cypherpunk

In this new series, we’re talking about remarkable cypherpunks who helped to create decentralized money and more privacy and online freedom tools for everyone. Let’s remember that the group named “cypherpunks” was formed by computer science, cryptography experts, and Internet activists aiming to create new software to foster privacy and social change. As you may imagine, a lot of people in the crypto world belong there. 
Wei Dai is, of course, one of them. Maybe his name is ringing a bell if you ever read the Bitcoin whitepaper. He’s one of the references at the end. We don’t know much about his personal life, because he’s a very private person —like most cypherpunks, indeed. However, we do know about his career. 
Probably born in 1976, of Chinese origin but living in the USA, Dai went to the University of Washington. He graduated in computer science with a minor in mathematics. According to some sources, his career began at TerraSciences, where he contributed to developing security solutions for the oil and gas industry. Later at Microsoft, he played a crucial role in optimizing encryption algorithms.
Dai's notable contributions include the widely-used open-source Crypto++ library, employed in projects like Microsoft Office Groove and LastPass. Dai's VMAC algorithm, designed for 64-bit systems, demonstrated high-performance data verification. He also identified critical vulnerabilities in SSH2's Encryption Block Chaining and was part of the team that discovered the BEAST protocol vulnerability in SSL/TLS, posing a significant risk to Internet security. 
Besides, his work on b-money influenced the core concepts implemented in Bitcoin. This is a very similar system, published before the Bitcoin whitepaper. Despite speculation, Dai denies being Satoshi Nakamoto, or even having some real influence in the cryptocurrency creation. 
B-money Proposal

B-money is considered an important precursor of all cryptocurrencies, even though it was never released. “Fascinated”, in his own words, by Tim May’s crypto-anarchism ideology with its purpose of making the government unnecessary and the threat of violence impotent, Dai designed potentially unregulated money for the crypto-anarchist community to operate, free of governmental intervention. 

He described, indeed, two protocols. The first one, described as impractical, establishes a basis for the second, more feasible one. In both, an untraceable network is assumed, where participants are identified solely by digital pseudonyms. The first protocol relies on a synchronous and uninterrupted anonymous broadcast channel, with participants maintaining databases of money ownership tied to pseudonyms. It covers the creation and transfer of money, and enforcement of contracts, including arbitration mechanisms.
The second protocol shifts the accountability of the money mint to a subset of participants called servers, connected through a Usenet-style broadcast channel. Transaction messages remain similar to the first protocol, but participants must verify that messages are received and processed by a randomly selected server subset. To prevent collusion, servers are required to deposit money for potential fines or rewards, periodically publishing and committing to money creation and ownership databases. 
B-Money and Bitcoin
These two systems share many similarities. Both of them aim to establish unregulated digital currencies operating in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network without the need for a central authority. The use of Proof of Work (PoW) for the creation of new units of currency is considered as well. In both b-money and $BTC , participants can generate new coins by solving computational problems. This PoW process serves the dual purpose of securing the network and preventing abuse.

Additionally, both systems employ cryptographic mechanisms to ensure secure and private transactions. B-money, like Bitcoin, uses digital pseudonyms (public keys) to identify participants, providing a level of anonymity. Transactions are signed and encrypted, contributing to the privacy and security of the overall system.
The concept of a distributed ledger is another shared element. B-money and Bitcoin utilize a decentralized approach to maintain a ledger of transactions. In b-money, participants maintain separate databases, while Bitcoin realizes these databases as a blockchain—a public ledger that records all transactions across a network of computers.
Overall, the conceptual foundations of b-money, particularly the use of PoW, cryptographic techniques, and decentralized ledgers, laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Even the “b” in the name may result in suspicion. But Dai himself denied any contribution or involvement.
“I didn't create Bitcoin but only described a similar idea more than a decade ago. And my understanding is that the creator of Bitcoin, who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, didn't even read my article before reinventing the idea himself. He learned about it afterward and credited me in his paper. So my connection with the project is quite limited.”
Not that decentralized
B-money was only one of the important steps to what we have today, and to the real decentralization we’re still aiming to achieve in crypto. It wasn’t really decentralized, as you may have noticed: the “servers” (middlemen) were in control of the money. Something similar happens with Bitcoin, indeed. 
Miners, in charge of minting new coins, can cherry-pick or even censor transactions. If more than half of the big miners collude, they could take over the whole network. And they’re not even a lot of parties, considering that only two mining pools are currently in control of 54% of the network power (hashrate). 
Bitcoin Hashrate by Mining Pool as of 13/01/2024. Source: CoinDance

