Hello, in this lesson, we are going to look at the cypherpunks. So this is essentially going to be a history lesson on the cypherpunk movement and how they all originated. So prior to the 1970s, so prior to the 1970s, cryptography, cryptography, if you want a little refresher what cryptography is, I'm going to lesson covering that. So feel free to check that cryptography was primarily used, primarily used by military and spy agencies, and spy agencies. So James Bond, but sadly, that sort of stuff military and spy agencies, they're the ones that many use cryptography, but all of this With two publications that actually bought this into the public, I bought it into the open. There's two major publications that changed this.

And those publications were data encryption standards of guess what this publication was about the standards for how data should be encrypted. And new directions in cryptography, new directions in cryptography. So this was just about a new direction in cryptography. This was just about the new advancements with that was coming What was here how to use it. So essentially the standard and what was coming in cryptography so this is boring into the public eye. He wasn't till the 1980s the 19 80s when a guy named his name wasn't his title was doctor.

His name was David Chung probably pronounced the name incorrectly. Sorry, if I have and David Chang wrote extensively on two main topics and they might actually sound very familiar. It was anonymous, not anonymous, the group Anonymous digital cash nonnamous Digital cash and sudo nano aim to donate to Dani mass who sued I think I started rambling you government Sue Donna mess, reputation systems. Rep you keishon system, the all to do with anonymity and this My sound familiar and this is myth, Bitcoin or not just Bitcoin cryptocurrencies in general. So this is what formed this over the next few years and he was in the public eye to the large discussion going especially, especially between theists. And over the next few years, these ideas coalesced into a movement, as they always do into a movement into a movement and in 1992, free individuals by the name of Eric Hughes.

Tim Murphy fee may and john Gilmore, no relationship to the Gilmore Girls Not that I'm aware of. So Eric use Timothy main john gilma. Gilmore in 1992. founded a small group they founded he founded a small group and not 1992 that met monthly not meant that met monthly meetings once a month, and they met at john Gilmore, so like Gil Moore's company company worked at which was Cygnus sightedness solutions. And if you're interested in where this was, this was located in the San Francisco Bay Area meet they was meeting once a month. And they named the group the Cypher punks. And it was named like the other jokes he was derived from the word cipher, which has to do with cryptography.

And the punk part, and part of the cipher part was from cyber punk. So soy is a mixture of cipher and fork pumps. And that's essentially where the name Cypher punk came from. Roughly random at the same time, a mailing list was formed a mailing list. And a few months later, the mailing list is important because all these sort of followers were able to access the content they was talking about the content that they created a few months later, so Few months later, Eric Eric AK with Eric Eric. Eric published he published a Cypher punks Manifesto.

Manifesto. And this is a great Manifesto. Definitely worth reading. It's actually not very long at all. I'm just going to read out a, just like a short passage from the manifesto. And it goes, privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.

Privacy is not secrecy. private data 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, so that all sounds well and good ain't one of the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people that aren't very well educated in privacy and just don't properly Think about it. They say they have nothing to hide aka, their old saying, if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide. What they don't actually realize is they are quoting the chief propaganda going propaganda guy of the Nazis of the Nazis, I think.

Yeah, that's just like a terrible swastika. Well, I mean, to have our own. There we go. That looks much better. So he was the chief propaganda of the Nazis code. His name was Joseph girdle and I hope spelt his name correctly, but that nothing to hide sort of philosophy was he comes from him when he was trying to think or when the Nazis were trying to essentially subdue the population in letting them do what they want.

And it's all nothing to hide thing. Sorry about feeling nothing to avoid. It's like people saying, You're the equivalent saying I have I have nothing to say. Therefore I don't care. I don't care about I don't care about freedom of speech. And that almost anger, okay, but the problem is we're about the day where you do have something to say.

You think the people that have taken away your freedom of speech will give it back They won't. So this whole idea of nothing to hide is bullshit. Because people think people think that if you have something to hide, if you have something to hide it something to hide, or you want to you want privacy, that you're doing something illegal. And that's not always the case you close your curtains at night, because you don't want people looking in. You wouldn't be happy if somebody was following you all the time, but never did anything, but was just constantly watching your every move and just making notes. And that's essentially what the cypherpunk manifesto was trying to say.

They doesn't matter that you're not doing anything illegal, you should have the right to selectively choose what the world sees and what your PC and what people around you see. So in an open society, privacy is actually very important. It almost seems antithetical that if it's open, that it shouldn't be closed, but open society should allow the freedom to have what you want to be public and what you don't want to not be public. And that was one of the really important parts of the cypherpunk Manifesto. And if you been following the rest of this series, in talking about cryptocurrencies, and talking about blockchain in general and cryptography, you're see that the cypherpunks sort of philosophy is underlying all of that. And something notable members of the sights upon so some of the members I'm only going to mention a few.

There are several if you Google it, you'll find note, the Julian Assange, which I'm sure everyone is aware. He is the founder of WikiLeaks. The Jake Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Apple bum. And he is the Tor developer. So the Tor network that's obviously very, very influential with in the cypherpunk movement and and just anyone that wants to remain anonymous again, journalists use it. And they're not necessarily doing anything wrong, but they want to protect themselves and protect their sources.

So this whole idea of privacy is crucial to the freedom of speech, and the actual freedom of reporting news as well. So we also have Bram Cohen, to Bram Cohen. And he was the creator of BitTorrent. So, another major contribution in the digital age and in the 1990s in the 19, the 19 90s saw the crypto wars, the crypto wars, and it was essentially the US government that was attempting to stifle the spread of strong commercial encryption for the demo. They wanted to be able to track everything that he was doing. And they didn't want you to have any secrets, good or bad.

So that's what was happening in 1990s. It's still essentially happening now. But they the government essentially lost that battle. They're still trying to put in backdoors and regulations that will lead them to get any piece of information, but it's not looking like in the long term, the government's going to be able to do that. In 1997, a man called Dr. Adam back created Hash cash, hash cash and it was a anti mechanism and it did this by adding time and computational power to computational costs to send in an email. So it has to do with emails.

So it may be computationally expensive to send emails but indeed like small like one or even two emails were low and comp cost so computational cost, but it made it made spam on economical because if he's not requires so much power resources to send like a lot of emails most Thomas wouldn't be able to do it. So, it was created as a mechanism for that. Then in 1998 in 1998 why de probably pronounce his name incorrectly again sorry Why they published he published a proposal for B money sounds like something of a rap song B money and this essentially was contractual. It was contract draw agreements between nonnamous parties for sending and receiving money, so, for sending And receiving money. Again this might sound very familiar to me because this is the the the underlying philosophical datian of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. So, crypto currencies in general.

So all this cypherpunk movement helped lead to more knowledge on cryptography made that knowledge open. And this led to proposals and products created which ultimately led to what we have in Bitcoin in blockchain in EDA and all of these other crypto based products and throughout through the To phase them throughout the 2000s. Many Cypher punks built on the original ideas that were talked about in the 80s and 90s. On the original ideas, they eventually became different layers and standards for securing data and securing communication over the web. They've led to innovations such as proof of work, which is heavily used in Bitcoin is obviously led to block chain, which is the underlying ledger system to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and all these other systems. So what we have is this movement called me get to it For the Cypher punks that it's been going on for several decades and all of the publications and Open Knowledge of cryptography is and how it can be used.

Once that came, came into the public eye, several innovations were created from from Bitcoin to blockchain to proof of work to many other security based implementations. So this has just been essentially a history lesson on the cypherpunks. Any questions or you want to know more about cypherpunk movement, feel free to reach out and as usual, thank you for watching and I look forward to seeing you in my next lesson.