Bitcoin: The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists

[GazetaBitcoin]

This is basically the beginning of the end for Paypal, and this move serves as their confession that they know it too

This may be very well the end of PayPal and also of the banks. Once they accept Bitcoin they'll also prove that they are afraid of it. But this fear should be properly understood by individuals and not to go straight to banks and PayPal. Instead, understand to avoid them!

Also, incase you missed, check my previous post, which is an answer to the alternative IDs idea you suggested.

[Anonylz]

Seriously i think the days of banning crypto are behind us, with this new development of PayPal providing crypto service to it's customers starting with USA customers, i want to believe the negative perception about crpto in general is reducing otherwise while will a company like PayPal decide to support crypto, now they have realize that the use of digital currency is inevitable, the more government device a means to eradicate crypto the more the awareness grow,
it really doesn't matter what the government do or say, the fact remains crypto is here and not going anywhere, it is time they start to have a re-think, make plans towards crypto acceptance, it is said "if you cant beat the you join them"  government are losing control.

You are in vain to rejoice at this PayPal announcement, because this announcement does not carry anything useful for the crypto. You read their announcement in general, they offer centralized storage of cryptocurrency, without providing private keys, and this is contrary to the principles of cryptocurrency. They are also going to provide educational materials for those who are newbie to cryptocurrency. And what happens: PayPal will breed a huge number of misguided newbies who will think that centralized storage of cryptocurrencies is okay. This not normal. So PayPal at this stage cannot bring any benefit to Bitcoin and its community, in principle, benefit only to Bitcoin holders, because the price is flying up against the background of this announcement.

PayPal did not give a damn about the rule for any crypto user: Not your keys, not your coins and is developing another centralized trash heap in which your funds can be blocked or censored. They have such a reputation, they often did this in the field of traditional payments.

Perhaps you are right in some ways but this type of thinking is only for those who have deep knowledge about crypto and the importance of having your personal wallet, even though in practice this is not mostly applicable to all the users in crypto (their are millions of users who still prefer to keep their crypto asset in exchange rather than in their personal wallet and this is after knowing about all the risk involve) in the case of PayPal, this is mostly relating to the average joe who have less knowledge of all this things you said and still want to be in crypto regardless,

And if your perception about "not your key, not your money is that strong" then i guess you have no funds with any financial institution, because as far as i know, financial institution are directly in control of people's funds and billions of people all over the world are still trusting them with their funds, we can not deny the fact that bank still plays a vital role in our spending, if not all then most of our cards are attached to a bank,
PayPal may have their own way of providing this service but bottom line is they recognize crypto and are willing to provide the service to people, and since they are willing to educate people in this regard then i don't think they will be misguided after all.    

[Anonylz]

Yes, I finished with banks in 2018 and no longer have to deal with them, I have cards of services that support cryptocurrency and are available for most ATMs. Yes, they have higher fees, but the card will not be blocked along with the funds, as I had before when I tried to withdraw cryptocurrency to bank cards. And a person will learn cryptocurrency if he wants to understand what cryptocurrency is for, who created it, etc..  And most people are not interested in it at all, they see bitcoin as a means of profit, that's all. As a means of speculation.. And they don't want to get to the bottom of it at all, it's easier for them to give their coins to someone than to know about wallets, transactions and so on.

PayPal custodian service will be calculated for such. And in training, of course, there is a threat, it's better for beginners to study independent sources of information than from interested centralized guys from PayPal, who can answer: Nothing personal is a business.

Awareness comes during the learning of new information, and let these newcomers study the right information than prepared by such as PayPal.

Mate, we can go back and forth arguing this out but at the end we won't be able to come to an agreeable conclusion,  you know why! Because we are human and are allowed to have different opinions, views and choices,  now you said you have cut off with bank since 2018 but from 2017 or so downward the banks have served you and provide you with all financial services at the time when you needed them most.... now you don't need them anymore it is your choice.