Obyte, on the other hand, has solved this issue by completely eliminating the mining system. Instead, its Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure is fully censorship-resistant. There are no powerful parties behind, and only Order Providers (OPs) are required to order transactions. Their transactions serve as waypoints to order the rest, and nothing else. If someone sends a transaction to the DAG, it can’t be blocked or censored by any party. The total supply is also fixed, protecting against inflation.
Interestingly, as Wei Dai described enforcement of contracts and arbitration mechanisms, we also have contracts with arbitration as well as an arbiters store (ArbStore) in Obyte. This is a new decentralized escrow payment solution, specifically designed for international trade. 
Operating on the decentralized Obyte crypto platform, contracts with arbitration facilitate safe transactions using smart contracts (without users needing to code anything) and cryptocurrencies, offering a decentralized escrow that safeguards funds until the conditions of the contract are met. With the added layer of protection from independent arbiters in case of disputes, the parties involved are assured a fair resolution process. 
We’re in debt to our predecessors. Distinguished cypherpunks like Wei Dai and Satoshi Nakamoto laid the groundwork for the building of real decentralization in the financial and online world. Let’s continue their mission!

#bitcoin #cypherpunks #cypherpunk #decentralization #Obyte
Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian / Freepik
Originally Published on Hackernoon [Cypherpunks Write Code series]

If you look his name up on a search engine like Google or Bing, you’ll likely find first a photograph of an old Japanese man in a suit, with glasses. Funny enough, that’s not actually Satoshi Nakamoto —or at least, not the Bitcoin creator. Not that we’re aware of. Because that’s the thing: we don’t really know who “Satoshi Nakamoto” is, or who he or she was. We just know him/her through Bitcoin, and there are a lot of unanswered questions about his/her (or their?) identity.
The man in the photos in the search engines is Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, an American-Japanese physicist living in California. Due to a famous report in the magazine Newsweek in 2014, he was signaled as a main candidate to be the Bitcoin creator. He’s repeatedly denied this, though. And he’s far from being the only likely suspect. Therefore, no, we don’t have a face or voice to give to “our” Satoshi, and we don’t even know if that’s their real name. 
What we know about him (let’s assume this is the right pronoun) is that he’s a fervent cypherpunk. He shared his creation first in 2008 with other Libertarian programmers just like him. This way, he got the help of the experienced Hal Finney and others, like Laszlo Hanyecz (the first person ever to make a real-world purchase with Bitcoin), to improve the software in its early stages. Every communication was via encrypted emails, so, no luck with their identity there. 
Bitcoin Origins
As you may know, $BTC is the first-ever cryptocurrency. However, it’s not the first try. Satoshi’s fellow cypherpunks have been trying to create a new form of digital cash without middlemen since well before the 21st century, with different degrees of success or, let’s say, “useful” pieces to complete the puzzle. Satoshi did just that: complete the puzzle started by his predecessors. 
At the end of the Bitcoin whitepaper, released in 2008, we can find at least two other cypherpunks as references: Adam Back and Wei Dai. The first one proposed the Hashcash system in 1997 (which inspired the crypto mining system), while the second one shared its own vision of a potentially decentralized digital coin in 1998. These early attempts needed some fixes, though, and Satoshi did his best to put everything together. 
References in the Bitcoin whitepaper

The result was the first functional digital money without a single central authority to control it. Instead, it relies on a decentralized ledger that records all transactions across a network of nodes (computers) controlled by different parties worldwide. And anyone could download and handle their own node, and/or become a miner to create and receive new coins and create new blocks.
When someone makes a Bitcoin transaction, it’s broadcasted to this network, where it’s verified by network participants. The miners use powerful computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles, and when they successfully solve a puzzle, they add a new block of transactions to the blockchain. In return for their efforts, miners are rewarded with newly created bitcoins, as well as transaction fees paid by the included transactions.
Bitcoin Impact 
By relying on this mostly decentralized (more decentralized than anything before it) system, anyone could send and receive transactions without any requirements (except Internet connection) or geographical and legal restrictions. Bitcoin was launched in January 2009 for this purpose, but its use didn’t start spreading until Laszlo Hanyecz bought a pizza with 10,000 BTC back on May 22, 2010 —May 22 is now celebrated as “Bitcoin Pizza Day”.
By February 2011, the Bitcoin price reached parity with the US Dollar (USD). Still, nobody had much faith in it. Few adopters, companies, and miners here and there, and a market cap of around $1.6 million [CMC]. Fast forward to October 2025, Bitcoin has around 24,000 nodes worldwide [BitNodes], a market cap of over $2.4 trillion, over 32,540 venues and services worldwide accepting it as a payment method [CoinMap], around 39,441 Bitcoin ATMs in 66 countries [Coin ATM Radar], and a whole country (El Salvador) officially adopting it as legal currency —to use and pay for everything within its borders.


