on Merkle's scheme - paper submitted for NSA review by Xerox to NSA. Dealing with optimalisation of crypto computation (NSA censored due to S-box design mention). Xerox accepted, but 1 of NSA outside reviewers leaked the paper to hacker-millionaire Gilmore, who leaked it to sci.crypt Usenet group (8000 subscribers).
• 1991 Zimmermann: *PGP => hero on the crypto scene: he created a tool for people, strong impulse to crypto community not only to talk, but to create software (eg. May & Hughes start Cypherpunks). First widely available program implementing public-key cryptography. Investigated by the Gov for 3 years. US Government had long regarded cryptographic software as a munition, and thus subject to arms trafficking export controls. At that time, the boundary between permitted ("low-strength") cryptography and impermissible ("high-strength") cryptography placed PGP well on the too-strong-to-export side (this boundary has since been relaxed).
• 6/1997 US Supreme Court (ACLU vs Reno decision): CDA to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The Court agreed with the ACLU and EFF that the law was too vague and therefore unnecessarily “chilled” protected speech. Of more lasting import, however, was the Court’s embrace of the concept of cyberspace and its apparent conferral of a special legal status for cyberspace communications.
• 1998 US Gov claims authority over net (Green Paper after Postel's week-long 'test' and unsuccessful attempt of Internet Society to take over the domain authority away from Network Solution monopoly).
• 2000 crypto community celebrates at the annual Crypto conference: Government stepped back and they can freely distribute crypto software outside US.

David Chaum (and DigiCash)

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto [p267])

• Bearded, ponytailed, Birkenstocked cryptographer and businessman, was the former Berkeley graduate student raised in suburban Los Angeles in a middle-class Jewish family.
• Since childhood fascinated with privacy hardware (locks and burglar alarms and safes), first computer security, then encryption.
• The privacy revolution's Don Quixote, idealistically pursuing crypto liberation from Big Brother.
• While at Berkeley in the late 1970s, he began building on the foundation of public key to create protocols for a world where people could perform any number of electronic functions while preserving their anonymity.
• “I got interested in those particular techniques because I wanted to make [anonymous] voting protocols,” he says. “Then I realized that you could use them more generally as sort of untraceable communication protocols.”
• The trail led to anonymous, untraceable digital cash.
• paper “Numbers Can Be a Better Form of Cash Than Paper”: Verify authenticity of the bills - by unique numbers and merchant/bank can check if the bill was already spent. Anonymity via "blind signature" - bank releases numbered banknotes and user can change them, but it still includes stamp saying who issued the bill.
• Another tale making the rounds was that Chaum made a last-minute veto of a deal with Visa that would have made Digicash the standard for electronic money.
• Stubborn a 'paranoid' matematik z bohatej rodiny, top5 kryptograf v late 80s ked odisiel do Amstru, tam robil v crypto dept of CWI (automatic toll collection roads spravili, nakoniec neimplementovane). Potom rozbehol vlastnu firmu DigiCash *1990 s vlastnou e-menou 'ecash' *1993, lebo kreditky su highly insecure (staci vediet niekoho cislo) a nie su dobre na mikroplatby. To je v A'dam Science Parku, ING + Goldman Sachs chceli DigiCash zobrat na burzu, ale Chaum bol paranoidny a nakoniec to nepodpisal. Chcel to aj Gates do Win95, ale Chaum chcel viac prachov a padlo aj to; Netscape tiez; Visa chcela v 96 investovat ale chcel viac. Also worked for intelligence agencies. 1996 in the relations magazine of Honeywell-Bull: "The difference between a bad electronic cash system and well-developed digital cash will determine whether we will have a dictatorship or a real democracy." Zamestnanci sa mu v 3/96 vzburili ze vsetci odidu, on spanikaril, spravil 2 z nich sefmi a zmizol v USA.V 97 do DigiCashu pumpovane velke investicie, zobralo ho 8 bank (incl Deutsche Bank a Credit Suisse) ale len aby neostali pozadu - produkt mali ako specialny, Nemali preco ho tlacit, zakaznici boli tiez spokojni, fraud preplatili kreditne corps, anonymita im bola ukradnuta, pohoda. Citibank to nezobrala, a cele to spadlo v 98. Od 2006 riesi Punchscan is an optical scan vote counting system, open source. [69]

