The Cypherpunk Revolution with Austin Hill

 
 

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“Everyone thought we had this masterplan for Blockstream… I literally went to our investors and I said ‘You need to look at Bitcoin as the Manhattan Project of the financial singularity. The world of finance will be completely remade with Bitcoin at the core. It is literally like creating atomic fusion that Feynman and Teller and Oppenheimer did…we’re going to need a shit load of money, and I have no idea how we’re going to make money, but we’ll figure it out.’”
— Austin Hill

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: New York
Date: Tuesday 7th December
Company: Former CEO of Blockstream
Role: Entrepreneur, VC & Cypherpunk

Many are still ignorant of the cypherpunk movement. Yet, it is arguably one of the most consequential enterprises in the history of man.  

The rise of civilization has been marked by a slow shift from centralized control to increasing levels of individual sovereignty. This was accelerated by the industrial revolution, with political institutions adapting to facilitate increasing levels of democracy. 

Democracy peaked in 1990's: Francis Fukuyama predicted in 1992 universalization of liberal democracy would lead to 'The End of History'. But in only a generation, this certainty of the future has been lost. We are now at a critical junction, where many fear technology could allow for a permanent totalitarian structuring of society. 

Cypherpunks seek to ensure the balance of power is in the hands of the individual. Foreseeing the inherent danger to maintaining an open society in the electronic age, they have and continue to devise privacy-enhancing technologies. "We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and... we're going to write it." A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (Eric Hughes, 1993). 

The future role of the individual, and the essence of civilization, is in the hands of an informal, diligent, dispersed, and largely unheralded cohort of computer and cryptography experts. 

I sat down with Austin Hill, one of the original converts to the cypherpunk movement, and more lately, a pivotal safeguarding figure for Bitcoin. In the first of two successive interviews to be released, we discuss how he discovered the cypherpunks, his challenging early endeavours, a reawakening through Bitcoin, and the risks and opportunities for the future. 

TIMESTAMPS

00:04:02: Introductions
00:06:59: Discovering the cypherpunks
00:13:54: Privacy and pseudonymity
00:16:09: Post dotcom crash and 9/11
00:20:12: Singularity explained
00:27:42: Going down the rabbit hole
00:31:25: Creating Blockstream
00:40:35: Google and "Don't be evil"
00:43:29: An analogy for the Blocksize Wars
00:51:29: Quantum thinking and open-source toxicity
00:55:37: Rigorous testing for a strong foundation
01:00:24: Potential for Bitcoin in the insurance industry
01:02:40: Bitcoin's progress
01:08:39: The SegWit revelation
01:10:19: Future risks and threat modelling
01:17:27: Possibility of hyperbitcoinised cities
01:28:01: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

Connect with Austin:

Mentioned in the interview:

Other Relevant WBD Podcasts:

PodcastPeter McCormack