The technology was already there for the most part, but an interesting outlook 20 years before its time.
The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.
-- Timothy May, in The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1)
Yes! Very interesting.
So old, yet it feels like it was written just a few years ago.
Same thing I said.
Even back in 95' I don't think it really took a genius to see where the state of things were headed. No one really doubts or doubted, that at some point currency will become fully digitized and will be integrated within all possible means. We've already started this trend long before bitcoins were even conceptualized. Notice how many people purchase items with debit or credit cards these days, without even handling the money physically? But if it's going to be 5, 10, 50, 100, 1000 years from now is harder to say. What replaces the traditional greenback currency is anyones guess, but it will happen at some point in time.
Also, I think crypto-anarchists very much under-estimated the nature of government in it's role in regulation.
How do you think regulation could affect cryptocurrency? Also do you think goverments will go after Dark Wallet, and Zerocoin, if they achieve complete anonymity in cryptocurrency?