The Cypherpunks

John Gilmore

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto [p261])

• outspoken civil libertarian, created alt.* hierarchy @Usenet, contributor to GNU, 5th employee of Sun (till 1986; made a fortune), free software contributor, co-author of Bootstrap Protocol (later DHCP). [70]
• gentle computer hacker with long thinning hair and a wispy beard.
• co-founded EFF in 1990
• 1991 conference “Computers, Freedom, and Privacy”: speech that anticipated the thoughts of May's and Hughes — a people's crypto movement to stave off the government: "What if we could build a society where the information was never collected? Where you could pay to rent a video without leaving a credit card or bank account number? Where you could prove you're certified to drive without giving your name? Where you could send and receive messages without revealing your physical location, like an electronic post office box? That's the kind of society I want to build. I want to guarantee — with physics and mathematics, not with laws — things like real privacy of personal communications ... real privacy of personal records ... real freedom of trade ... real financial privacy ... [and] real control of identification."
• Particularly interested in making sure that information about crypto found its way into the public domain.

Tim May

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto [p258])

• most authoritative political voice @ Cypherpunks.
• Slim, bearded man who often wore an outback hat, he owned a small house cluttered with books, gadgets, and well-fed cats.
• Physicist who had retired from Intel seven years earlier with a bundle of stocks. His major contribution at Intel had been his proof that quantum events — the meanderings of subatomic particles — could affect the calculations performed by semiconductor chips. May's discovery allowed Intel's designers to devise strategies to deal with this problem, enabling the steady progress of Moore's Law.
• politicial libertarian: “I got converted by reading Ayn Rand as a kid”
• He usually signed his e-mail with a hair-raising list of passions — “crypto anarchy, digital money, anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, black markets, and collapse of governments”.
• In the computer age, we create 'virtual regions', he would say. And the conduits and pipes of the future, the very mortar and walls of those virtual spaces, could be held up by nothing but crypto. Oh, God, May would burst out when speaking of this vision, it's so profound. There's nothing else! One-way functions like the ones exploited by Diffie, Merkle, and Rivest were the building blocks of cyberspace, he insisted, and if we don't use them we would be reduced to pathetic shivering creatures standing in the ashes of a virtual burned-out house. But with it, everything is imaginable. Secure conduits — untappable by the NSA! — from hackers in Los Gatos, California, to activists in St. Petersburg, Russia. Transactions beyond taxation. And an end to the nation-states. That was the coming revolution, according to Tim May.
• wrote Cyphernomicon: He envisaged the future as an Ayn Rand utopia of autonomous individuals dealing with each other as they pleased. Before this future arrived, he advocated tax avoidance, insider trading, money laundering, markets for information of all kinds, including military secrets, and what he called assassination markets not only for those who broke contracts or committed serious crime but also for state officials and the politicians he called “Congressrodents”. In his future world only elites with control over technology would prosper. “The clueless 95%” – whom he described as “inner city breeders” and as “the unproductive, the halt and the lame” – “would suffer, but that is only just”.
• While the overwhelming majority of cypherpunks were, like him, anarcho-capitalist libertarians, some were strait-laced Republicans, left-leaning liberals, Wobblies or even Maoists.

Eric Hughes

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto [p259])

• Semilapsed Mormon from Virginia, Hughes had a long, wispy light-brown beard, aviator wire-rimmed glasses, and a cold, sarcastic wit.
• Studied math at Berkeley, and worked for a company overseas for a while
• His ultimate goal was combining pure-market capitalism and freedom fighting.
• In his world view, governments — even allegedly benign ones like the United States — were a constant threat to the well-being of citizens.
• Individual privacy was a citadel constantly under attack by the state
• Hughes and May were an interesting combination, bound by scientific passion, political libertarianism, and a slightly unnerving paranoia. Hughes came down from north Bay Area search for flat in Santa Cruz, hung out at May's, they talked all three days, and started the Cypherpunks list when he got back. Iinspired by Zimmermann's PGP to develop a software, the tools that would arm the general public against cyberthieves, credit bureaus, and especially the government.