Who is Satoshi?
Who made all that possible? Not to mention the whole crypto industry that followed behind, with over 2.4 million alternative digital coins (altcoins) and over 11,132 crypto companies and projects worldwide [Golden]. It’s difficult not to be curious about the man, woman, or group that laid the groundwork for a $2.5 trillion industry to thrive. So, theories and candidates abound. 
One prominent figure is, as we mentioned above, Dorian Nakamoto. The primary clue that led to his misidentification as Satoshi Nakamoto was a statement made by Dorian's brother, suggesting that he had been involved in classified engineering work for the government. This, combined with his background as a computer engineer and his birth name, led the reporter to conclude that Dorian was the creator of Bitcoin. He’s denied it adamantly, though.
Another candidate is Nick Szabo, a cryptographer and also a cypherpunk who proposed a similar concept to Bitcoin called "BitGold" in 1998. While Szabo's work has similarities to Bitcoin's design, he's repeatedly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.

A more polemical contender is Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016. Despite his assertions, he's failed to offer conclusive proof about it and instead has been picking legal fights with numerous members of the community. In March 2024, after unraveling the available evidence, a UK High Court officially declared that he's not, actually, Satoshi Nakamoto.
On the other hand, Hal Finney, a cryptographer, cypherpunk, and one of the earliest contributors to Bitcoin has been suggested as a possible candidate. Other names in the long list of candidates are Adam Back, the Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, the Finnish economic sociologist Vili Lehdonvirta, the software engineer Gavin Andresen (the first Bitcoin lead developer after Satoshi), the founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, and even the businessman Elon Musk. 
So far, every candidate but Wright has denied being Satoshi. Using his “official” communication channels and email, Satoshi stayed involved in the Bitcoin development until mid-2010, when he handed the project to a team of open-source developers led by Andresen. And just like that, his persona disappeared to likely not be seen again. Not even his immense fortune in Bitcoin (around one million BTC) has been moved, ever.
Evolution of Decentralized Money
We can say that Satoshi Nakamoto created the first taste of financial freedom for everyone and, as a true cypherpunk, refused to privatize his own software. Bitcoin isn’t perfect, though. The energy-intensive coin mining is especially concerning since it could be a threat to both decentralization (and censorship resistance) and the environment. Miners can cherry-pick and censor transactions, and, in an extreme colluding attack, they could even take over the network. 
Meanwhile, the mining process takes around 166.8 TWh annually, which is more than numerous countries worldwide would take in a year as well [CBECI]. That, in exchange, produces around 84.52 MtCO2e annualized greenhouse emissions. Again, more than some countries. 
Bitcoin greenhouse emissions compared to countries (CBECI)

Luckily, Bitcoin was just the first step. More cryptocurrencies with new improvements have appeared over the years, including Obyte, which focuses on getting rid of mining and including smart contract capabilities. Instead of relying on miners to include every transaction without censorship, Obyte uses a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-structured ledger. In this system, each new transaction must reference previous transactions, forming a web-like structure built collectively by network participants. 
This consensus model not only eliminates the energy-intensive mining process but also eliminates the miner's role as middleman and enables a higher level of user control. Therefore, Obyte's DAG-based architecture presents a potential evolution beyond Bitcoin's mining model. With its focus on decentralization, Obyte represents a potential growth in the cryptocurrency space, offering a glimpse into what the future of digital currency might look like.

Read more from Cypherpunks Write Code series on Hackernoon
Featured Vector Image by Garry Killian / Freepik
Photograph of the statue dedicated to Nakamoto in Budapest (Image by Fekist / Wikimedia)
Originally Published on Hackernoon
#Satoshi #SatoshiNakamoto #CypherpunkRoots #cypherpunk #bitcoin

Bitcoin pioneer and #cypherpunk Adam Back says fears about quantum computers breaking #Bitcoin are massively overblown.
Responding to claims that Bitcoin could be threatened within a few years, Back explained that:
🔹 Today’s quantum computers are far too small and too noisy to break SHA-256
🔹 A real threat is likely 20–40 years away
🔹 Post-quantum encryption standards (NIST-approved) already exist and can be implemented long before any powerful quantum machines appear
Chamath Palihapitiya recently suggested Bitcoin could be at risk within 2–5 years — but Back strongly disagrees, pointing to huge gaps between idealized “qubit counts” and real-world usable (logical) qubits.
Current quantum hardware:
• 6,100 physical qubits (record) — but not even close to breaking modern encryption
• Most systems are still too noisy or too limited to pose any real cryptographic threat
• “Harvest now, decrypt later” risks matter for long-term encrypted data — but not for Bitcoin, as long as it upgrades in time
Bottom line:
👉 The quantum panic is premature.
👉 Bitcoin has decades of runway before quantum tech becomes relevant.
👉 And when that day comes, the network can adopt quantum-resistant cryptography.
The real threat? Not today. Not soon. And likely not for decades.
#BTCPriceAnalysis #BTC☀️ #MarketMeltdown $BTC