WEBVTT - Meet The Godfather Of Cryptocurrency 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:14.840 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:21.040 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, Bitcoin 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.320 has been surging again lately. Yeah, I think as we 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:29.800 record this, it's currently above eight thousand, right. Yeah, it's 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:32.839 been fluctuating a little bit, but obviously one of the 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:37.080 things that happens that every time Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.640 start to spike, interests follows soon thereafter. It's one of 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.000 these things where when it's down suddenly people go quiet 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.559 and stop talking about it and pretend they were never involved, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.440 and then when it's surging, everyone's like, oh, yeah, I'm 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:52.120 I'm interested in that stuff at a very much a 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.800 great example of narrative following price. Yes, indeed, I actually 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.120 joked on Twitter earlier today that now we're going to 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.240 see all the people that scrubbed blockchain from their Twitter 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:04.960 bios and LinkedIn profiles, they're all going to start adding 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.039 it back in. But I think when it comes to 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.240 the bitcoin price, you know, I know a lot of 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.080 people watch it sort of purely out of entertainment value. 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.679 But we've talked before on the show about the importance 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.240 of the network effect and the idea that if you're 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.720 actually going to get people using bitcoin, you need to 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:24.120 generate a buzz, right, absolutely, so obviously the buzz is 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.559 picking up. Bitcoin itself has been around, uh for about 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.280 a decade now, basically exactly ten years more or less. 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:34.319 But what I think a lot of people don't know 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.800 or they've never really thought about, is for for so long, 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:42.920 many years prior to bitcoin, decades really, people had been 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.840 trying to work on the problem of digital money and 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.760 somewhere or other, whether it's anonymous payments online or payments 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:56.600 that didn't have some sort of centralized clearinghouse to facilitate them. 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.680 Bitcoin isn't just a new thing. It's kind of the uh, 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.960 the solution to a problem that people had been focused 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:08.040 on for a while. Right. So, I think the notion 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.520 or the exploration of digital currencies kind of started growing 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.720 in tandem with the Internet, right, and it was sort 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:18.920 of a solution to a problem that the Internet and um, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.640 new technology suddenly threw up. Didn't you read a book 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.639 on this, by the way, weren't you really excited about something? Yeah, 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.280 there's a great book coming out this summer by Finn 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:32.280 Brunton all about this, But yeah, exactly right. I mean, obviously, 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.600 in the real world and the physical world, I can 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.160 pay you in cash and no third party no uh, 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.400 you know, legal authority has to know about it. But 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.720 very early on people sort of intuitive that as our 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.480 economy became more digital, that that would be a problem 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.639 that would need to be solved. So today I'm very 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:54.120 excited because we are going to be talking to a 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.840 guest who was at the forefront of this search for 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.000 a solution to this album. Truly, I think everyone in 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:06.600 the space would agree. One of the godfathers of digital currency, 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:11.760 a true pioneer, an inventor of digital currency long before 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:16.320 bitcoin ever came around, who could tell us all about 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:21.280 this prehistory of cryptocurrency and where he sees the space now. 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:24.040 So that further Ado, I want to bring in David Chaum. 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:28.000 He is the CEO and founder of Elixir, but very 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.280 early on for decades. Like I said, one of the 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.000 godfathers of the space. Really appreciate you joining us. It's 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.240 so great to be here with you both. Let's start. David, 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:37.840 just tell us how did you when did you get 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:42.760 interested for the first time in solving this problem and 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.960 seeing that as the world got more digital there would 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.680 need to be away for transactions to be at least 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:54.520 in some sense anonymous. Well, actually eighty two I published 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:59.600 a paper about blind signatures, which was the e cash 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.000 technology that I later deployed in in the mid nineties. 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:09.000 So e cash it was not a cryptocurrency as we 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:14.520 know it. Now, why don't you explain what was the cash? Well, actually, 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.360 the cash is slightly different and in some sense slightly 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:24.560 better than perhaps cryptocurrencies, in that current cryptocurrencies are generally 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.680 think of the more like digital checks. They move money 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.919 from one wallet I d one account, your account to 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:36.719 someone else's accounts, whereas with e cash, it was a 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:41.120 the first digital bearer instrument. It was a number that 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:46.159 was worth money. And one of the additional features of 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:50.560 the cash was because it was a digital bearer instrument, 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.360 in the first such thing, it could have this special 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:59.719 blind signature property, which meant that when you withdrew one 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.120 of the is from your bank account, and you know 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.360 your bank account was reduced in value, and they gave 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:09.120 you this signature publicly digital signature, the cryptographic operation they 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.039 performed on a number that you sent them, that that 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:14.720 signature was worth let's say one dollar, that came out 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.960 of your account. Well, you were able to transform that 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:25.159 signature into a different and unrelated form that was still 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:31.359 clearly signed worth one dollar, but absolutely uncorrelatable to the 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:33.719 number that you sent to your bank, So that meant 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.440 that you had the money. There was no way that 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.279 they could stop you from spending it or even noo 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:42.880 where you would spend it or if you had spent it. 