Mailing list

Wired magazine 2, 1993 [2]

• List founders: Eric Hughes, Tim May, John Gilmore [71]
• The origin
  • 19.9.92 first CASI meeting (cryptology amateurs for social irresponsibility). About 20 people attended, non-academic environment, many of them made a fortune in software development and were not dependent on their work in cryptography. Their politics were heavily libertarian; more than a few were also self-proclaimed Extropians. "Code rebels" for crypto anarchy. May prepared 57-page handout on “societal implications of cryptography,” “voting networks,” and “anonymous information markets,” => "A Crypto Anarchist Manifesto".
  • PGP 2.0 had been released only days before — and most in attendance were huge fans of the first version — much of the meeting was spent discussing Phil Zimmermann's latest effort, and copies were distributed to all in the room. (Zimmermann himself was still in Boulder.) The event turned into a key-swapping party, as everyone exchanged PGP public keys and signed one another's key ring.
  • Hughes started list-serv on Gilmore's toad.com server. In a couple of weeks it reached 100 subscribers and 150 mails a day.
  • After the meeting, Hughes wrote “a small statement of purpose” to explain what the group was about => "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" which envisioned a home-brewed privacy structure that the government couldn't crack: "Cypherpunks write code. They know that someone has to write to defend privacy, and since it's their privacy, they're going to write it. Cypherpunks publish their code so that their fellow cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Cypherpunks realize that security is not built in a day and are patient with incremental progress. Cypherpunks don't care if you don't like the software they write. Cypherpunks know that software can't be destroyed. Cypherpunks know that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy."
• List about encryption (also known as cryptography, the science and art of secret writing).
• cypherpunks@toad.com (later shutdown 2001 by Gilmore) -> "distributed mailing list" -> cryptography@metzdowd.com (2003; 1 of forks, but primary successor, moderated + less zany + more technical)
• 1992, peaked around 1997 (200 mails/day; 1000 subscribers)
• 1993: three founders on the cover of 2nd issue of Wired masked by PGP keys. Features "Code Rebels" article by Steven Levy [72].
• The general attitude, though, definitely put personal privacy and personal liberty above all other considerations.
• Lot discussed also: anonymity, pseudonyms, censorship, monitoring, anti ban on export of crypto software, hiding the act of hiding (crypted msgs which act as noncrypted), code/software.
• Gilmore: "I want a guarantee -- with physics and mathematics, not with laws -- that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications."
• fork: Coderpunks, took up more technical matters and had less discussion of public policy implications
• inspired: the "Cryptography" list (cryptography@metzdowd.com); the "Financial Cryptography" list (fc-announce@ifca.ai); small group of closed (invitation-only) lists as well. Also: PGP, /dev/random, Linux kernel, anonymous remailers
• late 1997: decline of the list, following a meltdown over the question of the possible moderation of the list – censorship! – and the departure of John Gilmore.
• 1999-2001 archive: http://www.shmoo.com/mail/cypherpunks/jan99/ .. http://www.shmoo.com/mail/cypherpunks/aug01/
• Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (1999) novel is directly inspired by the list, and it is featured in the book.
• cyberpunks who used cryptography (Ian Goldberg, Bram Cohen and Nikita Borisov)
• subscribers: Adam Back (*Hashcash); Assange; Bram Cohen (*BitTorrent); Hal Finney (PGP2, RPOW); Rop Gonggrijp (Xs4all); Horowitz (PGP); Ben Laurie (Apache-SSL); John Young (Cryptome); Zimmermann (PGP); Zooko [73]
• When some cypherpunks helped organize the first conference on financial cryptography, its location was a foregone conclusion: Anguilla, a small Caribbean island whose transactions laws were, to say the least, liberal.
• May: BlackNet: “We consider nation-states, export laws, patent laws, national security considerations, and the like to be relics of the pre-cyberspace era.”
• on Assange and cypherpunks: [74]

Jim Bell

(via Steven Levy's book Crypto)

• Even more extreme cypherpunk of the libertarian Right than May, like an inverse Leninist, thought that history might need a push.
• In mid-1995, drawing upon May’s recommendation of assassination markets, he began a series explaining his “revolutionary idea”, which he called “Assassination Politics”.
• Bell devised a system in which citizens could contribute towards a lottery fund for the assassination of particular government officials. The prize would go to the person who correctly predicted the date of the death. The winner would obviously be the official’s murderer. However, through the use of public-key cryptography, remailers and digital cash, from the time they entered the competition to the collection of the prize no one except the murderer would be aware of their identity. Under the rubric “tax is theft” all government officials and politicians were legitimate targets of assassination. Journalists would begin to ask of politicians, “Why should you not be killed?” As prudence would eventually dictate that no one take the job, the state would simply wither away.
• ended his 20,000 word series of postings with these words. “Is all this wishful thinking? I really don’t know!” A year or so later he was arrested on tax avoidance charges.

