Thread by @_The_Wub_

An interesting precursor to the current "Present a govt-funded surveillance endeavor as a privately-owned "security" service (Tor et all)" model used by Alphabet Soup is Crypto-AG, a Swiss firm jointly owned by the CIA & Germany's BND which spied on numerous countries for years

A good critique of the "decentralization" ideal which has become so popular among activists, often as much on the Left as the Right, comes from Jo Freeman's critique of the principle's place in the feminist movement of the 70s "The Tyranny of Structurless"-Next quotes are from it

"People would try to use the "structureless" group & the informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable out of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything but oppressive."

"A laissez faire group is...as realistic as a laissez faire society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others...the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones"

"Structurelessness is organizationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one"-"an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent."

"When informal elites are combined with a myth of "structurelessness," there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious...Informal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large."

"Informal structure is rarely together enough or in touch enough with the people to be able to operate effectively...the movement generates much motion & few results...the consequences of all this motion are not as innocuous as the results' & their victim is the movement itself"

"Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and personal power games rule the day."

"It is those groups which are in greatest need of structure that are often least capable of creating it. Their informal structures have not been too well formed and adherence to the ideology of "structurelessness" makes them reluctant to change tactics."

"The more Unstructured a group is, the more lacking it is in informal structures, and the more it adheres to an ideology of "structurelessness," the more vulnerable it is to being taken over by a group of political comrades."

"Those who do not fit into what already exists because of class, race, occupation, education, parental or marital status...will inevitably be discouraged from trying to participate. Those who do fit in will develop vested interests in maintaining things as they are.

"If the movement continues to keep power as diffuse as possible because it knows it cannot demand responsibility from those who have it, it does prevent any group or person from totally dominating. But it simultaneously insures that the movement is as ineffective as possible."

A connecting line between the developments Joreen was concerned about in the women's movement & the modern fetishization of decentralization, particularly by libertarian techno-utopians of the Left & Right, can be found in Stewart Brand & the "commune movement" of the 60s/70s

Brand was good friends with Ken Kesey a known participant in MK Ultra (there are many links between Kesey, the Grateful Dead & MK Ultra which I won't go into rn) Yasha Levin covered Kesey & Brand's libertarian/communalist opposition to the genral ideals of the "New Left"

"If the American state deployed massive weapons systems in order to destroy faraway peoples, the New Communalists would deploy small-scale technologies-ranging from axes & amplifiers, strobe lights, slide projectors & LSD-to bring people together"

A parable about the Synergia commune in New Mexico, which banned collective organization in lieu of "connection sessions" which were intended to resolve conflicts between individuals in a non-hierarchical way. But it aided the mentally/physically strong in dominating the weak

"There was fear actually because the people who were more dominating-there was anger. There was constantly a background of fear...Like spyware. You know its there but you don't know how to get rid of it." Decentralization opened the space for informal elites to usurp control

New Communalism led Brand to a similar conclusion as Timothy C. May; it would be far easier & more achievable to build "Libertaria" in cyberspace then continue to struggle for it IRL. Brand became an entrepreneur & PR specialist who helped build much of modern tech culture

According to Levine, Brand's "push to rebrand military computer technology as liberation coincided with a less visible force; the gradual privatization of the ARPANET and the creation of a global commercial Internet"

I am taking a break from this thread but I will circle back to BitCoin & cryptocurrencies origins now that I have given some context for where I'm going with all of this

Hal Finney, the first person to ever receive a Bitcoin transaction & a man admired by Satoshi Nakamoto & (potential true identity of Nakamoto) Adam Back (CEO of Blockstream) was active in the Extropy Institute's digital mailing list, now a chatroom.

