Before #Bitcoin, there was crypto anarchy.
Tim May watched his friend Phil Salin build AMIX – an early online marketplace for information. Salin imagined people buying guides, reports, software, expert advice.
May thought bigger. The most valuable information wouldn’t be public reports, but secrets. Trade secrets. Classified documents. Information people would pay serious money for.
He imagined “BlackNets”: encrypted markets where people operated under pseudonyms, traded information, and paid with electronic cash. Governments would try to kill it – but code running worldwide would be very hard to stop.
May saw two futures:
1️⃣ A surveilled internet – every message, site and transaction logged.
2️⃣ A #cryptographic internet – strong crypto everywhere, individuals using electronic cash, reputation and proofs instead of trusting the state.
That second path, he believed, would lead to crypto anarchy.
In 1988 he wrote The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and handed it out at Crypto ’88. A quiet beginning to the revolution Bitcoin would later ignite.
We’ve captured this moment in The History of Bitcoin by Smashtoshi with the artwork “MAKING A MANIFESTO” by @nicedayJules overon X, featured in the Collector’s Book and our interactive timeline.
Read the full article by Aaron van Wirdum here:
🔗 https://www.historyofbitcoin.io/timeline/making-a-manifesto
#Art #BitcoinArt #Zap ⚡️