Libtech-l list

Started by Nick Szabo. libtech-l@netcom.com

Szabo: "While the security technology is very far from trivial, the 'why' [to design decentralised currency] was by far the biggest stumbling block -- nearly everybody who heard the general idea thought it was a very bad idea. Myself [Nick Szabo, inventor of bit gold, 2001-5], Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai). Only Finney (RPOW) and Nakamoto were motivated enough to actually implement such a scheme." [75] [76]

Nick Szabo

[77] [78].

Hal Finney

[79]

• 1956, BS engineering, CA/US, 09 diagnosed with ALS (rare and serious neurological disease)
• worked on PGP 2.0; till 2010 @ PGP Corp; digital cash, anonymous remailers.
• praised Btc on btc list on 8.11.08; tested already v0.1.0, 10.1.2009, [80], [81]
• "Unlike many early Cypherpunks, I never viewed cryptography as a gateway to a libertarian society. My goals are more modest but still worthwhile, I hope."

Wei Dai

[82] [83]

• Singularity institute; wrote crypto++ library for C++
• praised Btc (making money with computing & no third party) on his blog 16.2.11 [84]

Californian Ideology

• Hippie New Left American counter-culture ideology: (1) anti-state (warlords & traditionalists); (2) McLuhanist techno-utopia = liberation.
• Californian Ideology (anarcho-cybercapitalist ideology) = hippie New Left + neoliberal capitalism (which cannot be abolished):
  • (1) criticism of state (state = censorship, NSA, DNS control, access control)
  • (2) new technologies = tool of emancipation
  • (3) libertarian (personal liberties & private property), Jeffersonian (as in US independence from Europe), free market (while protects itself by state laws), neoliberal
  • (4) FLOSS = ?! (information wants to be free)
  • (5) cyberspace/virtual reality/Edge - independent from reality (what ignores the physicality of internet -- hardware, cables, human labour)

Barbrook+Cameron: Californian Ideology, 1994/1995/1996

[85] [86]