The philosophy of Extropianism emerged in the 70s among the same circles of hippie-libertarians that Stewart Brand & Ken Kesey ran in. Max More, an influential extropian, defines it as an "evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition"

Max More is the man who introduced the version of "transhumanism" we know today in a 1990 essay, & served as CEO for nearly 10 years of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. More co-founded the Extropy Institute

According to his LinkedIn, More was "the first honorary vice chair of Humanity+ for years" & has sat on the Board of directors for a decade. In 2011, Jeffrey Epstein donated $20,000 to Humanity+. Epstein also gave $100,000 to pay Humanity+ founder Ben Goertzel's salary

Humanity+'s spooky connections don't stop at Epstein. Goertzel's resume (which now 404's lol) revealed connections to US Army Intelligence, the US Air Force, & IARPA (Alphabet Soup DARPA). Epstein was also interested in cryonics, a field which More, as I said, got his start in

Italian futurist (not the Marinetti kind) Giulio Prisco says that in addition to Hal Finney, Julian Assange "lurked & occasionally participated." If you know anything about WikiLeaks role in promoting the TOR honeypot, this should raise a red flag for cryptocurrency as well

An essay written by More where he (unecessarily considering how banal & simplistic it is) elaborates a bit on the general Extropian philosophy. A glance at the references shows it rooted firmly in the proto-anarcho-capitalism of Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Nozick, & Ayn Rand

On June 20th, 2001, Reason covered the fifth annual Extropy Inst conference rather glowingly. One panel points to the truly vile capitalism underpinning the fluffy utopianism of "Extropians."

Computer security consultant Nick Szabo, who is also a candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto's real name, spoke of "smart contracts" which "solve the problem of trust by being self-executing" For example, a key to a car sold on credit ceases to work if you are behind on your payments

The same panel, "Legal Processes & Liberty in the Information Age", featured Austrian economist Mark Miller who promoted the idea that "he Internet might be used to help people in developing economies who hold informal titles to property." This should be treated with skepticism

The "developing world" has been a source of ruthless profit extraction under the guise of humanitarianism for a long time. Two examples that come to mind are Omidyar's micro-lending in India & Al Gore's M-Kopa Solar which fleeced many citizens of various African nations

Fore more on Omidyar's predatory micro-lending, which led to a wave of suicides in India: As for Gore's M-Kopa Solar, I reference this portion of Corey Morningstar's series critiquing the current ecological movement: exiledonline.com/glenn-greenwal…
wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/28/the…

Forgot to include the Reason article: The article's author, Ronald Bailey, himself participated in a panel at the event, where he dismissed any criticism of the transhumanist fundamentalism of the Extropians or calls for regulation as "Neo-Luddism" reason.com/2001/06/20/liv…

"The effect is to make such concentrations of power even more possible and even less subject to oversight, and this is very much the direction in which Bitcoin heads."-David Golumbia

"...not simply that current governments are corrupt or misguided, but that the project of governance itself is an idea whose time has passed, one to be superseded by markets and market-like mechanisms that offer no resistance at all to concentrations of power"-Golumbia

"The point is much less that Bitcoin is attractive to those on the right wing, than it is that Bitcoin & the blockchain themselves depend on right-wing assumptions, & help to spread those assumptions as if they could be separated from the context in which they were generated"

Golumbia shows that the classic US rightist view of the Fed (unregulated central bank that creates inflation on purpose by printing money) is not only inaccurate but originated as propaganda penned by a fascist friend of Ezra Pound (himself working from earlier theories)

This reactionary critique of the Fed has been recycled & rebranded through many channels, to the point where its origin becomes not only obscure but taken for granted as the correct critical perspective of the Fed's history. Bitcoin evangelists, including Nakamoto, follow suit

Bitcoin first became known on a widespread basis through its emergence as an alternative means of donating to WikiLeaks after the US government made doing so through traditional channels impossible. Consider Assange's interaction with the Extroprians I mentioned earlier

Attempting to uncover who "Satoshi Nakamoto" (indeed, if he is just one man) exposes even more of the official public relations around Bitcoin & cryptocurrency as either highly dubious or total bullshit.

