What You Need to Know About the Cypherpunks
I think it’s time we take a look at the Godfathers of privacy through the use of cryptography.
They call themselves the Cypherpunks.
This cypherpunk movement took root in the 1980s and is centered around the idea of establishing cryptographically secured methods of ensuring privacy.
If you want to learn more about this movement, reading the Cypherpunk Manifestois a fine place to start.
It was written in 1993 by Eric Hughes and has some powerful statements.
It was written about 25 years ago but it is becoming increasingly more relevant as time moves on and our privacy is increasingly being eroded.
Here are some key parts of the Cypherpunks manifesto that I’d like to you all to hear:
“Privacy is not secrecy.”
“Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
This piece goes on to speak of how individuals should have the right to selectively reveal their identities in this day in age when electronic transactions and communications are now the norm. It also mentions how they are achieving privacy through uses of anonymous email that uses digital signatures and also interestingly enough, mentions electronic money. Keep in mind that this was written a good 16 years before the Genesis block of Bitcoin.
Towards the end of this written piece we are introduced to their motives for writing code that will accomplish this as well as their desire to keep this code open for others to study and learn from. (Hint: Open Source Philosophy)
Over and over Eric speaks about being aware of the importance of maintaining your own privacy and shows that decentralizing their information and making it open for others to view and learn from will only help to spread and ultimately secure the future for cryptographically secured methods of communications and transactions.
In my opinion, these are the people that deserve to be remembered, and we all need to take the time to understand how we can help perpetuate and solidify this movement for the future.
Additional Reading/Sources:
Cypherpunk Manifesto
’93 Wired Magazine Article on the Crypto Rebels
Untold Story of Bitcoin
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Thanks for sharing @heiditravels!
Hi Heidi!
Once again thanks a lot for your very entertaining but also informative videos. I really love them.
Have a great day!
Cheers!
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Aloha @heiditravels,
Thanks for the information about the cypherpunks.
I liked the story, but I especially like the underlying idea that privacy isn’t about secrecy, it’s about control of who gets your information. In a way these people are just giving us back control over our personal information. Thanks for making me think today and literally giving me the words which explain my attraction to crypto currency. I have up voted and resteemed this post.
Take care,
@shortsegments
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like, really i'm a ninja in my spare time.. ;)
I am happy to learnt the meaning of cypherpunk by reading your post .thanks my dear for widening my horizon. Truly those people need to be remembered.
I like that part of the manifesto, I'll make a post about it and I'll present it to you ...
I learned something new with your post thanks @heiditravels
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