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:48.400 So this is an actual improvement over these check based 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:53.920 systems where much can be traced. So I have two 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:57.520 questions based on that. But one was e cash dependent 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.800 on the banking system? Could it own work if you 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.080 had a bank accountant? It was sort of deriving the 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:08.280 number from that transaction, And be what was the problem exactly? 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.240 We alluded to this in the intro, But what was 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:15.159 the problem that you were trying to solve with this invention. Well, 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.520 to answer the part A, we issued what we're called 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.760 cyber bucks. This is what today is called an air 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.039 drop in effect. So what I said was we're only 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:29.920 going to issue a million of these, and anyone who 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.560 wants to put up a digital shop, we will give 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.560 them a hundred. And there were like over a hundred 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:39.599 shops set up and if you go to my website, 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.720 you can still see their logos and click on them 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.120 and see kind of what their homepages looked like. In 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:48.680 many cases in those days, this was way before really 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.240 the web or an electronic commerce was very early days. 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:58.040 So I invented de cash more truth be told to 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:02.760 demonstrate that it was possible to do all the things 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:04.920 that you need to do in the digital world as 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:09.600 a consumer while still maintaining your privacy yourself. Is it 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.880 like a today called digital sovereignty, keeping your own keys 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:15.160 so that you didn't have to rely on others to 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.120 safe you know, do not look at your personal data 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.840 or stored safely. Just before we move off the specifically, 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.480 I want to make sure people understand exactly how the 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.440 mechanism works. So the idea was, I mean, we don't 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:29.040 have to get too technical, but the idea was essentially, 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.360 if this had spread and if this had become well adopted, 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.960 the idea was one could take money out of their 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:39.440 bank and have it would be on a card, or 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.679 they'd have some sort of card that would represent this. 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:47.840 This was a purely digital process, so your computer would 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.680 create a random number at itself, which no one else 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.800 could predict. Or imagine right, and then it would we 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.560 say blinded. It would hide it in a second in 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.160 a key, and then it would send that hidden random number, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.280 which is like this would be the serial number of 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.200 your digital one dollar bank note. Later it would hide 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:11.640 the digital serial number by encrypting it with another random key, 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.240 send that hidden serial number in the bank would use 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.560 the secret key that only it has, which it gives 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:22.160 it the exclusive ability to validate these digital bank notes. 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:26.000 It would then return that signed hidden number to you. 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.400 And then because of the magic of commutativity, and like 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.680 you know, three times four is equal to four times three, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.240 you could divide out the hiding layer and now you 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:39.240 would have the signature, the actual bank's validating signature on 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.240 your seal number, without any residue from the hiding And 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.800 then the recipient of this money, so you get the 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.480 money out of your bank. The recipient then has something 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.600 that they can deposit in their bank account. Absolutely. And 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:56.320 but then there was the old little double spending problems, 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.600 So there's the bank would that have to send it 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.400 into the bank to make sure that you hadn't spent 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.960 it elsewhere. But there was a more sophisticated version that 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.360 we developed that was enjoyed work with money or and 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:13.160 names fiat that if you did double spend it, you 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:18.160 would in effect be digitally signing a confession to this effect, 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.960 whereas if you spend each one only once, you would 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:25.160 never reveal enough information to allow your identity to be linked. 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.640 And that's because when you spent those those special types 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.120 of coins, you would have to answer a random query. 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.760 And if you'd answer two questions, it's kind of like 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:36.680 when the police interrogate you. You know, if you answer 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.000 two questions, they don't fit together and then they realize, oh, 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.600 it's you. So I'm guessing you know we're talking about um, 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.199 I guess the early nineties. When when you did this? 