• ~ "West Coast cyber-libertarianism", "hippie capitalists", "West Coast anarcho-capitalists"
• CI: mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism
• CI mags&people: Wired and Mondo 2000 as well as the books of Stewart Brand, Douglas Rushkoff, Kevin Kelly and many others. But also: Negroponte, Gates, Dyson. Supported by ideologists: Toffler, Gilder, Peters.
• CI followers (Wired readers): new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, thirty-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself.
  • in EU: recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult.
• CI writings: amusing cocktail of Bay Area cultural wackiness and in-depth analysis of the latest developments in the hi-tech arts, entertainment and media industries.
• CI politics: impeccably libertarian - they want information technologies to be used to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' in cyberspace where every individual would be able to express themselves freely.
• CI vision: fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market - a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives
• CI gets it wrong (1): dreams about fictive world, ideological.
• CI gets it wrong (2): ingores racism, poverty and environmental polution, because it's too busy with other things.
• CI two visions of future:
  • Rheingold: anti-biz & anti-state: anti-corporate purity of the New Left has been preserved by the advocates of the 'virtual community'. According to their guru, Howard Rheingold, the values of the counter-culture baby boomers will continue to shape the development of new information technologies. Community activists will increasingly use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech 'gift economy' in which information is freely exchanged between participants.
  • West Coast ideologues: fuck welfare..: embraced the laissez-faire ideology of their erstwhile conservative enemy. For example, Wired - the monthly bible of the 'virtual class' - has uncritically reproduced the views of Newt Gingrich, the extreme-right Republican leader of the House of Representatives and the Tofflers, wreho are his close advisors. Ignoring their policies for welfare cutbacks, the magazine is instead mesmerised by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered by the new information technologies. Gingrich and the Tofflers claim that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications will not create an electronic agora, but will instead lead to the apotheosis of the market - an electronic exchange within which everybody can become a free trader.
• CI origins: McLuhan's new tech empowered individuals believing they are turning their nonconformist libertarian principles into political act. Media+computing+telecommunications => *electronic direct democracy, *electronic agora (total free speech, no censorship)
• CI influenced by: technological optimism of the new left and the counter-culture. 'Virtual class': 'labour aristocracy', engineering specialists. '...the techno-intelligentsia of cognitive scientists, engineers, computer scientists, video-game developers, and all the other communications specialists...' (Kroker and Weinstein)
• CI emerged from: an unexpected collision of right-wing neo-liberalism, counter-culture radicalism and technological determinism
• CI gets it wrong (3): free market is a myth and anti-state attitude is fake. Barbrook: we need state.
  • 3a, even Silicon Valley computing initiated by massive support of state and public money
  • 3b, libertarian computer capitalists in CA joined state-sponsored cartel to fight Japanese taking over the American microchip market
• CI hero: Jefferson - libertarian, while being one of the biggest slave-traders.
• CI effect: another apartheid between the 'information-rich' and the 'information-poor' is being created. Rich white Californians need their darker-skinned fellow humans to work in their factories, pick their crops, look after their children and tend their gardens.
• CI dream: "digital nirvana inhabited solely by liberal psychopaths". As neo-liberals, they assert that the will of the people, mediated by democratic government through the political process, is a dangerous heresy which interferes with the natural and efficient freedom to accumulate property. As technological determinists, they believe that human social and emotional ties obstruct the efficient evolution of the machine. Abandoning democracy and social solidarity, the Californian Ideology dreams of a digital nirvana inhabited solely by liberal psychopaths.
• CI gets it wrong (4): claims universalism, but is created by is location-specific - West Coast's eclectic blend of conservative economics and hippie libertarianism.
• 1792: FR revolucia: went beyond liberalism to democracy (republic as 'general will'). The state had to represent the interests of all citizens, rather than just protect the rights of individual property-owners.
• EU hypermedia (good model): state intervention + capitalist entrepreneurship + d.i.y. culture

Louis Rossetto - reply to Cal Ideology (Wired editor-in-chief), 1995

[87] [88]

• re:
  • criticism (1): (doesn't address)
  • criticism (2): the others are simply late-adopters: "Not haves and have-nots - have-laters".
  • criticism (3): High European taxes which have restricted spending on technology and hence retarded its development; state telco monopolies which have kept prices high and service bad, again impeding networking in business and the home; state-directed technology investment, which has resulted in the monopolization of risk capital, uniformly bad technology policy, and the squandering of resources and opportunities; social welfare policies which reward parasitical living rather than risk-taking; a truly attavistic, sick attachment to the compulsion and non-meritocratic elitism of statism as a way of life; and a kneejerk disdain for truly radical social and political thought which falls outside Euro PC dogma (read failed Marxist/Fabian) - have all retarded and will continue to retard Europeans.
  • criticism (4): (not directly, but positions it as US vs EU)

Barlow: "fuck them" => Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 2/1996

[89]

Barbrook - Hypermedia Freedom = re: Barlow's Declaration, 3/1996

[90] [91]

• he casts himself as the new Thomas Jefferson calling the people to arms against the tyranny of Bill Clinton: "the great invertebrate in Washington". Claiming to speak "on behalf of the future", he declares that the elected government of the USA has no right to legislate over "Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind". Because "we are creating a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live", Barlow asserts that cyberspace exists outside the jurisdication of the American or any other existing state. In cyberspace, only Net users have the right to decide the rules. According to Barlow, the inhabitants of this virtual space already police themselves without any interference from Federal legislators
• Barlow gets it wrong: cyberspace cannot be separated from reality, there is still hardware and cables and human labour. Construction of the infobahn is an intensely physical act. It is flesh and blood workers who spend many hours of their lives developing hardware, assembling PCs, laying cables, installing router systems, writing software programs, designing Web pages and so on. It is obviously a fantasy to believe that cyberspace can be ever be separated from the societies - and states - within which these people spend their lives.
• EFF was never just a campaign for cyber-rights. It was also a leading cheerleader for the individualist fantasies of the Californian Ideology
• The spread of the new industrial technologies freed no slaves. On the contrary, the invention of the cotton gin and mechanical spinning machines actually reinforced the archaic and brutal institutions of slavery in the Old South.
• CI's Jeffersonian Democracy is simply neo-liberal propaganda designed to win support for the privatisation of cyberspace from the members of the "virtual class".
• any meaningful campaign for cyber-rights has to fight for freedom of expression against both state and market forms of censorship.
• inherent contradiction of free speech: The political rights of each individual are circumscribed by the rights of other citizens. For instance, in order to protect children, the state has a duty to restrict the freedom of speech of paedophiles on the Net. Because ethnic minorities have the right to live in peace, the democratic republic should try to prevent fascists from organising online.
• challenge: we need to protect kids (pedophilia) and minorities (fascists), while not limiting access to internet to the others

