The Cypherpunk email list and the philosophy of the cultural ethos driving Satoshi Nakamoto and peers to build decentralized networks, free of the infringing violations of privacy and data, to the movement to decentralize the essential components of society; communication, law, and economy, with Bitcoin as the missing component of an integral base layer of value exchange to build upon. I review "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet", by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, laying the ground for the ethos of data rights and privacy, along with "The 7th Property" by Eric Yakes, shedding light on the evolution of these philosophies into an additional property of immutability that in the of making Bitcoin has essentially added to the precedent of characteristics which has imbued money.
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Origin Story: CypherPunk Email List.
The cypherpunk email list in the origin story of Bitcoin, is founded from a philosophy of activism essentially pushing for transparency of the powerful and privacy for the weak. The concern of megalithic organizations like governments and corporations, given the tools of technology to extract and weaponize data for surveillance, consumerism, propaganda campaigning, or other tooling towards an agenda devised by any such powers, was the foundation for discussion of circumventing such Dystopian possibilities and the strategies to defend communities in digital space from such forces. The CypherPunk email list is decentralized in structure, with regional factions, and demographics of information and technology activists that, despite the name, cypherpunks, was only actually made up of about 10% programmers, with even less, ~5% that actually wrote code for the crypto or security industry. Most infamous among subscribers to the original Cypherpunk mailing list, is the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who has even been speculated by some, to actually be a small group of those OG CypherPunk mailing list subscribers combined, or at the least, have contributed if only in discussion through the list, to various building blocks of Bitcoin, from privacy to game-theory defense [1].
"Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet" by Julian Assange.
Part of that original email list, Julian Assange who began coding before the law labeled it as "illegal activity" published "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet" in 2013. The book is based on his discussion with other digital rights and security experts and activists rallying at a fork in the road to free society from the oppressiveness of regimes with the answer to the encroaching invasion, to build our own decentralized infrastructure apart from the traditional centralizing entities. The hostility Assange has faced from every powerful Nation-State since publishing began on WikiLeaks in 2006 exemplified an early successful use case for Bitcoin as an escape hatch from monetary retaliation for political purposes. WikiLeaks analyzes censored or restricted datasets for war crimes and corruption for public disclosure through online publication. Assange's book begins with a warning of the gravity behind empowering the coercion of the state to tax, censor, fine, enforce the very self made laws to shield its own megalithic power, in contracts, rights, concessions of all types as proof of deemed authority to govern through such violent force funding the Military Industrial Complex machinery worldwide. As the internet abstracts those powers away from the necessity of such violent means, we have the opportunity to restructure our world with more voluntary methods of solving those objectives.
Put in his words directly "Cryptography is the ultimate form of nonviolent direct action. ...Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited application of violence. No amount of coercive force can solve a math problem."
State strategies of control follow the mafia playbook, using regulation that would block competition from the ability of the market to better provide the services it taxes for. The need for protection of individual liberties is illustrated through the retaliation from multiple NationStates against the developers and others affiliated with WIkiLeaks from travel harassment, Grand Jury persecution, censorship, financial blockades, surveillance, seizures, smear-campaigns, and even the threat of assassination by drone strike made by a US politician. The mere survival of WIkiLeaks is a tribute to the ability of Bitcoin to allow Assange a means of funding his life and the project for the years he was targeted.
Free Speech! Free Press Free Assange!
Regarding government intrusion on civil liberties, a pretense, from Nazi-Pedo, terrorist, or whatever the label to scare, cringe or otherwise, is often used as the opening to insert authority and governship. Limiting the flow of information of any ideas in all forms is anti-ethical to freedom, noting pedo-predation and National Security as common trojan horses for increased surveillance and the creation of freedom restricting laws. There will be pros and cons to assigning a filter, appointing the control points of those structures as there also would be to free and open discussion and interactions that would likely better aid in resolving the issues we hope to prevent by having a more undistorted timeline filled with whatever diverse footprints, to be openly debated, highlighted or condemned by an open community, as no king should rule any as too lowly to communicate.
Building Social Order for Freedom in the Digital World
Such centralized positions of power, that would govern information gateways, eventually attracts those intending on abusing that power. Humans by nature after all are not infallible. Society needs an epiphany, to shift the value for privacy and personal data and develop systems separate from the state and capable of existing freely beyond conquest of the Military Industrial Complex. Whether the centralized power be government or corporate conglomerate, there is great danger in free range access and surveillance of citizen data collected on mass scale. A separate architecture of protocols opposed to centralized platforms should be sought as public and private community gateways have proven untrustworthy in upholding user interests; rather have shown more a record for exploitation.