One of the reason why many people criticise banks and payment system like PayPal is because of their high fees..... and you also agrees that cryptocurrency fees are also high...... but you still use them anyways because you are in control of your funds, but remember whatever have advantage also have disadvantage (if all individuals in the world have absolute control over their funds i can't imagine what it will result to)

You said a person will learn cryptocurrency if they choose to but the problem is many people are not willing to learn only interested in price and speculation,  I totally agree, for now people are more concerned about the price than the tech, this is because crypto is not widely used, even the big players in crypto all have same interest,  that fact is undeniable,

PayPal offer to educate people who would not have ordinarily want to learn crypto on their own, i see it as the beginning of crypto journey for people,  from there they can decide to do more research if they want to and make their own decisions base on PayPal services and other crypto service,  they are not tied down so it is a free entry and exit.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Yes, I finished with banks in 2018 and no longer have to deal with them

we are human and are allowed to have different opinions, views and choices,  now you said you have cut off with bank since 2018 but from 2017 or so downward the banks have served you and provide you with all financial services at the time when you needed them most.... now you don't need them anymore it is your choice.

To be honest, I envy Ratimov from this point of view. I wish I could also be unbanked. My wife is unbanked but I can't be, at least not at the moment, as I'm forced by the employer to receive my salary on a bank account. But I'm trying to limit the interactions with the bank(s) as much as possible. For example, in the very day when I receive my salary I cash out all my money and I spend it only in cash form. I didn't want to have anything to do with the banks since decades, since highschool. I always wanted to have control - full control over my finances without having any kind of third party placed between me and my funds. I guess I had a native Cypherpunk vision on this subject, as I had this ideology with decades prior hearing about Cypherpunks. For many years I was able to stay away from the banks but not anymore. But if I'd be given the option to receive my salary in cash I'd close my bank account in the next second...

One of the reason why many people criticise banks and payment system like PayPal is because of their high fees...

I don't think the criticism is related to their fees lol. The criticism is related to their centralization of BTC and I fully agree with that. It is similar with the criticism toward eToro or Revolut, where you don't even own the cryptocurrency, but CFDs... Read again what Ratimov stated:

You are in vain to rejoice at this PayPal announcement, because this announcement does not carry anything useful for the crypto. You read their announcement in general, they offer centralized storage of cryptocurrency, without providing private keys, and this is contrary to the principles of cryptocurrency. They are also going to provide educational materials for those who are newbie to cryptocurrency. And what happens: PayPal will breed a huge number of misguided newbies who will think that centralized storage of cryptocurrencies is okay. This not normal. So PayPal at this stage cannot bring any benefit to Bitcoin and its community, in principle, benefit only to Bitcoin holders, because the price is flying up against the background of this announcement.

PayPal did not give a damn about the rule for any crypto user: Not your keys, not your coins and is developing another centralized trash heap in which your funds can be blocked or censored. They have such a reputation, they often did this in the field of traditional payments.

if all individuals in the world have absolute control over their funds i can't imagine what it will result to

Financial freedom? This is how things should be! This is what Cypherpunks fought for. This is what Satoshi fought for. Because it's their money, not banks' money, not governs' money, not a third party's money...

[BitcoinFX]

h/t @BitcoinMemeHub on twitter.

" Brilliant easy to watch series on the history of CypherPunks  including #Bitcoin by @jimepstein "
- https://twitter.com/BitcoinMemeHub/status/1333289056470372357

Cypherpunks Write Code ...

Before the Web: The 1980s Dream of a Free and Borderless Virtual World (Pt.1)
- https://youtu.be/YWh6Yzr12iQ

Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny
- https://youtu.be/n4qonsvSgAg

When Encryption Was a Crime: The 1990s Battle for Free Speech in Software
- https://youtu.be/lv8OFSWZkGs

Bitcoin and the End of History
- https://youtu.be/HDKQulqVCQg

[GazetaBitcoin]

[...]

Thank you for your suggested links, BitcoinFX! As usual, you bring a lot of precious information for all those interested about Bitcoin, its history and about remarkable figures of the past which contributed one way or another for bringing to light what came to be known as Bitcoin!

[zeingrind777]

I agree that the sense of Bitcoin is anarchism and libertarian. Bitcoin is a digital currency that doesn't care about the country and the central bank. Monetary control, including exchange rates, rests entirely with the cross-border user community. The ideology of bitcoin is to remove money from social control, as well as the government.

[BitcoinFX]

[...]

Thank you for your suggested links, BitcoinFX! As usual, you bring a lot of precious information for all those interested about Bitcoin, its history and about remarkable figures of the past which contributed one way or another for bringing to light what came to be known as Bitcoin!

We can but try!

This topic also had some interesting links (some repetition, "Meet the Extropians" is a good read) ...