A 2011 FastCompany article by Adam Penenberg theorizes that 3 men are actually behind Nakamoto's identity; Neal J. King, Charles Bry & Vladimir Oksman. fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoi…

Penenburg first points to interesting translations of "Satoshi Nakamoto" (which most researchers agree is a fake name) In Japanese "Satoshi" can mean “inside” or “relationship” while “moto” is defined as “the origin; the cause; the foundation; the basis.”

Sidenote: Consider that Al-Qaeda's translated name is "The Base" which is also the name of an American reactionary group similar to Atomwaffen which has all but been proven to be a fed operation at this point. Satoshi=the origin, the cause, foundation, basis" is even stranger imo

Penenberg finds a patent filed on 08/15/2008, 3 days before the domain was registered. The patent was for an "updating & distributing ecryption keys invention." A phrase in the patent application was verbatim repeated in Nakamoto's paper bitcoin.org

Of the 3 inventors listed on the suspicious patent application, King & Bry are in Munich, Germany. Oksman lives in the USA but all 3 of them have filed multiple patents with obvious crossover with Blockchain/crypto tech. They collab'd on another patent 2 months b4 Bitcoin launch

The domain is registered by a Finnish provider in Hellsinki. Bry traveled to Finland in 2007, 6 months before the domain was registered. Bry & Oksman both work for a company called Lantiq. Dave Emory's related research ties Lantiq to Siemens & Bain Capital bitcoin.org

As Emory explains, "Siemens spun-off Infineon A.G. (a semiconductor firm). Then Infineon & Golden Gate Capital created Lantiq. Golden Gate Capitol was formed by alumni of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s firm" spitfirelist.com/news/bitcoinbu…

We return to Crypto AG, the collaboration between the CIA & Germany's BND intel agency which sold nations encryption tools which they used to gain access to state secrets. "The BND covered up its involvement by using Siemens for Crypto AG's technical and business support"

Infineon AG, Lantiq's parent, is a leading producer of TPM chips. TPM Chips are speculated to give the NSA a backdoor into hardware that uses them. Germany denied this, but think of just recently, Israel's own backdoor scandal

Another potential candidate for "the real Satoshi" is Nick Szabo, who I brought up earlier in this thread as the guy who advocates for "smart contracts." In 1998, Szabo theorized a decentralized digital currency called "Bit Gold."

There is hardly any personal info out there about Szabo. However, he has been described as a "Cypherpunk Legend." He seems to agree with the premises of the other fed-linked cyber-libertarians covered here. His concept of smart contracts forms the core of Ethereum's protocol

Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, received a $100,000 Thiel Grant to develop Ethereum. He's since donated over $300 million to the Methusala Foundation, a life-extension organization. His father was an early Blockchain investor & businessman in his own right

YouTuber Barely Sociable has argued that Adam Back, yet another Cypherpunk-linked nerd & co-founder/CEO of Blockstream, is Satoshi Nakamoto. If you would like to engage with BS's argument (which I don't full agree with but definitely don't disagree with):

BS makes many good points which suggest Back is Nakamoto, but I am more interested in the politics of Back's involvement with Bitcoin through Blockstream & also the connections of his fellow Blockstream board members. Have some stuff to take care of but will return

So BitCoin Foundation is started by Gavin Andresen in 2012, ostensibly as a way to improve Bitcoin's reptutation since it was at that point known as a way to conduct criminal acts in a legal gray area. Andresen is 2nd only to Nakamoto himself in the development of Bitcoin

While at the Bitcoin Foundation, Andresen oversaw 2 eyebrow raising additions to the team. 1st was CATO Inst. recruit Jim Harper a "founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee." 2nd, & more alarming, was Brock Pierce

Pierce is (allegedly) a Hollywood child molestor who got into the crypto game by co-founding Blockchain Capital. By 2014, he was elected the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, which caused a wave of resignations of staff uncomfortable with his (alleged) past of child abuse

@cuttlefish_btc has compiled a timeline of Brock Pierce & Co here:

This timeline highlights some of the dishonesty Pierce & his associates displayed while dealing with the accusations of their (alleged) victims medium.com/@cuttlefish_bt…

Steve Bannon was hired by Pierce's Internet Gaming Entertainment firm to "land venture capital." While sitting on IGE's board of directors that Bannon developed his current political strategy, which jives with Bitcoin's rebrand of Old Right talking points to alienated young men

To circle back to Back, he founded Blockstream (a for profit company) 6 months after Andresen stepped down as lead developer for the Bitcoin network. Blockstream receives funding from Pierce's Blockchain Capital & also AME Cloud Ventures, run by Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo!