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:52.080 The early eighties, right, Well, I wrote a technical paper 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:57.400 on e cash in two, which was the same year 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:03.600 that I or canize the International Association for Cryptologic Research 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:10.520 and held the first really scientifically sponsored conference on cryptography 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:16.400 to counter the National Security agency directors threatening to scientific 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.920 organizations draconian legal measures if they were to even have 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:24.920 sessions little own conferences on cryptography, so I organized a 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:29.559 conference without using any electronic communication that created in effect 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:33.200 in international scientific association. And then when the people all 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.880 appeared there. I said, okay, now you're all members by 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:38.400 virtue of having paid your registration fee, and we'll have 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.720 our next events in Italy in the spring. And here's 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:43.000 the you know. And so I did all that without 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.960 ever using the phone. So the guys in the front 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:47.960 row were all from the n s A. And they 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:51.839 all turned green. So you're developing this in the eighties, 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.160 and then in the nineties, I guess, well, the idea 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:56.720 was published in the eighties, and then in the nineties 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.720 the Dutch government because I was based in Amsterdam at 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.520 the Center for Mathematic Computer Science and whole leading group 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.320 of crhotography of search there, and the Dutch government came 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:07.320 to us said we want to do a road toll 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.200 pricing like sort of like I think it's often called 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.880 easy paths these days on the highway speed on without 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:16.560 lane constraints, and uh, we don't want the drivers to 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.320 have to reveal their identity or they're there, who they 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.320 are to these to these radio frequency transceivers that they 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:27.480 passed under. And can you do this? And I said yes, 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:31.080 I've just happen to have the answerd blind signatures this decash. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.920 So they said, great proof to us that it can work. 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:41.120 I recruited like a dozen college students, said you guys, 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:43.400 build this in ten days. I'll send you and your 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.800 girlfriends to Disney World for for two weeks. And they 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:52.040 turned their like student housing into a lab or twenty 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:54.040 four hours a day and they did it. We started 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.760 Dutch government and they were like, wow, that's cool. One 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.120 in one yard of road travel at two a like 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.360 at a hundred kilometers an hour could make this privacy 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.560 protected payment. And so I just took the contract they 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.280 gave us to the bank and said, hey, we got 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.360 this contract from the government to make this and they said, oh, great, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.719 you can borrow against that, no problem. And that was 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.440 digit cash. So what I was going to ask is, 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:21.760 you know it's now and clearly we're not using digit cash. 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.640 We're arguably not even really using a lot of other 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:28.280 cryptocurrencies for for payments. So so what happened, like what 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.960 went wrong? Why wasn't there more adoption? The real question 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.600 that I was fighting for it at that point was 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.520 the web over the like what I used to call 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.920 the five channel guys that the set top boxes. I 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.920 don't know if you recall, but it wasn't a done deal. 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.480 That we'd all be using the Internet and the web right. 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.400 It was more like you have this closed box and 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.280 it would deliver video but also like the web interface, 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:57.360 but it would be a closed system and that would 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.400 you know you have an account with it, and that 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:01.680 there would be no real need for payments. And it 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:03.400 all seemed quite plausible and there were a lot of 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.280 big actors supporting that, and it was kind of a 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:11.040 uh an insurgency that was pushing for an open web. 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.120 And I think that the Scientific American article that I 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.640 published in the mid eighties would show that you could 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:21.080 do all these interactions online protecting your own privacy and 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.880 your own information, using your own keys, was instrumental in 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.360 getting people to realize that the web was could work 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.880 for everything that would be needed in future, and was 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.480 a much better option than this kind of closed set 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:38.320 up box option. Do you think the the closed set 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:40.560 top box people are kind of winning again, because I 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.360 think that's a big people look at the web and 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.960 it doesn't feel as open, and it feels dominated by 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.679 a handful of companies, and people don't use much uh 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.240 technologies that could obfuscate their privacy. Is this is this 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.559 is part of the reason that we see this revival 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.760 of interest in cryptocurrencies in blockchain as a response to 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.760 the fact that the open web is losing. Well, that's 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.160 a that's a really interesting way to look at it, 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.360 and I think the open web has one because my 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.000 definition of winning is deployment wins. So we have now 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:20.720 used this approach to get a very powerful and very 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.080 easy to use computer in the hands of everyone half 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:28.480 the people on the planet, and that that's a huge win. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:30.800 And what that has done to answer come back to 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:35.920 your your point is the transparency and the east access 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.960 to information like what your show provides it. It is 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.160 revealing that the web isn't kind of what it could 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.280 be and what end that all these strange things are 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.160 happening behind the scenes, and people are have become very 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.040 upset about it. I thought's the sense of the public 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.800 that I get. They really are starting to recognize that 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:00.160 it's not just you know, strong end end encryption. It's 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.080 needed is the protection of the metadata, the whole social graph, 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.880 who you talk to and when, where you are, how 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.320 you interact with things, all that inciliary information which you 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.040 know they've been distracted from being concerned about now is 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:15.600 something the public is aware of and so I think 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.720 we're it's it's all tied up to the just the 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:24.240 perfect point where the Maslowian level is about to do 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.400 a phase change. So now we have smartphones that are 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.240 so handy and cheap and work great and can do everything, 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.720 and now people are saying, Okay, it works. Now what 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:57.080 I what I really need is privacy. Something that's striking 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:01.960 to me listening to this is you two, Like very 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.920 few people were thinking about any of these problems, even 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:08.320 just this idea that there would be something called an Internet, 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:10.840 or that there were different versions of how it could 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:15.240 have gone, the more closed version, and anticipating that privacy, 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.760 which is incredibly salient topic in twenty and nineteen, would 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:20.800 ever be have to be a thing that we have 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.640 to worry about. Setting aside digital money for a second, 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.480 just tell us about, like, how this became something that 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.240 you anticipated in the group of people who were thinking 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.240 about this. How did it tell us about that scene 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.280 and anticipating all this stuff. I'm not sure there was 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.960 much of a scene. It was me and I wrote 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:44.360 about this very extensively, at so much so that my 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.400 work was invited to the best journals and republished in 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.560 a bunch of languages, and then I laid out two scenarios. 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:56.200 Basically is what's played out right, that that privacy technology 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:00.960 could protect people, allow them digital sovereignty, if you will, 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.600 in tony sterm alogy, or it could go the other way, 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.200 and that is that all this information could be used 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:12.760 to control society under the pretense of, you know, preventing 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:17.160 criminal use of of systems, and that this would lead 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.399 to a kind of battle between these two approaches. The 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:25.200 winner would determine whether we'd have like a free, democratic 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:30.200 society or we'd have a kind of totalitarian society that's 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:37.800 orchestrated by let's say, AI helping evil actors control everything. 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:42.120 And I think that that choice is now, finally, after 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:46.520 all these years, become quite a parent to people. And 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:51.560 also it's much more imminent than people realize because all 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.160 the AI and and and and message data and all 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.040 that stuff is going way ahead behind the scenes. And 0:17:57.080 --> 0:17:59.719 I think people are starting to get a sense of that, 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.000 and they're saying, hey, wait a minute, this is this 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:06.440 is a pretty dangerous situation. Democracy is a key aspect 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:07.840 of all this too, And not to be left out 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:09.879 and done a lot of work, I'm voting and I 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:14.320 think that all this digital privacy is a critical and 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:19.919 necessary ingredient for democracy. And and that's kind of to me, 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.720 that's kind of the meta issue that the public gets 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.480 to decide what kind of world they want, and the 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.160 only real way to do that is if they have, uh, 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:32.800 the ability to see whatever they want, to communicate with 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.359 people and to pay for be paid for information or 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.120 supplying if its subscribed to your your show, whatever, if 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.879 they had to pay for it without anyone being able 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:46.560 to notice that or stop them. So, David, I have, um, 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.119 what might be a stupid question, but when it when 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.200 it comes to that metadata issue, when it comes to 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.720 the problems of sovereignty, it seems like we expend collectively 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.800 so much energy, or at least the cryptographic community expends 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.919 so much energy trying to solve this problem, you know, 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:10.199 creating anonymous payments and similar things. Would it not just 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:16.240 be easier for the government or the regulators to limit, um, 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:22.080 the use corporation's use of information of metadata or is 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.720 the issue that you don't trust the government at all 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.760 to do that in a fair and um unbiased way. 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.680 I came back, so to speak, into this space truth 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:40.240 be told. When the snow and revelations were made public, 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:45.600 and I went to my cryptography conference that I had founded, 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.400 so that we have one every year, and there's two 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.040 others that were sponsored by organization publics and journalist one. 