Cypherpunks - 1992
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5163467.0

[cygan]

wanted to bump this unfortunately already forgotten but always interesting thread again because there is on twitter a very entertaining film (~5 minutes) which shows the history of our digital gold BTC:

https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1665680905300525056?t=tzQFWuhf3g_FF7Vs5hLUcA&s=19

[GazetaBitcoin]

Thanks cygan for this friendly bump and also for the short movie!

I believe this is the shortest Bitcoin documentary I ever watched  It has only 4 minutes and 37 seconds yet it managed to capture some interesting parts from history of Bitcoin! That was fun to watch 

[JayJuanGee]

Thanks cygan for this friendly bump and also for the short movie!

I believe this is the shortest Bitcoin documentary I ever watched  It has only 4 minutes and 37 seconds yet it managed to capture some interesting parts from history of Bitcoin! That was fun to watch 

Of course, I appreciate the short film too, but it seems that there is a lot of foggying of ideas by frequently using terms such as crypto and blockchain and trying to suggest that there is a kind of amorphous concept (crypto/blockchain) that exists and bitcoin just happens to be part of it.

I think that it would be much better to be a bit more bitcoin focused and to use the word bitcoin a whole hell of a lot more and to avoid using the term crypto and blockchain, except to the extent to which they might be putting those ideas in the context of bitcoin.

There are so many folks out there who really need to understand bitcoin better, rather than attempting to appear smart by talking abut crypto and blockchain, when it hardly means very much.. so in that sense, there are likely ongoing needs to attempt to be more purposeful in the use of language - even if the substance of the movie (documentary) might not end up changing very much, but only to be a bit more clear regarding what they mean by crypto/blockchain rather than assuming people know what they are talking about, including that even regular bitcoiners might become a bit unclear what they are talking about when they are failing to give a bit better context to their use of some of their vague terms in which blockchain and crypto seem to be the most frequent ones that need to be clarified, even if it is a relatively good short documentary like this one or when those same terms (crypto/blockchain) then end up being even more vaguely referenced in other contexts, whether mainstream media or some shitcoiner pumping their scam project in terms of their proclaiming themselves to be part of the (crypto/blockchain) movement rather than merely an affinity scam.. and perhaps some of the ethereum folks are involved in these bullshit propagations too.. but they are not the ONLY ones since there are ethereum imitators who also foggy the topics in terms of promoting their own scam nonsense.. which again will frequently end up deemphasizing some of the important aspects that both distinguish bitcoin from those other shitcoins and even ending up suggesting that maybe some of the other various shitcoins are somehow similar to bitcoin because they are all part of a "valid movement" blah blah blah.

Yes.. I will concede that the affinity scam language can many times end up seeming like subtle and unimportant points and even battling over nothing - even while at the same time a lot of people do end up either getting confused about what is bitcoin or lured into nonsense because even a lot of seemingly smart people present these matters in vague ways by using vague terms (including mostly but not limited to crypto and blockchain).

[cygan]

came across this great essay written by Jameson Lopp today. as the title says, this is about the rise of Bitcoin and the cypherpunks, how it all started and what led to the fact that we now can't get Bitcoin out of our heads and out of the whole world anymore

While many of the innovations in the space are new, they’re built on decades of work that led to this point. By tracing this history, we can understand the motivations behind the movement that spawned bitcoin and share its vision for the future.

https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks/

and if you are a bit too lazy to read the whole thing, you can also listen to it (narrated by Guy Swann): https://www.lopp.net/media-archive/presentations/Bitcoin_Audible-Bitcoin_and_the_Rise_of-_the_Cypherpunks.mp3

[GazetaBitcoin]

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! It is a very important article.

As a matter of fact, I also had it bookmarked for months now (maybe even more than 1 year), as I intended to write a topic about Cypherpunks and I thought that some information from this article may be useful for my purposes. (I did not write that topic yet and I don't know when I'll do it, but it is still on my to-do list.)

However, I had this article saved from CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/04/09/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks. Apparently, Jameson Lopp is also a columnist at CoinDesk. At first I thought the CoinDesk article was pure plagiarism, as it looks 100% identical with the one you shared, but I noticed afterwards that it's the same author.

In any case, this is a very good reading for anyone interested to learn about Cypherpunks.

