Mate, we can go back and forth arguing this out but at the end we won't be able to come to an agreeable conclusion,  you know why! Because we are human and are allowed to have different opinions, views and choices,  now you said you have cut off with bank since 2018 but from 2017 or so downward the banks have served you and provide you with all financial services at the time when you needed them most.... now you don't need them anymore it is your choice.

One of the reason why many people criticise banks and payment system like PayPal is because of their high fees..... and you also agrees that cryptocurrency fees are also high...... but you still use them anyways because you are in control of your funds, but remember whatever have advantage also have disadvantage (if all individuals in the world have absolute control over their funds i can't imagine what it will result to)

You said a person will learn cryptocurrency if they choose to but the problem is many people are not willing to learn only interested in price and speculation,  I totally agree, for now people are more concerned about the price than the tech, this is because crypto is not widely used, even the big players in crypto all have same interest,  that fact is undeniable,

PayPal offer to educate people who would not have ordinarily want to learn crypto on their own, i see it as the beginning of crypto journey for people,  from there they can decide to do more research if they want to and make their own decisions base on PayPal services and other crypto service,  they are not tied down so it is a free entry and exit.

h/t @BitcoinMemeHub on twitter.

" Brilliant easy to watch series on the history of CypherPunks  including #Bitcoin by @jimepstein "
- https://twitter.com/BitcoinMemeHub/status/1333289056470372357

Cypherpunks Write Code ...

Before the Web: The 1980s Dream of a Free and Borderless Virtual World (Pt.1)
- https://youtu.be/YWh6Yzr12iQ

Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny
- https://youtu.be/n4qonsvSgAg

When Encryption Was a Crime: The 1990s Battle for Free Speech in Software
- https://youtu.be/lv8OFSWZkGs

Bitcoin and the End of History
- https://youtu.be/HDKQulqVCQg

I agree that the sense of Bitcoin is anarchism and libertarian. Bitcoin is a digital currency that doesn't care about the country and the central bank. Monetary control, including exchange rates, rests entirely with the cross-border user community. The ideology of bitcoin is to remove money from social control, as well as the government.

wanted to bump this unfortunately already forgotten but always interesting thread again because there is on twitter a very entertaining film (~5 minutes) which shows the history of our digital gold BTC:

https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1665680905300525056?t=tzQFWuhf3g_FF7Vs5hLUcA&s=19

Of course, I appreciate the short film too, but it seems that there is a lot of foggying of ideas by frequently using terms such as crypto and blockchain and trying to suggest that there is a kind of amorphous concept (crypto/blockchain) that exists and bitcoin just happens to be part of it.

I think that it would be much better to be a bit more bitcoin focused and to use the word bitcoin a whole hell of a lot more and to avoid using the term crypto and blockchain, except to the extent to which they might be putting those ideas in the context of bitcoin.

There are so many folks out there who really need to understand bitcoin better, rather than attempting to appear smart by talking abut crypto and blockchain, when it hardly means very much.. so in that sense, there are likely ongoing needs to attempt to be more purposeful in the use of language - even if the substance of the movie (documentary) might not end up changing very much, but only to be a bit more clear regarding what they mean by crypto/blockchain rather than assuming people know what they are talking about, including that even regular bitcoiners might become a bit unclear what they are talking about when they are failing to give a bit better context to their use of some of their vague terms in which blockchain and crypto seem to be the most frequent ones that need to be clarified, even if it is a relatively good short documentary like this one or when those same terms (crypto/blockchain) then end up being even more vaguely referenced in other contexts, whether mainstream media or some shitcoiner pumping their scam project in terms of their proclaiming themselves to be part of the (crypto/blockchain) movement rather than merely an affinity scam.. and perhaps some of the ethereum folks are involved in these bullshit propagations too.. but they are not the ONLY ones since there are ethereum imitators who also foggy the topics in terms of promoting their own scam nonsense.. which again will frequently end up deemphasizing some of the important aspects that both distinguish bitcoin from those other shitcoins and even ending up suggesting that maybe some of the other various shitcoins are somehow similar to bitcoin because they are all part of a "valid movement" blah blah blah.

Yes.. I will concede that the affinity scam language can many times end up seeming like subtle and unimportant points and even battling over nothing - even while at the same time a lot of people do end up either getting confused about what is bitcoin or lured into nonsense because even a lot of seemingly smart people present these matters in vague ways by using vague terms (including mostly but not limited to crypto and blockchain).

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! It is a very important article.

As a matter of fact, I also had it bookmarked for months now (maybe even more than 1 year), as I intended to write a topic about Cypherpunks and I thought that some information from this article may be useful for my purposes. (I did not write that topic yet and I don't know when I'll do it, but it is still on my to-do list.)

However, I had this article saved from CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/04/09/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks. Apparently, Jameson Lopp is also a columnist at CoinDesk. At first I thought the CoinDesk article was pure plagiarism, as it looks 100% identical with the one you shared, but I noticed afterwards that it's the same author.

In any case, this is a very good reading for anyone interested to learn about Cypherpunks.

I am pretty sure that I had seen something like that previously.. I cannot remember exactly where.... or maybe I just heard such an e-mail had been sent without actually seeing the contents.. like what is being shown in your cited image.

First of all, I apologize for not being present inside my own thread for a while. I was out of country and I had only my phone with me, so it was impossible for me to write long posts using the phone. Anyway, I am back now



I remember this. I saw this years ago, on gwern's website.

In fact, it seems that DDmr found already the source:


I remember I studied well gwern's website, being very well impressed about the materials presented there. With that oocasion I also found out that gwern was also active on our forum and it's sad that they ceased being active here...


Most likely, the author acted like an amateur and did not care to verify the source of the information. There are so many acting like this in our days...

Thank you for sharing this, cygan! And I apologize for the delayed reply but I completely forgot about it.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that Hal was Satoshi. I read many articles about Hal and also multiple statements he made and he seemed very honest... Besides, after I read his post from the forum I became convinced there is no chance for him to be Satoshi. The post in question is this one and it's a must read, from my perspective: Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney).

I also recommend to everybody to merit that post, as it is, in a way, Hal's legacy...