Before Bitcoin Pt.1— 70s “Public Key Saga”

Part Three which will explore the formation of the cypherpunk movement in response to the government’s violations of personal liberty. This movement would go on to later create TOR, Bit Torrent, Wikileaks and Bitcoin. Understanding the cypherpunks will lend a retrospective view of Bitcoin and it’s meaning as a technology.

In Part Two, I will be exploring his continued work on public key cryptography and his research on the need for anonymous communications, payments and decentralised services. His ideas would go on to seed the movement of cypherpunks, the movement that would go on to create TOR, Bit Torrent, Wikileaks and of course: Bitcoin.What is decentralized? Wh... See more

The Cypherpunks used their mailing list to document various attempts at building an electronic coin network. This included “e-gold,” in 1996; an anti-spam proof-of-work algorithm called Hashcash by Adam Back; an anonymous proof-of-stake electronic cash network in 1998; and Bit Gold, a proof-of-work string of cryptographic hashes by Nick Szabo in 20... See more