[cygan]

a recently surfaced email now reveals more about Bitcoin's previously little-known origin story. it is the oldest known piece of writing from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. a message from august 22, 2008 to Wei Dai.
for his part, Dai had been working (as mentioned by GazetaBitcoin in this thread) on a digital cash system called 'b-money' since 1998. apparently, SN was inspired by this, which is also confirmed by the e-mail. in it, the Bitcoin founder asks for the publication date of the b-money page so that he can quote it in his soon-to-be-published work.

[JayJuanGee]

a recently surfaced email now reveals more about Bitcoin's previously little-known origin story. it is the oldest known piece of writing from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. a message from august 22, 2008 to Wei Dai.
for his part, Dai had been working (as mentioned by GazetaBitcoin in this thread) on a digital cash system called 'b-money' since 1998. apparently, SN was inspired by this, which is also confirmed by the e-mail. in it, the Bitcoin founder asks for the publication date of the b-money page so that he can quote it in his soon-to-be-published work.

I am pretty sure that I had seen something like that previously.. I cannot remember exactly where.... or maybe I just heard such an e-mail had been sent without actually seeing the contents.. like what is being shown in your cited image.

[DdmrDdmr]

a recently surfaced email now reveals more about Bitcoin's previously little-known origin story. <…>

Yesterday I saw an article (*) that typified the disclosure as recent, and it got me all kicked-up to see what it was all about. Reading the content of the email, much like JJ, I thought it rang a bell.

The truth seems to be that the email was disclosed years ago (although I can’t pinpoint exactly how many). Bitcoin.com has had the email content on its site since at least mid 2021 since at least mid 2021 and I believe I saw 2020 articles referencing it too.

If the source is the same as I’ve placed below, I’m left wondering whether the author used AI to aid his writing, or he simply used old information and planted it without paying attention to the content and the reference to "recent" it enclosed.

(*) https://finbold.com/this-is-the-first-known-satoshi-nakamotos-email-whats-inside/

Edit: 2016 thread here referencing the email:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1345468.msg13718422#msg13718422

The "discovery" of the emails may date back to 2014, as depicted here:
https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto

[GazetaBitcoin]

First of all, I apologize for not being present inside my own thread for a while. I was out of country and I had only my phone with me, so it was impossible for me to write long posts using the phone. Anyway, I am back now

I am pretty sure that I had seen something like that previously.. I cannot remember exactly where.... or maybe I just heard such an e-mail had been sent without actually seeing the contents.. like what is being shown in your cited image.

I remember this. I saw this years ago, on gwern's website.

In fact, it seems that DDmr found already the source:

The "discovery" of the emails may date back to 2014, as depicted here:
https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto

I remember I studied well gwern's website, being very well impressed about the materials presented there. With that oocasion I also found out that gwern was also active on our forum and it's sad that they ceased being active here...

If the source is the same as I’ve placed below, I’m left wondering whether the author used AI to aid his writing, or he simply used old information and planted it without paying attention to the content and the reference to "recent" it enclosed.

Most likely, the author acted like an amateur and did not care to verify the source of the information. There are so many acting like this in our days...

[cygan]

yesterday the well known Jameson Loop published a very interesting blog article about the legendary cypherpunk Hal Finney. with this article he presents his research results, and supports his claim that HF was/is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

A compilation of evidence that Hal Finney and Satoshi Nakamoto were different people.

https://blog.lopp.net/hal-finney-was-not-satoshi-nakamoto/

[GazetaBitcoin]

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! And I apologize for the delayed reply but I completely forgot about it.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that Hal was Satoshi. I read many articles about Hal and also multiple statements he made and he seemed very honest... Besides, after I read his post from the forum I became convinced there is no chance for him to be Satoshi. The post in question is this one and it's a must read, from my perspective: Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney).

I also recommend to everybody to merit that post, as it is, in a way, Hal's legacy...

[cygan]

the following image is currently causing fresh speculation in the BTCitcoin and crypto community about the true identity of the mysterious BTCitcoin inventor. the image shows an interesting, albeit questionable, translation of the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto' into japanese katakana and hiragana characters, which, when interpreted as latin letters, should result in the name 'Hal Fin(n)ey'
the speculation surrounding the characters is the latest chapter in the long history of detective work surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. it shows that the search for the inventor of BTCitcoin is often driven by the hope of finding a clue in every little detail - i hope we never find out who SN was...