Nostr Web Client

It is pretty clear that laws are not being applied equally in the USA.

Selective enforcement is used to attack the perceived enemies of the State. This behavior is subject to change. Any group can become "out-group" if convenient for the Regime.

This behavior also displays weakness. Like a child lashing out at anyone who doesn't want to play their game. There's a real threat to asymptotic warfare. A minority of individuals (first-movers) who subvert the Regime have an outsized impact.

The comedic part is, it's literally a bunch of autistic basement trolls with greasy soles typing on the internet... Threatening "the most powerful nation in history".

Couldn't be a more beautiful match.

"I'm a revolutionary, I took my money back".

Replying to

ODELL

RHR AT 1800 UTC TOMORROW.

https://rhr.tv

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Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.

Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.

Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.

Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.

The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.

Onward.

Eric Hughes

9 March 1993

6d

DrZhivago 1y ago

Financial privacy = death of fiat currency

It is critical for Government to stop personal sovereignty over money.

It has also never been easier to be a revolutionary. Literally just go get your money from the bank. Crypto or Paper, a small % will topple the whole regime. That's the power of fractional reserve banking!

6d

DrZhivago 1y ago

When average people offload the burden of practicing privacy to the State, it becomes everyone's problem. The State has more resources than any individual and can act maliciously beyond the capacity of any ONE person. So the ignorance of privacy by the many results in the tyranny over all.

The State refutes privacy of the individual because it does not benefit the State. This is a deeply rooted Human issue that scales into physical violence, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1900s (eg: Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc...). With today's technology and general sentiment towards digital privacy, we are heading towards actions that will manifest in the physical world at a scale that dwarfs the 1900s.

Obedience is dangerous because people offload the responsibility of actions to captured agencies with compounded power. Individuals allow Hell to be brought forth (as in the 1900s). Those who are informed and who act against the intent of a malicious State are the bulwark against that Hell.

That is the context. Your actions may spare the destruction of millions.

David can beat Goliath. If David refuses to fight, then Goliath certainly wins. This is the strategy of the State vs Rebels.

Appear unbeatable. Crush morale. Suffocate the Spirit. Defeat the enemy before you have to fight... Because the State is ultimately more vulnerable than individuals. Fast moving small targets are harder to hit than slow moving beasts.

The State can destroy individuals, but if enough individuals have the courage to stand against it, the corrupt State collapses. It is always a minority that leads the majority, on both ends of the spectrum.

This is why the State makes terrible examples out of individuals who stand against it. (Snowden, Assange, Khashoggi...). It is terrified of empowered individuals.

If Humans were destined to be slaves to our Nature, we'd already be. We wouldn't even have these conversations. Like ants in a colony.

Our species is destined for greater heights. I refuse to believe otherwise, because I can lead my own life in that direction. I don't need everyone to be me. If I give up on that dream then I'm already dead.

6d

DrZhivago 2y ago

My thesis on UTXO size depends on Bitcoin's adoption. We are currently in an era of abundance for UTXOs. At some point in the not so distant future, they will become scarce. Leaving many people in trouble with economically unviable BTC dust. This will lead to centralization of holders on the base chain, with decentralized holders on a second layer or sidechain or what-have-you. Centralized holders will be able to make high fee bids, but it is also possible that they may not need to, as traffic is pushed off the base layer.

So for now fees are able to be nominally high in BTC and nominally high in USD. However as the demand increases and supply diminishes, I expect BTC fees to be nominally lower and USD value to be nominally higher. Very few people will ever custody .5+ BTC. Very few entities will be able to pay fees in the .5+ range. So fees will have to go one of two directions:

Centralized entities and/or federated groups compete for large amounts of blockspace with high amounts of BTC. (Whale wars)

Centralized entities and/or federated groups do not have to compete for blockspace with high amounts of BTC, because BTC becomes so concentrated in the hands of a few on the base layer, that blockspace actually becomes more abundant again. BTC continues to accrue value when measured against every other asset, but this also means less BTC is needed to represent high value. So fees may actually nominally reduce in the long-run, but the perceived value of those fees dramatically increases. (Concentrated Abundance)

Most of the world will never know what it means to custody .01 BTC personally. It is simply too scarce of an asset. There may only be 1.5 Billion UTXOs the size of .01 BTC (considering lost BTC). We are heading towards a population of 10 Billion. So most of the world will never transact on the base layer. This may not happen in our lifetimes, but it is inevitability going to play out this way. The adoption of BTC is what determines the pace of base-layer exclusivity. The more BTC is adopted, the faster people get priced out of the base layer.

I expect this to play out over the next 10 years, and by then we will know the direction we're headed. Either Whale Wars or Concentrated Abundance. If we go into Whale Wars, .5 BTC may not be a high enough UTXO. If we go into Concentrated Abundance, .5 BTC will be way too much for a UTXO. For now I think .01 or .05 is sufficient. You can always consolidate UTXOs if things start going crazy. Individuals such as you and I will have to cooperate in federations either way, which will combine UTXO sets. Individual transactions will become economically unviable in both versions of my future guesses.

It's hard for us to imagine a world of abundance because we have been living in scarcity for so long, and our current institutions/behavior reflect that. Our standard mode of operating is being challenged. Guessing future UTXO sizes is a guess on human behavior, and we are a fucking insane species.