- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Looking back on the Crypto Wars
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

The sort of liberties presently being taken with the cypherpunk record ( archived online for all time! ) would not be unfamiliar to George Orwell. Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened . . ." https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-ot…

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Cryptopunks the new Saudi Royals
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

Only not as clean and polite https://twitter.com/i/status/1447590117372223488

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Looking to launch NFTs for a broad audience, and you care about the environment?
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

If you’re an artist looking to launch NFTs for a broad audience, and you care about the environment, #Avalanche is the chain for you. Quote Tweet FengShuiVerse Up-pointing red triangle @FengShuiVerse · 7h 1/5 Why I’m launching my PIXIU NFT on #Avalanche. https://twitter.com/ToppsNFTs/status/1445067937057017870/photo/1 https://twitter.com/i/status/1445011003624787972

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Cypherpunk " Baseball Cards ' coming - Ready or not!
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

https://tokenhell.com/rarible-launches-free-nft-minting/ Wrestling pictures - beery - could be a pip

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Filecoin has economic incentives to ensure files are reliably stored over time
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

The FIL token is used to purchase storage space and retrieve data from the Filecoin Network. At the same time, its users gain rewards for selling their excess storage using this open-source platform. To compete with existing centralized cloud storage services, Filecoin has economic incentives to ensure files are reliably stored over time. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bulls-target-100-filecoin-fil-after-data-poi… FIL could also become a way to connect with the Chinese masses tunneling through the Great Firewall of that Left-Fascist Hell-hole. It was popular there before the latest repression. DISCLOSURE - I have heavy bags in this asset and am looking to make a killing on it.

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Dave Chappelle claims Freud as a font of wisdom
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

Dave Chappelle has practically declared a Gender World War by endorsing notorious misogynist, Sigmund Freud and attacking Juice Newton...oh wait...no, sorry... that's not Dave Chappelle. That was James Dalton Bell. A close friend and supporter of goose-stepping, rapist Nazi, Julius Caesar Rand Paul Assmange. Bell also endorses cures for COVID-19 such as huffing hydrogen-peroxide and drinking bleach. A total fucking loser.

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Plandemic Blues Two - This Time its Personnel
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

JasonSCampbell · 3h Dennis Prager announces he has COVID-19 while ranting against vaccines and declaring that he was trying to get infected https://mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-announces-he-has-covid… Batshit didn't look too healthy last time we spoke.

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Tag and release
by professor rat 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

No Fuckin’ Trouble https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/14/15-nft-use-cases-that-could-go…

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Cryptocurrency: Action - Help Stop The Crypto Kill, DontKillCrypto, End WarOnCash and SpyVeillance Regime
by grarpamp 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