The Yang connection is interesting because Blockstream's Chief Security Officer is Samson Mow. Mow was former Chief Operating Officer at BTC China, China's first & largest Bitcoin exchange. CEO Bobby Lee's brother, Charlie Lee, is the founder of Litecoin

Bobby Lee previously worked at Yahoo! where, according to his LinkedIn, he "led the development of the earliest online communities." He later served as Vice President of Technology for Wal-Mart China. He eventually ended up on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation

BTCC was HQ'd in Hong Kong while Yang is a native of Taiwan. Not sure if this means anything but it's interesting that the mainland Chinese govt has recently expelled all Bitcoin miners from the country & cracked down on crypto in general. Consider the WikiLeaks board as well lol

Furthermore, Blockstream receives funding from Horizons Ventures. Horizons manages the private investment of Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Hong Kong. Horizons has invested in AI start-up Deepmind (later bought by Google), Siri (bought by Apple) Zoom, Spotify & Facebook

To return to main thread, Barely Sociable points out, to scale network for wider access "Satoshi originally planned" on a "fork" which would "create a new currency with a larger blocksize." Blockstream-funded "developers wanted to profit by keeping the block size small"

Andresen probably realized this was happening & tried to create Bitcoin XT as a gambit to re-gain leverage over the network. For this to work 75% of Bitcoin miners would have to use his version of the software. Tl;dr is this failed due to foul play by Blockstream-aligned actors

Nakamoto himself (remember that one of his possibly several identities could be Adam Back) appeared to take the side of Blockstream. He referred to BXT as "pretender Bitcoin" & claims that usage of his old work to justify it is cynical as he has changed several of his views

Recap: CIA & BND make Crypto AG as a way to steal state secrets under guise of private security firm. Later, NSA develops tools Cypherpunks later popularize. Cypherpunks overlap with Alphabet Soup cyber-libertarians. Assange is noted as a participant in cypherpunk spaces (1/4)

David Back, one of the several candidates for Nakamoto who is linked to Fedpunk world, starts Blockstream with VC money & links to Chinese/Chinese-American billionaires with dubious loyalty to the mainland government. Through the "tyranny of structureless" consolidates power

I'm not done exploring all these threads but I have to cap it there for the night. Will return

To return to the NSA, as I said earlier it created SHA-256, the hashing algorithm that allows a computer to become a bitcoin node. I would like to briefly (as briefly as possible) go over some other NSA ties to cryptocurrency

In 2018, "cryptojacking" (hackers steal computer processing power to mine crypto) rose a whopping 459%. This drastic rise was thanks to a hacker group called Shadow Brokers leaking a packet of NSA tools, including "EternalBlue" which exploits weaknessses in Windows-based systems

"The NSA had been developing the tools for their own cyberattacks & the sophistication of the software made for...formidable malware, such as the...WannaCry ransomware which has led to the disruption of crucial services in hospitals, factories, & government facilities"

"The packet was also used to develop malicious cryptocurrency mining software which has proven both lucrative & difficult to stop."

