Why We Need a Crypto Punk – Bitcoin Market Journal

This man is John Gilmore, one of the greatest traitors of our time.

In the early 1990s, Gilmore started a small discussion group at Cygnus Solutions’ offices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Officially, the topic was digital privacy. Unofficially, their mission was to defeat the government.

This secretive group of minds, which also included radical geniuses Eric Hughes and Timothy C. May, saw that the Internet would change the world and that there would be two possible outcomes.

In the first scenario, the government would have the ability to monitor anyone, at any time. In other words, it is a kind of Orwellian dystopia where citizens have no privacy on the Internet and freedom of speech is gradually disappearing.

In the second scenario, citizens’ privacy is protected, allowing freedom of speech to flourish, as well as enabling secure financial transactions over the Internet, which benefits business and the economy.

Two options: dystopia or utopia. The core of it all is public encryption.

Cryptography has been used since 3,000 BC. The Spartans, Julius Ceasar, and the Nazis all used encryption to encrypt military messages. But a watershed moment came in 1976, when this mathematical paper gave the public access to military-grade encryption.

This was the technology the Gilmour group was so excited about: public key cryptography.

The U.S. government did not share their enthusiasm. A military campaign was launched in Congress to limit the spread of this encryption technology. It turns out that this is a bit like limiting the spread of math.

Cypherpunk mailing list

“Privacy is important because privacy is power. We believe that people should have the right to decide for themselves what information they share and with whom.” – John Gilmour

Gilmour’s group was radical. They were also great writers.

They weren’t just discussing abstract technologies, they were talking about how to use them to protect civil liberties and protect citizens from government overreach.

Today some of their writings seem prophetic. Eric Hughes writes, “The technologies of the future will require an informed and vigilant population capable of protecting themselves from the abuses of totalitarian states.” “Encryption will play a critical role in that process.”

As the Gilmour group grew in size and influence, they began calling themselves “cypherpunks,” a combination of “cipher” and “cyberpunk.”

To better coordinate the discussion, they started the Cypherpunks mailing list (remember, this was before Reddit and X). The mailing list grew quickly, with members discussing everything from government monitoring to corporate information governance.

As Wikipedia points out, the public won’t understand these issues for decades. But today, when you look at the massive collection of personal data by Meta, Google, and Apple, and the failure of companies like Equifax and Capital One to protect that data, you have to think: Maybe the cypherpunks were right.

“Hierarchies are inherently insecure. Flat networks based on cryptographic protocols are much more powerful.” – Ian Greig

The Cypherpunks’ way of thinking is eloquently summarized in A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, written in 1993 by Eric Hughes. “Privacy is not secret,” he says. “Private things are things you don’t want the whole world to know, and secret things are things you don’t want anyone to know.”

That means we all want privacy about our medical procedures, financial statements, and deepest emotions. This is something we selectively share with people we trust.

These days, we take online privacy for granted, whether it’s logging into a hospital’s patient portal, doing our banking online, or talking to a therapist over Zoom. But all of this was made possible by cypherpunk.

clipper chips

The U.S. government had other plans.

In 1993, the Bush administration released a new computer chip with the delightful name “Clipper Chip,” which sounds like your best friend. But in reality, your friend was a snitch.

The computer chips allow for strong encryption and have “backdoors” that the government can open if the device needs to be scanned.

Let’s say you have a new phone encrypted with a Clipper Chip. The government will have encryption keys (such as passwords) stored in a secure location so they can hear them if they need to tap your phone in court. Bespeak.

For the Cypherpunks, this was a flashpoint. Who stored the secret key? How can the secret key be kept secret? Your secret key will become a honeypot for hackers. It was like having all your passwords stored in one cloud-based company (which is a really bad idea, by the way).

The Clipper chip was the rallying cry Cypherpunks needed to turn their message into a movement.

War on Digital Freedom

The Cypherpunks went on the attack.

Gilmore, informally known as “Captain Cypherpunk,” used his mailing list to delegate tasks such as technical analysis, legal research, and media outreach to experts. Cypherpunks framed the government’s efforts as follows: Battle for Digital Freedom.

At the same time, Cypherpunk hackers wrote code that exposed weaknesses in the Clipper Chip. They created a fictitious company called “Sundevil Technologies” and secretly ordered phones equipped with the new chip, identified vulnerabilities and widely disclosed them.

