Before Bitcoin Pt.2 — 80s “The Origins of Decentralization”

70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and the people behind the tech

Part Two’s Notes

Continuing on from the 70s

George Lucas’s brainchild of the 70s
IBM, Apple and Microsoft’s battle of the 70s

The traffic analysis problem

How do Mix Networks work?

Video explanation of Mix Networks
If you want to ‘learn’ more about TOR: Here is an more in-depth guide

Untraceable payments

  • Conduct financial transactions with an ‘external system’
  • Exchange data with an ‘external system’
  • Contain an ID linking the ownership of data within the ‘external system’
  • Store data relating to interactions with the ‘external system’
  • Secure the stored data through cryptography where it could be accessed using a secret ID known to the owner

Stumbling onto the concept of Decentralization

“Don’t work on this, because you can never tell the effects of a new idea on society”.

TIME Magazine 1982

Chaum’s warning to the World in 1985

So what was decentralization?

Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks in 2013 Headline news outlets
Screenshot of leaked CIA’s Documents on the US Surveillance program: PRISM
Leaked CIA’s Slides on how their own software worked! I wonder if they have a CIA confluence wiki…
Meta data being abused once again in 2017
Facebook’s billion dollar business built on metadata
Metadata captured by Facebook

Wow was David Chaum a time traveller?

After the 80s

Digicash ‘98

“Don’t work on this, because you can never tell the effects of a new idea on society”.

David Chaum enjoying himself

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