DON’T KILL CRYPTO https://dontkillcrypto.com/ https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/stop-the-senate-from-sneaking-thr… https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-congress-to-protect-human-rights-i… https://decrypt.co/78530/irs-wont-go-after-bitcoin-miners-regardless-broker… https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/cryptocurrency-surveillance-provision… https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-lummis-toomey-amendment… https://twitter.com/rokhanna/status/1423760775131418627 https://decrypt.co/78387/anna-eshoo-pelosi-letter-crypto-tax-bill https://twitter.com/RepTomEmmer/status/1424845416697323522 A poorly written provision in the must-pass infrastructure bill would effectively crush the cryptocurrency ecosystem, expand surveillance, and endanger human rights. But Congress can fix it. Check the scorecard to see where your reps stand & tweet them! We've already driven and . Here’s the plan to get lawmakers on the record opposing the bad cryptocurrency provisions in the infrastructure bill TL;DR: The House is scheduled to vote on the infrastructure bill this Thursday 9/30. This is a crucial opportunity to get as many lawmakers on the record in support of a #DontKillCrypto fix as possible. Contact your reps via the scoreboard below. This Thursday, September 30, is when the House plans to vote on an infrastructure package the Senate already passed. Buried inside the package are unworkable cryptocurrency provisions that threaten the rights of software developers and undermine human rights and free expression. This harmful provision led to major political action in the decentralized tech community, driving unprecedented numbers of calls to lawmakers that resulted in a heroic, bipartisan effort to get it fixed. Despite overwhelming support, the Amendment failed at the last minute, basically due to a process technicality related to obscure Senate rules. But now, we have a huge opportunity to get more lawmakers on the record in support of policies protecting cryptocurrency innovation, privacy, and human rights. At this point we are unlikely to affect the outcome of the broader infrastructure package vote, but the good news is that both Democrats and Republicans in the House have already said they want to take common sense action similar to the Wyden amendment to fix the provision. So, we need to demand that everyone voting on the infrastructure bill also publicly commits to helping fix the crypto provision. They can do so by issuing a statement, tweeting #DontKillCrypto like Rep Khanna, or signing a letter like the one from Rep Eshoo or from Reps Emmer, Soto, Schweikert, and Foster. Here’s what to do: EVERYONE: Use our scoreboard below to see if your rep has made a public commitment. If they haven’t, use our easy tools to contact your rep now. If they reply to you, help us keep the scorecard current by emailing Team(a)FightForTheFuture.org. Then, make sure your friends and collaborators do the same by the morning of September 30. IF YOU RUN A PROJECT, CHANNEL, OR SOCIAL ACCOUNT WITH REACH: Drive traffic to DontKillCrypto.com — ask your audience to take 5 minutes to find their representative on the scoreboard and contact them before the vote. Activate mailing lists, go live, and ask that in this crucial moment the crypto community makes their voices heard. This is a golden opportunity to get our reps on the record. Once they join the momentum for a bipartisan fix, our reps are committed to moving that fix forward either through a future budget bill, or standalone legislation. The crypto coalition can grow, and that’s what we need for a decentralized future. Where do your reps stand? Green = supports crypto; Red = against crypto; Grey = unknown About This Campaign The #DontKillCrypto campaign formed in opposition to a cryptocurrency provision in the must-pass infrastructure package that mandates mass surveillance of the crypto-economy in the name of reducing tax avoidance. This puts many fundamental cryptocurrency participants in an impossible position: to either collect information that they structurally cannot get access to, or to operate outside the US. Either way, mass surveillance of everyone in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a massive blow to human rights. Cryptocurrencies are both a testing ground and a foundational investment in the move to decentralization. The issues at hand aren’t simply about taxes—they’re about the United States’ ability to participate in cryptocurrencies and a decentralized future that puts the rights of people above the exploitative and manipulative business models of Big Tech.

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Cryptocurrency: Crypto Industry Royally Screwed Privacy, Privacy Finance
by grarpamp 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