The incredible complexity of mass surveillance already in our homes, deployed the moment we let any apple product, google device, or other media conduit inside our doors, represents the Military stationing another surveillance post, practically penetrating every aspect of our lives both online and off. Civilian life is then stifled as behavior and expression is altered with the awareness of surveillance itself working as a silent mandate to obey and conform, subconsciously engrained, feeding the very dominance of the mentality that drives the Military Industrial Complex to conquer and plunder.
Speaking in militaristic terms, key elements of a state defining Taliban or other governing control is gained with the ability to maintain law, communication, and economy over a given territory. Bitcoin was the missing component to empower a digital economy, unstoppable, uncontrollable, unconfiscatable, and incorruptible by any force. The Cypherpunk ambitions of promoting the fundamental freedoms of communication, movement, and economic exchange with a layer of privacy protection in our brave new digital world could now begin to truly flourish from the ground up. The digital world could now truly diverge away from the reliance on centralized government or corporate controlled ecosystems. [2].
"The 7th Property" by Eric Yakes
The 7th property emphasizes the importance of decentralization in the evolution of immutability as the additional property of money that Bitcoin performs perfectly. In defining money, the use of the term of what money is "backed by" sums it up best. Money is essentially "backed by" properties that increase sale-ability, which is the convergence of desire for an asset among market participants. The ability of something to meet the properties of scarcity, durability, acceptability, portability, fungibility, and divisibility, have proven through time since money entered human civilization, to be essentially what successful forms of money have truly been "backed by". The Gold standard was merely a matter of being backed by the strength of those properties that gold possesses. The campaign of "Backed by the USA" then, sums up exactly what fiat money is, as defined, backed by the decree of declared law and force.
Consequences of the monetary system being hijacked by such decreed distortions of value attribution, are clear in the volatile swings that have accompanied every fiat currency to collapse. A history of central banking failures and the rise of the Federal Reserve Board or FED, the group of individuals interjecting controls onto fiat dollars, as the most profitable private company, managing a bulk of the world's assets, is detailed, explaining how debt cycles show up after their arrival to the timeline, creating violent swings heaving society into recessions and depressions, privatizing profits while socializing loss, exasperating social disparities in a system that makes the rich richer and poor poorer, leading to extreme political divisiveness.
This book is a definite read for a detailed dive into the history of central banking and the FED, Bitcoin basics from history to rules and essentials of wallets, keys, custody and beyond. The failure of Bitcoin to truly live up to the vision of the Cypherpunk ethos for privacy, is addressed with the ability for the lightning network and potential second layer protocols via 3rd party intermediaries as likely candidates to deliver such goals.
How Bitcoin Embodies the Properties of Money
- Scarcity: The 21 million fixed supply of BTC produced by the Bitcoin protocol is secured with POW Proof of Work. Energy and hardware solving difficult computational problems defend supply through the vastness of the network
- Durability: Decentralized nodes in global network makes Bitcoin make it durable even to nuclear attack.
- Acceptability: 1st to Market Network Effects make for the largest global network anyone can voluntarily join despite border divisions.
- Portability: Carry the key in your head and access it with any internet connection.
- Fungibility: Each BTC is equivalent to another and can be recognizable as such, however, there is a case that there are unique attributes in a BTC that might differentiate it from another though doesn't seem much different from a paper dollar having non-fungible years printed and differentiating them....
- Divisibility: Each BTC can be further divided into 100 million Satoshis, 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest amount that can be handled in a transaction.
Beyond merely meeting the precedent established of properties relevant in the backing of something as money, Yakes recognizes immutability as a 7th property increasing the resilience of Bitcoin as the vastness of decentralization in the network, decreases the ability for consensus to change the rules, perhaps making it the only asset that can claim such confidence in the fixedness of supply.
Bitcoin Attacks
From the nodes, miners, developers, and investors, all these components to the functioning of the protocol, are kept in alignment with incentives while attacks are so expensive to successfully accomplish, that any attempt in over the decade since Bitcoin's inception, has been obsolete. Attacks on Bitcoin have been attempted and anticipated. The most formidable aggressor against Freedom Money that cannot be controlled, are the Nation-States that stand to lose the most power. There are three attack pathways a state could take against Bitcoin. Focusing on the network, would require a 51% control of mining power, however the tens of billions of dollars it would cost, and growing, make it more likely that an actor would use those funds to enforce the protocol instead, and gain the rewards of doing so. Only a conglomerate with vested interest in the demise of Bitcoin, such as a government issuing currency, would attempt this attack. The distribution of miners has been trending towards even more decentralization, helping to defend against this, as confiscating mining operations would be the most likely scenario to accomplish such an attack, though still remains highly unlikely due to excessive costs and coordination.
