Read_793 - How DigiCash Blew Everything
Bitcoin Audible24 Tammi 2024

Read_793 - How DigiCash Blew Everything

"Retrospectively, a lot of ex-DigiCash employees understand why Chaum was so paranoid. As a cryptographer you have to assume the whole world is trying to rip you off. A certain amount of paranoia is part of the job. Chaum had also worked for intelligence agencies, and that didn't fortify his faith in the good intentions of humankind. His vision of the privacy of the individual was almost an obsession. In 1996 he said, in the relations magazine of Honeywell-Bull: "The difference between a bad electronic cash system and well-developed digital cash will determine whether we will have a dictatorship or a real democracy."

~ NEXT Magazine, 1999


Today's story unfolds around the rise and fall of DigiCash, a pioneering company in digital currency from the 90s. It delves into the paradox of its founder, David Chaum, a visionary yet paranoid cryptographer, whose brilliance in cryptography was overshadowed by his poor business acumen and inability to delegate. This leads to a compelling question: How did DigiCash, despite its advanced technology and potential to revolutionize digital payments, fail and how would the past have been different if it hadn't?

This is an amazing blast from the past with many lessons to learn, don't miss the article and the Guy's Take to follow!


Check out the original article at How DigiCash Blew Everything. (Link: http://tinyurl.com/2s37ew47)


Host Links


Check out our awesome sponsors!

  • Get 9% off the COLDCARD with code BITCOINAUDIBLE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Link: bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)
  • Swan: The best way to buy, learn, and earn #Bitcoin (Link: https://swanbitcoin.com)


“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

~ George Orwell

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bitcoinaudible/message

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(1374)

Chat_169 - Bitcoin Proving its Case with Walker America

Chat_169 - Bitcoin Proving its Case with Walker America

"Bitcoin is being embraced by the U.S. and the U.S. financial system and it is it being embraced by Iran and the Iranian regime at the exact same time and both of them know that they can use it withou...

2 Kesä 1h 6min

Read_946 - When the Experimenter Fails the Marshmallow Test

Read_946 - When the Experimenter Fails the Marshmallow Test

"Generation X and the millennials both tried to do everything right, according to what the boomers told them was the path forward: save money, study hard, get a ‘job’. At every stage we got rugpulled....

31 Touko 44min

Read_945 - Milei's Austrian Scam by the Numbers

Read_945 - Milei's Austrian Scam by the Numbers

"The peso scam is around a thousand times larger than the Libra scam, and its victims are the poorest, about 95% of Argentines." ~ Saifedean Ammous Javier Milei swore he'd burn down Argentina's centra...

27 Touko 55min

Chat_168 - Hashing for Heat with Tyler Stevens

Chat_168 - Hashing for Heat with Tyler Stevens

"Our little home controller, building controller, it knows our electric rate, it knows the way that electric rate changes based on the time of day. It knows the PV flux, the solar flux from the solar ...

21 Touko 1h 54min

Chat_167 - Why Your Keys Matter with Seed

Chat_167 - Why Your Keys Matter with Seed

"If you think of River or Gemini or Coinbase or whatever, think of all of those as silos and how people custody Bitcoin. If some sort of compromise were to come into the Bitcoin ecosystem at the priva...

14 Touko 2h 14min

Guy's Take_107 - Free Rent for the Rich

Guy's Take_107 - Free Rent for the Rich

"It's often discussed that arbitrarily lowering interest rates and the zero interest rate policy era leads to massive recklessness and unethical and irresponsible behavior. But there's something even ...

13 Touko 41min

Read_944 - Proof of Work in the Real Economy

Read_944 - Proof of Work in the Real Economy

"If your money isn't sound, it is not reflecting any proof of work. It is not reflecting anything about who should be able to consume, or how much there is available to consume. It's just being corrup...

10 Touko 35min

Read_943 - The Fabric of Desires

Read_943 - The Fabric of Desires

"It is not markets that made money possible. It is collectibles, which we now call money, that make markets possible." ~ Nick Szabo What if everything we've been told about how money emerged is backwa...

8 Touko 25min