Bitcoin: A Vision for Cypherpunks, Libertarians, and Crypto-Anarchists

Image of Romans paying taxes || Source: historyhit.com Governments have been holding people down for ages. The roots of this oppression trace back to the Roman Empire, around 2000 years ago. A lot has changed, but this practice is still alive and kicking. They use all kinds of tactics like direct and indirect taxes, inflation, restricting access to info, false accusations, bans, slavery, biased trials, snooping on personal data, and weaponizing it against honest folks. In the end, it all boils down to one thing: keeping power with the elites while the common folks toil away for their benefit. Sure, people have fought back throughout history, but often they ended up empty-handed. This ongoing struggle, which has been around since ancient times, is perfectly captured by Murray Rothbard as "the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power." One route to freedom has been through private money, but governments aren’t having any of that competition. They've had a monopoly on minting coins since the days of Rome. Yet, the desire for private money has been around for centuries, and history shows us that private currencies have popped up in various forms over time. The famous economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek, who snagged a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974, sparked an important discussion in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined: "[...] can’t help but wonder why people have tolerated governments holding exclusive power for over two millennia, regularly using it to exploit."

Reserved.

Herewith, DEF CON 18 - Moxie Marlinspike - Changing Threats To Privacy ... - https://youtu.be/DoeNbZlxfUM?t=71 Touches on the 'Crypto wars', Cypherpunks and crypto-anarchy. Onward.

Thank you for sharing this interesting link, BitcoinFX. It depicts a part of the history. It is said that who doesn't know the past, doesn't have a future and I consider important to study the past of crypto, the previous attempts of brilliant minds to bring liberty and privacy to the people, in order to limit the govern' oppression. "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes", said Mark Twain once and he was so right! The state feels that it is losing the power, the control, and it puts all its efforts in trying to keep this control. It is trying to centralize what was meant to be decentralized, it tries to regulate Bitcoin, which was born to be free and to set people free. These attempts are done with all possible means and long arms of the state: banks, law enforcement agencies and, since a while ago, with the unexpected help of the centralized exchanges. The state did not create the centralized exchanges, but their apparition is a great help in trying to control Bitcoin. The owners of centralized exchanges created these companies only because of greed. And greed is a very exploitable human weakness. The owners want money from transactions and they get money. But the govern speculated that, forcing them to obtain licenses for dealing with money. And in order to obtain licenses, the exchanges have to offer their clients' data to the state whenever it asks for such data. Practically, the exchanges betray their clients, they offer them as a tribute to the state for being allowed to function in a so-called legitimate manner. Let's not forget what happened to Coinbase clients, when the exchange was coerced by the govern to offer the personal data of more than 650.000 users! In Romania, the law was changed during the pandemic. The govern solved any other nation's issues and was free to focus on the law related to crypto exchanges during the pandemic. All good. How was the law changed? The exchanges will receive license only if they are offering to the govern all their customers' personal information! Practically, the govern does not need anymore to go into a Court of Law with the exchange in order to obtain this information. The new law makes to be way more easy to collect the personal information of the users.

Changing the system is only possible if crypto manages to become something more than it is now.

I think that changing the system is possible, if people wouldn't let the greed to rule them. To be more precise, instead of constantly exchanging BTC for fiat, use just BTC. If everybody would use only BTC, the govern would permanently be defeated and crypto-anarchy would flourish. But keeping the greed to a zero level is very, very hard.

Indeed. This wired article is also an excellent read ... Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the Anarchist Bringing Encryption - https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/ Moxie is quite an inspirational fellow and 'original' cypherpunk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk - his blog post 'The Money Machine' should be essential reading for any Bitcoiner IMHO (hes not satoshi though) ... The Money Machine - https://moxie.org/stories/money-machine/ ... On KYC ... Myself, having a background in retail Forex (and e-currency / crypto-currency) I know that KYC actually causes more real world 'problems' than it solves ... Aside from the pitfalls and 'controversies over this legislation/regulation/policy' see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer ... Companies often do not store 'customers' identities and/or documents securely, malicious actors will often disseminate (sell / re-sell) the collected information for use in identity fraud etc., KYC only really benefits 'criminals' in this regard and/or the people who 'control' the mainstream financial system. The requirement is literally an apocalypse to ones individual right to privacy ... - https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Apocolypse "apocalypse noun Something disclosed, especially something not previously known or realized: disclosure, exposé, exposure, revelation." i.e. the dissemination of private and/or personal information. ... The first Bitcoin Exchange rates site actually featured videos on 'Privacy and Money' ... - http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/video/7787146/Us+Now+Film Privacy and Money - https://youtu.be/BTRFuWtxawM ... What happened ? The 'cypherpunks' prepared for a future against facism. Most people think they are living in a social democracy. I would argue that, for the main part, we are actually living under facism masquerading as social democracy. ... More 'cypherpunks' ... rop, frank: Ten years after ‚We Lost The War‘ - https://youtu.be/P4k7RKx4OQM