Some of their methods were original. They raised $200,000 to build a computer that could crack the government’s DES algorithm. Adam Back and others created a comic book called “Uncle Fido’s Guide to the Clipper Chip” to explain in user-friendly language why this is important.

Cypherpunk Phil Zimmerman created an email encryption program that anyone could use. This is like a 4,096-digit lock that would take a supercomputer billions of years to unlock. He called it “very good privacy.” (Read my story about this here.)

Slowly, the cypherpunks even got politicians to join forces. To prevent one pro-Clipper bill from passing, they organized a “Senate Vigil” outside Senator John Kerry’s office, staging a 24-hour protest by delivering pizza, playing folk music, and sending him faxes. .

Exhausted and facing public pressure, Kerry eventually converted his votes, contributing to the Clipper chip’s ultimate defeat.

Victory and Beyond

The cypherpunk victory was hard won, but history has shown that this war was worth fighting.

The emergence of secure online standards like https has been made possible by our unwavering commitment to privacy and security. Every time you cash out your Venmo, every time you FaceTime a friend, Now in the browser address barThat security is their legacy.

In another respect they were right. Privacy is also good for the economy. The explosion of online services, the rise of online shopping, and the digitization of financial services were only possible with strong encryption standards available to everyone.

Privacy isn’t just good for individuals; it’s good for all of us.

Satoshi was a cypherpunk

“Cryptocurrency is not just about money. It’s about changing the world for the better and giving people more freedom and control over their lives.” – Satoshi Nakamoto

There is no doubt that Satoshi Nakamoto was a cypherpunk, although he came much later. His original Bitcoin whitepaper is part code, part manifesto. Indeed, there are Bitcoin extremists who still hold to the radical views of the early cypherpunks, but it is clear that we need something new today.

Just like in the early 1990s, the U.S. government is fighting hard against the threat of cryptocurrencies, this time using cryptocurrencies. The SEC is tracking cryptocurrency projects large and small. The DOJ recently fined Binance $4 billion. Even those trying to build cryptocurrencies “the right way” are blocked by government bureaucracy.

Simply put, the government wants to monitor the flow of money.

Just as they want to monitor communications with the Clipper Chip, governments want to know when money is flowing into terrorist financing or other illicit activities. Most of us would support that idea.

But we have a new technology that is once again putting cryptocurrencies into the hands of everyone: cryptocurrency. As Nick Szabo said, “We can create a world where anyone, anywhere can participate in the global economy without government or bank permission.”

No government should have the right to monitor every cup of coffee we buy or every cup of coffee we donate. again, Private life is not a secret. Even if you don’t have a secret to hide, most people prefer privacy most of the time. Otherwise, we live in a surveillance state.

No government should be able to freeze or even seize our cryptocurrency investments based on suspicion without due process. Otherwise we live in a police state.

Moreover, the government’s war on cryptocurrency is blocking a huge economic opportunity. Just as the emergence of security standards allowed the Internet to flourish, government oversight of superior cryptocurrency innovation could fuel the next wave of U.S. growth.

This is larger than either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. It’s all of us.

Why we need cryptopunk

Today we do not have a unified voice representing the cryptocurrency industry. We don’t have the creative brutality of the Cypherpunks. All we have is two industry trade groups in Washington. They all seem to be working with their own agendas.

I hope this year will be like that we become a movement.

We use the term “financial freedom” to mean “freedom from work.” But I’m talking about true financial freedom – the ability to use your own money, invest your own money, and build wealth in the way you choose.

It’s absolutely crazy that we don’t have a better understanding of this problem yet. Is Cryptocurrency Legal in the United States?. Of course, you can buy and sell it (and they will charge you taxes every time). But if you launch your own cryptocurrency token, you could end up in jail.

We need more participation this year. We should support specific advocacy groups, write articles for politicians supporting cryptocurrency advocacy policies, or even create our own local cryptocurrency communities. Activism is our only way out.

Above all, what we must do is talk to people. We need to share our passion for cryptocurrency, show that we’re not afraid to own Bitcoin, and educate our friends and family about what’s at stake. We are no longer defined by what people think of “cryptocurrency.”

This is the new Cypherpunk movement. Officially, we are “Citizens for Cryptocurrency Freedom.” But unofficially, we are “cryptopunks.”