It all started when Satoshi left TLS transport and coin privacy out of BTC. While that may have been excusable, the subsequent bitcoin development group is fully aware that they missing, and have done nothing to add TLS or any other over the wire secure transport or any coin privacy, not even any pluggable wallet privacy modules to use known swap join fusion protocols etc. They don't even really talk about privacy. Is that not apparently guilty of perpetuating weakness to help spyveillance and the State. And lately the BTC fanboi crowd is claiming Taproot and things gave more privacy to average everyday users when they do nothing of the sort. Guilty of propaganda. And real privacy still isn't even on BTC's roadmap. https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-crypto-industry-royally-screwed-up-priva… The crypto industry royally screwed up privacy Sadly, there are several reasons why the blockchain community has fallen short in making privacy a tier-one priority, and that must be changed. Privacy is a complicated topic. Few would argue that privacy is not important. It’s generally more interesting to talk about things that are disputable. So, the limited arguments against privacy actually make it somewhat boring to discuss and easy to take for granted. As Edward Snowden famously said: “Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” However, what if your privacy is not a priority? What if your privacy is not guaranteed? What if everything you do is under constant surveillance? You might fight back. Unfortunately, this actually is the state of the cryptocurrency industry, and not enough people are in the fight to defend privacy. Transparency vs. privacy When I first read the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper in 2011, I fell in love with the vision for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Most societies have physical cash — legal tender — so, in a digital society, what is the physical cash equivalent? Satoshi Nakamoto seemed to come up with an elegant answer to that question, and a multi-trillion dollar market has emerged around it. Sadly, Satoshi’s original idea has fallen short in at least one area, and that’s privacy. Legal tender is private. When someone exchanges coins or banknotes (aka “bills” in the U.S. and Canada) for a good or service, that transaction is only known to the two parties involved. Identification is requested if the good or service is restricted to certain age groups (beer runs aren't for everyone). Further, if you hand a $10 bill to the lady at the local farmer's market, she can't look up how much you have left in your bank account. However, transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain are radically transparent. This means transaction amounts, frequency and balances are all open for the entire public to see. The Bitcoin white paper only dedicates a half-page to the topic of privacy with suggested workarounds that don’t always work as intended, especially for second generation account-based blockchains such as Ethereum. There are user guides on how to achieve more privacy using Bitcoin, but they are extremely complicated and generally recommend using tools that can be dangerous for users. There are also a few blockchain networks that have been designed with privacy as the default, but most do not support more complex programmability such as smart contracts, which enable new use cases involving business logic in decentralized finance (DeFi). Related: DPN vs. VPN: The dawn of decentralized web privacy Leaving privacy behind Why has the blockchain community fallen short in making privacy a tier-one priority? For one, privacy has taken a back seat to three other priorities: security, decentralization and scalability. Nobody will argue that these three components aren’t important either. But do they have to be mutually exclusive to privacy? Another reason privacy has not been prioritized is that it’s very hard to guarantee. Historically, privacy tools such as zero-knowledge proofs have been slow and inefficient, and making them more scalable is hard work. But, just because privacy is hard, does that mean it should not be a priority? The last reason is probably the most concerning. There’s a myth in the media that crypto transactions are completely anonymous. They are not. This means that many people have been actively using crypto under the fallacy that their transactions are private. As blockchain network analysis tools become more sophisticated, the lack of anonymity increases. So, when does privacy become important enough to make it a priority? Related: Bitcoin can't be viewed as an untraceable 'crime coin' anymore Privacy Finance A friend of mine who has worked in the crypto industry full-time since 2015 recently asked me, “WTF is PriFi?” PriFi, or “Privacy Finance,” is the crypto industry’s admission that we royally screwed up with privacy. We screwed up so badly that, 12 years into this industry’s evolution, we are just now getting to the point where privacy is important enough to have its own hashtag. So, where do we go from here to build more privacy that protects everyday crypto users and achieves the digital privacy equivalent of cash? The first step is more education. As society becomes increasingly digital, privacy is becoming harder to achieve. This starts with educating the media on the differences between secrecy and privacy. Secrecy is not wanting anyone to know something. Privacy is not wanting the whole world to know something. Secrecy is a privilege. Privacy is a right. The next step is to make privacy simpler. Achieving privacy in crypto should not require clunky workarounds, shady tools or a deep expertise of complex cryptography. Blockchain networks, including smart contract platforms, should support optional privacy that works as easily as clicking a button. The final step is to defend privacy. Privacy is a timely issue. The recent U.S. infrastructure bill includes a clause to extend section 6050I of the tax code, which requires individual counterparties to collect personal information on each other for cash transactions over $10,000, and applies it to cryptocurrencies. Coin Center, a pro-crypto nonprofit advocacy and research group, is preparing to challenge the constitutionality of this change for crypto. You can too, here. Armed with proper education, an intuitive user experience, and motivation to make privacy a priority for crypto, we can defend our rights without being reckless and maintain sensible privacy on our own terms. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. Warren Paul Anderson is vice president of product at Discreet Labs, which is developing Findora, a public blockchain with programmable privacy. Previously, Warren led product at Ripple for 4.5 years, working on the XRP Ledger, Interledger, & PayString protocols; the RippleX platform; and RippleNet's On-Demand Liquidity enterprise product. Prior to Ripple, in 2014, Warren co-founded Hedgy, one of the first DeFi platforms for derivatives using programmable, escrowed smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain.

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