Barbrook - The::Cyber.Com/Munist::Manifesto, 12/1999

[92] [93] [94]

• is short version of Cyber-Communism article from 9/19999
• Whatever their professed political beliefs, every user dreams of the digital transcendence of capitalism.
• CI: 'prophets of American neo-liberalism', 'right-wing futurism', 'right-wing gurus'
• CI ~'Soviet communism' (SC) via ideology of emancipation through technology. (Any suffering caused by the introduction of new technologies was justified by the promise of future liberation).
• In the late-1990s, the prophets of American neo-liberalism measure our progress towards utopia through increases in the ownership of digital artefacts: home computers, Net connections, mobile phones and laptops. SC: in 30s Stalin similarly measured progress towards utopia through the rising output of modern products: steel, cars, tractors and machine-tools.
• CI=SC via vanguard party=digerati
• cyber-communists (CC) - noncommodified intellectual labour within cyberspace, via gift economy
• CI wants intellectual property vs CC wants piracy

The Cryptography Mailing List

• ?-1996-3/2001? cryptography@c2.net. "This is an unofficial, unedited (by us) public service from Online Privacy (privacy.nb.ca), a non-profit group located in Canada. "Cryptography" is a low-noise mailing list devoted to cryptographic technology and its political impact." [95]
• 29.3.01-5.4.03 (last: msg04029.html)
• since 3.6.03 cryptography@metzdowd.com, [96]

Digital currencies

• 1980s: Hal Finney and Nick Szabo in cryptography circles
• 1990s: The first ones—Beenz, Flooz and others, arrived with the first wave of the Internet in the 1990s and failed.
• 1993: ecash by Chaum's DigiCash. It got so popular that some brick and mortar banks started accepting it! But unfortunately it died out almost as rapidly since it was closed source, patented, and the company went bankrupt.
• 1996-2009: E-Gold, by by Dr. Douglas Jackson and Barry K. Downey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold
• late 90s: libtech list (Szabo, Dai, Finney)
• 1997: Webmoney, wmtransfer.com, "Russian version of Bitcoin called Webmoney has been around since 1997 and it's far more advanced than Bitcoin in terms of market penetration as well as security, exchange mechanisms and software" z 1 fora..
• 1998: B-money (idea, on libtech list), by Wei Dai. b-money used proof of work in a different way for money creation, but transfers are just like Bitcoin. [97] [98]
• 1998: Bit Gold (idea, on libtech list, *1998, made public *2005), by Nick Szabo: "Nakamoto improved a significant security shortcoming that my design had, namely by requiring a proof-of-work to be a node in the Byzantine-resilient peer-to-peer system to lessen the threat of an untrustworthy party controlling the majority of nodes and thus corrupting a number of important security features. Yet another feature obvious in hindsight, quite non-obvious in foresight." [http//unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html]
• mid-2000s: virtual currency economy boomed on the strength of gaming systems: Linden Dollar in Second Life, World of Warcraft Gold, Entropia and Tencent’s QQ in China encountered success with volatility.
• 2004 RPOW, by Hal Finney. [99]
• 7/2007: Ven (closed loop currency), 0.5 mil USD @ 2011, [100]
• 2008: Pekunio (?!), [101]. Nakamoto: "Indeed, it [btc] is much like Pekunio in the concept of spraying redundant copies of every transaction to a number of peers on the network". [102]
• Ripple. Nakamoto: "As trust systems go, Ripple is unique in spreading trust around rather than concentrating it." [103]
• 2009: *Bitcoin

Code

bash one-liner for mtgox

curl -s https://mtgox.com/code/data/ticker.php | sed -e 's/[{}]//g' | awk -v RS=',"' -F: '/sell/ {print $2}'

'sell' can be changed for high, low, vol, buy

Criticism

Mining is centralised to 2 pools takze zavisle na third parties (network is not decentralised).