A more likely attack by governments against Bitcoin would be on the ecosystem. This route focuses on using law, such as making technology like exchanges and self custody wallets illegal, excessive taxation to dis-incentivize, and regulating away third party intermediaries facilitating payments, transactions or other vulnerable vector. However, simply ordaining illegality cannot stop the technology, but rather, has demonstrated by such legislation, to simply open up a black market, creating criminals of curious techies. The third attack vector against Bitcoin would be in defeating the cryptography. The military grade encryption securing Bitcoin is as susceptible to being cracked as any public-key cryptography underlying all systems the world functions upon today. Developing quantum computing to break Bitcoin, is more theoretical than practical in terms of the trillion computers, computing trillions of calculations for a trillion years to break, is feasible. As quantum computing technologies advance, the Bitcoin network would more likely adopt any emerging innovations to better secure the protocol. Any other successful applications to the internet, or denying internet as an attack vector would raise greater concern for basic freedoms and liberties on it own, let alone restricting access to the first truly decentralized form of money in our lifetimes.
How vulnerable is Bitcoin to latest, faster, shinier, new, AltCoin?
The true resilience of bitcoin comes from vastness of the network and simplicity of the protocol to honestly accomplish the goal of that first spark of life in a digital currency to build upon as a functional, integral base layer. Bitcoin is a secure savings technology while competitors like Ethereum are better described as insecure financial service technology. Payment systems via 3rd party intermediaries is the most recent stage of development demonstrating this as the mere stability that the ecosystem is founded upon, with a 21million fixed supply, instills the kind of trust that attracts the minds and talent of those interested in building digital networks dedicated to freedom. Yakes handles many of the criticisms against Bitcoin, including the misconception about the environmental argument attacking the energy use of Bitcoin without comprehension of the energy production dynamics. [3]
Conclusion
What it boils down to, is that if we want an open society, free and unimpeded from large actors incentivized to use influence in the digital space to direct the perspectives and behaviors of the masses towards any agenda no matter how noble it might claim, then we'll have to build our own, separate from governments and corporations. New pathways that are open source, decentralized and united, not by the coercion of the firepower behind the state, or the colorful lights from 1000 hypnotic impressions bombarding us daily, developed by today's tech giants, from Google to Facebook, Amazon and beyond to the Altcoins and latest flashing distraction, but by the value we have for humanity to interact in an environment empowered by the integrity of freedom. A space not only to communicate ideas, but also value, through the free flow of economic transactions, offering what we've never really seen, a reality we can now translate without the filters of overseers that determine our direction, so we can find it organically from the bottom up opposed to the force-fed top down imposition the world has become so accustomed.
"Ready Player One" key to the Metaverse Owned by 1 instead of all.
Over a decade since Bitcoin was birthed as the first successful digital money, decentralized in production and storage, directed by each individual owner, with the inability to gain consensus due to the distribution of that ownership, enshrining greater trust in the immutability of supply, increasing the value proposition to those holding more fragile assets. Terms like the Metaverse, originally joining crypto culture in terms of that decentralization, as something we as a people create, separate from the state, separate from the tech megaliths, our own world materializing from conception only to be reappropriated and stolen by coining Meta, one of the very conglomerates we seek to flee, attempts to pull the same distortions as those trademarking "organic", remember that...?. Don't let them fool you. Our vision and focus on the components of a functioning open society in a digital world in which our privacy is secured, to freely communicate, transact, and build upon, is underway. The evolution of the internet into the metaverse, as a network of various open source, decentralized systems, allowed to function freely and separately of any corporate or government control, is the essential vision of Cypherpunk activism and philosophy. The point is to have alternatives that redirect value flows of network growth, participation, etc, back to the users of the system opposed to the exploitation attached to every aspect of the analog world. Look beyond the Ready Player 1 vision of one owner, Like an Bezos or Zuckerburg that owns this space in which we collectively commune. We'll need to come together under virtues for freedom to compete with the marketing lights of the tech giants seeking to rule the digital domain. We either achieve this vision or in the words of Assange, "High tech rebel elites" will be the only ones that will truly be free.
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Earn LBRY tokens watching videos on Odysee
00:00 Intro
00:39 Origin Story: CypherPunk Email List.
02:14 Review of "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet" by Julian Assange.
07:47 Review of "The 7th Property" by Eric Yakes.
16:00 Build our own Decentralized Digital Communities with Bitcoin as the base layer of value exchange
17:33 The Metaverse Must be Decentralized
19:13 Conclusion / Gratitude / Socials
References:
[1] Cypherpunks. Gerry. 2009.
https://www.scribd.com/document/12887060/Cyberpunks
[2] CypherPunks and the Future of the Internet. Julian Assange. 2013.
https://www.scribd.com/read/235106324/Cypherpunks-Freedom-and-the-Future-of-the-Internet#
[3] 7th Property. Eric Yakes. 2013.
https://www.amazon.com/7th-Property-Bitcoin-Monetary-Revolution/dp/0578902621/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=125c9f02-eccf-4f8e-9da7-e0715c4633a3
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