Linking this to the Monero thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg54633230#msg54633230

Said right, but this is not a fight that should be left for a one man alone. You cannot fight for everyone alone, you can only fight for yourself in a situation like this and that’s the best you can do. I am saying this because there are still people out there who still like the way they are living and they are not ready change it and go for something else. When you tell these people about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, they are the ones that will tell you that they are not interested or they will just call it a scam so that you wouldn’t pressure them to be part of it. So, I just do things for myself, if others are ready to be part of it, it’s up to them.

I honestly don't believe in or stick to any particular worldly ideology. What matters to me is what is right. We could find flaws in the above ideologies or others that aren't mentioned here. Whatever works, and is really right/safe is acceptable to me. However, I think in all the ideologies, there could be some that are abit closer to the truth, but get spoilt by mistake, errors, disadvantages etc.  We need something very good or close to perfection. I believe we can achieve perfection with the help of our CREATOR. Truely decentralized system would behave more like a hard-to-kill living thing/being(unless destroyed by GOD)... that's one of the reasons I like it alot.

About 9 years after b-money, we have Bitcoin that has really changed the world. There are many generations of cyberphunks and developments of cryptographics, digital money but only bitcoin makes a revolution for our world. Initiated by Bitcoin, the world has the technical term, cryptocurrency. Honestly, I have not yet knownn most of stories you collected and presented in OP so thank you. I am going back to OP for reading it now.

This is the only time that I have realized the importance of liberty from the creation of these cryptocurrency made before the implementation of the bitcoin network and bitcoin itself. I don't know if it's just me who is thinking that bitcoin was being used to evade taxes that is being imposed on people who are having an online businesses to make a living on their own. Because if the use of bitcoin promotes freedom from being oppressed by the government in terms of monetary policies -- then it is our job to persuade and educate the masses why the use of bitcoin really matters. Won't the economy be affected?

Thank you as well. I am glad that you find this topic interesting It may be, but that is the state economy. For people it would be better, without being robbed everyday for their honest work. Yes... you can not help people by force, if they don't realize they need that help... All we can do is to spread the word as much as possible and hope that some will understand... Thank you! Thanks for spreading the word. Thank you, BitcoinFX. Based on your replies, I believe you share the crypto-anarchic ideology Feel free to share more information on the subject, if you have more. Your suggestions are very interesting as well.

Wow man. That was a hell heaven of information. I never really cared to read about the early versions of digital money. Though I knew about hashcash and digicash, I didn't have any idea about b-money and I was happy to read about it and how Satoshi contacted WeiDai regarding it. Thanks for sharing such a great article and I am sure it will help a lot of people like myself and give them more knowledge about the earlier digital financial system.

GazetaBitcoin, The reminder about what is really important is refreshing, thank you! With all the greed and focus on short-term gains it is nice to see people interested in learning from history. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. --Benjamin Franklin I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. --Steve Martin

Thank as well for spending the time and reading this topic. I am so happy to see so many people here interested in history, libertarianism, anarchism and crypto-anarchy! I also recommend you to follow all the hyperlinks inserted thorough the text, as you'll find there even more valuable information. This essay was very important for me, being my 1000th post and I put a lot of efforts in writing it, making the proper research, finding the quotes together with their sources, proof-reading and so on. However, the result makes me so happy: seeing it raised so much interest!

The following thread is probably of interest to this topic, as unbelievably we have not yet fully ascertained the exact origin of the word cryptocurrency ... I seemingly have the first iteration of the word on this forum, although I saw it first used on bitcoin.org (unsurprisingly) ... Re: Who coined the word "cryptocurrency" ... - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155348.msg51504401#msg51504401 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155348.msg52786029#msg52786029 The links to the other research papers on digital cash should also be of interest. ... Dan Held's recent twitter storm on Hal Finney was very interesting and insightful indeed ... 1/ to 83/ ... - https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1244655439024779265 Bitcoin certainly wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for Hal Finney's work and input. ... I will dig out some more relevant content when I can find the time.

My only quibble with that quotation is the no one should want to live under either.  Fascism, socialism, communism, "social democracy", authoritarianism, collectivism etc are all very similar, just substituting who is doing the controlling.  A limited, constitutional republic (with enumerated powers, like in theory the US is supposed to have) protects people's freedoms and rights from tyranny of the majority.

Utah Data Center - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Ad libitum ... ? - https://youtu.be/DoeNbZlxfUM?t=501 ...

This could use a bump.