Aug 11, 2020
Aaron van Wirdum is the technical editor at Bitcoin Magazine. Finn Brunton is the author of “Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency.” In this episode, they tackle the history of digital currency. Topics include:
- the motivations behind the earliest attempts to create digital currencies, and who was behind those attempts
- the Extropian philosophy and how digital currency was born out of it
- how the cypherpunks came together and eventually began implementing tools that would lead to the creation of digital currencies
- the problems faced during the development of digital money, from double-spending to privacy, centralization, and spam
- the development of a public key protocol and why it was so significant
- the characteristics of earlier forms of digital currency like e-cash, hashcash, b-money, and bit gold, as well as their differences
- the original purpose of proof-of-work and how it was developed
- Hal Finney’s essential contributions to the creation of earlier digital currencies, and later, Bitcoin
- previous implementations of blockchain and how Bitcoin came to reinvent and utilize it
- which previous digital currencies come closest to Bitcoin
- and who they think Satoshi Nakamoto is …
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Crypto.com: https://crypto.com
Episode links:
Aaron Van Wirdum: https://twitter.com/AaronvanW
Finn Brunton: http://finnb.net
Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179490/digital-cash
Aaron's Bitcoin magazine series on the early days of digital currency: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/genesis-files-how-david-chaums-ecash-spawned-cypherpunk-dream
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/genesis-files-bit-gold-szabo-was-inches-away-inventing-bitcoin
Aaron on What Bitcoin Did discussing the stories: https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-beginners-guide-to-bitcoin-part-3-bitcoins-pre-history-and-the-cypherpunks-with-aaron-van-wirdum
Breaker Mag Interview with Finn
Brunton about his book:
https://breakermag.com/new-book-reveals-cryptos-radical-origins/