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:52.520 It was a big deal. Now we have like a 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.560 half a dozen workshops around the world and there so 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.520 the seven hundred league cryptographers in the world are there, 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.280 and I know a lot of them, all the ones anyways, 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.040 and just but I realized we didn't even establish that's 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.199 your background, right, Yes, I'm generally thought of as like 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.720 I published a bunch of articles on cryptography and for 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.159 a long time, more than anyone else in the world, 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:17.879 even five years after I stopped publishing. That's what the 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.000 publisher told me. I don't really know, but I'm not 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.680 academic really anymore. But I was at at this conference 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.200 and no one seemed very concerned about the Stone revelations. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:33.640 But to me, it was really shocking because I never 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.520 really believed or was certain that the government was spying 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.840 on everything. I remained open to that. Yeah, would I 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:45.960 like to believe there was a benevolent information security aspect 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.080 to government spots. When it was revealed that they were 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.520 really doing the worst possible things we could imagine, and 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.640 and the people in the field were hardly shocked by 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:58.959 it because they make a living kind of you know, 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:00.840 being a part of the what do you call it, 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.560 like the crypto industrial complex, you know, education that I 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.600 just had to find a way to speed up all 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:10.119 my old work, which I did, so I've made a 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.160 thousand times faster we don't want have done in thirty 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.000 five years. The mixing, and that was the missing ingredient 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:17.760 in the e cap so that to hide where you're 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.399 sending the money from. Let's talk about the sort of 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:25.120 closer prehistory to bitcoin. So we as we established Bitcoin 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:27.720 came out in two thousand nine, I think, or into 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.840 two thousand eight, people had been working very towards this 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:32.920 goal for a while. The cash was one of them. 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.320 There was a famous mailing list called the cipher Punk 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.680 mailing list. You I believe you participated in that mailing list, right. 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:44.800 The cipher punks all maintained that that my work inspired, 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:48.919 so your name is is mentioned all over those archives. 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.359 It was the technology that I developed which enabled their position. 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:55.600 So at that point, how much were you talking to 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.720 the people working on this problem, thinking about the solutions 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:02.000 that you would come up with talk about the opportunity 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:04.879 is like, how much were you sort of uh in 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:09.040 communication with the people who ultimately we're getting closer to 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:15.119 solving bitcoin. Basically, I filed my dissertation at Berkeley into 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:20.080 the library and two without releasing the copyright to dissertation abstracts. 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:22.560 So the three copies in the library and the archive 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:25.800 there were the only copies that were let's say, publicly 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:30.600 available in principle. Now it turns out that there were 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:33.840 some times that they were checked out, and it's very 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:36.080 interesting to go look at those little slips of paper 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.520 and see the dates and so on. But that dissertation 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:44.720 laid out in code how to build a blockchain, and 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.080 and recently there's a referee article that appeared in the 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:51.520 Tripoli Security and Privacy is a pretty good journal, established 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:58.480 that that dissertation included all the aspects of modern blockchain's 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:00.720 permission I'm in un permission sort of corporate in the 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:04.479 open ones except for the proof of work, which was 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:08.600 presented like ten years later at the cryptocomis that I mentioned, 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:11.000 and I was there in the audience thinking that's where 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.960 they want to use this to protect against spam. Maybe 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:15.879 you could use it for other things, but I'm not 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:18.040 going to think about it because they both were working 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:20.720 at IBM and it's probably bad that completely and they 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.200 already thought about it, so I didn't think, oh, maybe 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:27.480 we could use this to solve, uh, you, improve electronic money. 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:31.359 So in October two thousand eight, the you know, the 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:36.160 famous Bitcoin Satoshi Knockamoto white paper comes out. What did 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:38.840 you think when you write it or when did it 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:41.520 first come to your attention and what was your reaction? 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:43.960 Did you go like, oh, this sounds a lot like 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:49.840 my dissertation. Well, it's kind of a blend of of 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.520 my dissertation and the kinds of electronic money systems that 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:59.440 we worked on back in the day. But honestly, what 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:04.000 I thought it was, Gee, this is a potentially very 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:11.359 powerful mechanism. Could possibly be used by government for various purposes. 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:15.920 It might have bad implications for voting that's not done 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:18.239 in a polling place in terms of vote buying. It 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:20.800 might be able to be used to pay people to 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:24.280 do things that are an athetical to democracy, or maybe 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:27.919