Before Bitcoin, there was David Chaum. Risking life in jail, he laid the foundation that would inspire the creation of the world’s first cryptocurrency. (Via CointelegraphZN)
Chaum is clear in his belief that “the only effective way to maintain any level of privacy is to control the information with your own keys” and goes on to explain that continuous government leaks suggest that any information entrusted with others can become public at any time.Unlike the criticism leveled at the Cypherpunks he inspired, Chaum denies being an ideologue, saying his views are based on practicality, as people need to have a credible assurance of privacy.
Chaum argues that privacy, over the long term, is critical for a functional democracy because “you cannot be a citizen of a democracy without the ability to communicate freely,” bringing up a story about how when coffee was introduced in Europe around the time of the enlightenment, it was hated by kings as it encouraged people to spend their evenings discussing politics.Subscribe for thoughtful explorations and leisurely reads from Magazine.
“Did you know that every single banknote is traced from the teller desk to the ATM machine in China?” he notes. The Chinese government has introduced the digital yuan to get a panopticon-style view of every last payment. Despite all the attention on cryptocurrency, Chaum seems far more excited about blockchain as a mechanism of future governments. Armed with a confidently deep understanding of political history, he dives into a lecture.
“We’ve had civilizations we know of for 6,000 years,” he begins, saying that they gained traction when they were able to exercise public policy but naturally became failed states and flipped to autocracy largely because of the difficulty of finding intelligent people to do the government’s work while resisting the temptation of corruption. “If democracy fails to govern effectively, it gets kicked out,” he says, somberly opining that the west appears to be heading toward such a phase.
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