Long transaction delay & poor scalability: slow if many transactions; [104]

Employers of large companies exploiting their computational power cannot be stopped.

Hugely wasteful in terms of computation.

Future

Alpha P2P currency

Nakamoto: "I see Bitcoin as a foundation and first step if you want to implement programmable P2P social currencies [..]. First you need normal, basic P2P currency working. Once that is established and proven out, dynamic smart money is an easy next step. I love the idea of virtual, non-geographic communities experimenting with new economic paradigms." [105]

Bitcoin is the "first attempt which will be superseded with better designs." [106]

Several Btc forum members discussed creating alternative which would sustain 51% attack: ComputerScientist, ByteCoin, s, unk ("many 3d-intensive games are much larger 'supercomputers' [than Btc]"), Andes. (early 2011)

"Bitcoin is ugly, but 'worse is better'. It seems to work. Just like Unix, there were countless ways to destroy your data or crash the system, which didn't exist on more 'proper' OSs like OpenVMS, and there were countless lacking features compared to systems like ITS or the Lisp machine OSs. But like the proverbial cockroaches, Unix spread, networked, survived - and the rest did not." [107]

• worse is better (by Richard Gabriel on software acceptance): quality does not necessarily increase with functionality. There is a point where less functionality ("worse") is a preferable option ("better") in terms of practicality and usability.

Proposals and speculations

Andresen: "I still think selling boot-able USB sticks that contain a Linux distro, bitcoin, a bitcoin miner, and "starter" bitcoins would be a great eBay business/product. You're not selling currency, you're selling software and a USB stick. You'll have to have a good eBay rep, though, because the person who gets it would have to trust that you didn't keep a copy of the wallet." [108]

Szabo: "Byzantine-agreed P2P, atomic clock time-stamping service which could be based mostly on code from Bitcoin. 'Bittime', natch. :-) This would provide a more secure Internet time service for everybody." [109]

Btc meetup raid.

Btc exchange with long tail currencies.

Legalisation of Btc in political programmes of pirate parties.

Open source bots.

Decentralised currency competitors.

Trivia

Nakamoto thought Bitcoin also as an anti-spam for celebrities receiving email: "It can already be used for pay-to-send e-mail. The send dialog is resizeable and you can enter as long of a message as you like. It's sent directly when it connects. The recipient doubleclicks on the transaction to see the full message. If someone famous is getting more e-mail than they can read, but would still like to have a way for fans to contact them, they could set up Bitcoin and give out the IP address on their website. "Send X bitcoins to my priority hotline at this IP and I'll read the message personally." [110]

Sidetracks

Facebook uses BitTorrent to distribute updates to Facebook servers. Twitter uses BitTorrent to distribute updates to Twitter servers. [111]

Resources

• Bitcoin at Wikipedia, [112]
• Bitcoin Wiki, [113]
• Bitcoin Forum, [114]
• Bitcoin at EncyclopaediaDrammatica, [115]
• Cypherpunks mailing list archive. 1992-1998, [116]
• Eric Hughes, 1993. A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, [117]
• Steven Levy, 2001. Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government, Saving Privacy in the Digital Age. New York: Viking.
• Steven Levy, 1993. Crypto Rebels, Wired Issue 1.02, [118]
• Robert Manne, 2011. Julian Assange: The Cypherpunk Revolutionary. The Monthly, March 2011, [119]
• Tim May, 1992. The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, [120]
• Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. [121]
• Chris Palmer, 2010. Constructive Direct Action Against Censorship. San Francisco: Electronic Frontier Foundation (Published 14 December) [122]
• Rainey Reitman, 2011. Bitcoin – A Step Toward Censorship-Resistant Digital Currency. San Francisco: Electronic Frontier Foundation (Published 20 January) [123]
• Nick Szabo, 2011. Bitcoin, what took ye so long? Enumerated blog, [124]