"XMR is by far the hacker’s preferred currency with 85% of the crypto illegally mined being monero"

So the Shadow Brokers, the hacker group which leaked these NSA tools, technically leaked it from another hacker group known as the "Equation Group." However, this group has all but been confirmed as a wing of the NSA. arstechnica.com/information-te…

Like Crypto AG decades ago,Equation Group intercepts important digital materials & implants malware which allows them to spy on the intended receiver, without the receiver ever knowing. They also were renowned by many observors as *the* most sophisticated hacking outfit

Something strange about Shadow Group's leaks of these materials is that they promoted them in advance & then auctioned them to the highest bidder. According to Risk Based security, while this type of autction isn't uncommon, it is unusual on such a scale & with so much fanfare

As for Monero, it appears to have been designed in response to those who (correctly) pointed out that Bitcoin is not as "anonymous" as it's PR says. It has the 3rd largest development team in crypto, behind Bitcoin & Ethereum. Much of this team chooses to remain anonymous

So you have a hacker group more or less confirmed as an NSA op known for being perhaps the best, penetrated by some group of supposed randos, said randos create buzz for auction of materials, this auction disproportionately benefits Monero mining.

Am I wrong for thinking this may be an new & improved form of the same old NSA strategy going all the way back to Crypto AG? Bitcoin becomes mainstream, which has some benefits if it is an op, but also drawbacks, IE it is less useful as a honeypot. Why not reboot the program?

To cap it off, the actual damage caused by the leak itself appears to have been much less extensive than initially thought. One month before Shadow Brokers began to sell the leaks, Microsoft patched many of the vulnerabilities they would target. Monero's network still benefits

In April former CIA director Michael Morrell wrote an analysis of Bitcon which did little but tell us what we already knew: the Blockchain is a "boon for surveillance."-"Blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool"

Monero's street cred was bolstered by a post on 4chan which included this image, a supposed Department of Defense memo stating that the "success we have had with Tor, I2P, and VPN cannot be replicated with those currencies that do not rely on nodes" I'm sure this is legit lol

Would it surprise you to learn that CryptoNote, the protocol on which Monero relies, was written by someone who nobody knows anything about who goes by a pseudonym? (

An in-depth post on bitcointalk explores the bizarre history of Crypto Note, noting that "nobody, and I mean no-fucking-body, is a known entity...none of the made up names on the CryptoNote website exist" bitcointalk.org/index.php?topi…

By analyzing the confusing origins of references in the v.1 & v.2 CryptoNote whitepapers, the author of the linked bitcointalk piece points out that the developers deceived ppl into thinking the papers were written earlier thanthey were, & in doing so left "dead footnotes" in

An interesting theory proposed by the author here is that Monero is actually a variation on CryptoNote that got out of control of the original devs & they pushed ByteCoin to try & re-gain control. Not sure if I agree with this but it would make sense

To simplify the the whole CryptoNote/Bytecoin debacle

One potential use for cryptocurrency that certain interested actors in the ruling class would have, apart from surveillance, is that it provides an avenue to provide individuals & groups with funding when traditional avenues become difficult (recall Bitcoin's aid to WikiLeaks)

This use takes a particular nefarious shape in, for example, the way fascists in America have used crypto for the last several years to get & receive fast cash for their operations. mic.com/articles/18643…

weev, of course, seems to have been the primary fascist beneficiary of crypto's usefulness for his ilk

David Golumbia quoting an MIT researcher whose views on the positive innovations of cryptocurrencies that jives very well with Mencius Moldbug, Peter Thiel, & other "Dark Enlightenment" cyber libertarian's ideas cosmonaut.blog/2019/04/17/str…

Golumbia on the irony that the anarcho-capitalist ideology embraced by many crypto-fundamentalists leads to precisely the "serfdom" that their biggest intellectual influences, such as Hayek, warned "collectivism" produced

Unchain, a bitcoin/blockchain conference in Hamburg, featured Alice Weidel, leader of Germany's reactionary "Alternative for Deutchsland) party. The conference's website listed Weidel as an "economist and bitcoin entrepreneur." theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Bannon has said the Blockchain will: “empower the movement, empower companies, empower governments to get away from the central banks that debase your currency & makes slave wages...We take control of the central banks away. That will give us the power again.”

Remember Brock Pierce the [alleged] child molestor who Bannon worked for & who later became head of the Bitcoin Foundation? Remember how the Cypherpunks came out of transhumanist orgs? Remember Epstein's funding of Humanity+? Yeah, anyway