Thread by @XX_1133_1221_11

Thread: Big Tech’s ‘Dot-Com’ Evolution into today’s Technocracy

Over the past four decades, a deeply interconnected network of Silicon Valley pioneers, tech companies, venture capitalists, and government entities has propelled the futurist technocracy movement, harnessing cryptocurrency, AI, and modern technologies to transform the global landscape. Sun Microsystems, founded in 1982 with ties to DARPA and In-Q-Tel, set the stage for Silicon Valley’s rise, later merging into Oracle, whose founder Larry Ellison maintained CIA connections, exemplifying the fusion of tech and government interests. Netscape, a browser trailblazer backed by Kleiner Perkins, evolved into Mozilla via AOL, fostering cypherpunk ideals of privacy and decentralization that influenced cryptocurrency’s ethos. Google, built with Sun alumni like Eric Schmidt and investments in Ripple, alongside Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset—linked to NASA’s Barney Pell and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund—advanced AI and search technologies while intertwining with crypto ventures. DigiCash, founded by David Chaum, pioneered digital currency concepts that inspired Bitcoin, with later projects like the xx network funded by Ripple’s Chris Larsen, bridging cryptography’s past and present. Singularity University, co-founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis with Google and XPRIZE support, champions exponential technologies, reflecting a transhumanist vision shared by Thiel and others. This web of relationships—spanning Ripple, Stellar, venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, and government contracts—has not only shaped the tech ecosystem but also driven a technocratic agenda where AI, cryptocurrency, and innovation converge to redefine humanity’s future.

Sun Microsystems
Oracle
Netscape
AOL
Mozilla
Google
Powerset
Microsoft
Infospace
DigiCash
Singularity
XPRIZE

Ripple
Stellar
Bitcoin

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1/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part I

Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 by Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy, focusing on workstations and servers powered by the UNIX operating system. The company grew rapidly, becoming a key player in enterprise computing with its SPARC processors and Solaris OS. Sun had connections with U.S. government agencies, including DARPA, which funded early research, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, which invested in Sun-related technologies for intelligence applications.

Andreas Bechtolsheim was charged with insider trading by the SEC for the 2019 Cisco acquisition of Acacia Communications. Andreas has funding in Diamond Foundry. Mark Pincus of Zynga is another invesotr in Diamond Foundry. Zynga has funding from Google, specifically John Doerr who was also a director at Sun Microsystems. Doerr, aside from working with Google, Sun Microsystems, Amazon, and Zynga, was also an advisory council member for the Jeffrey Epstein funded MIT Hamilton Project, aka “OpenCBDC”. Diamond Foundry also had investments from Wendi Murdoch, a close friend of the Kushner brothers and ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch. Vast Ventures is another important funder of Diamond Foundry, which is a VC founded by Ripple co-founders Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen. Scott Banister of PayPal mafia and long time affiliate of Peter Thiel is another funder of Diamond Foundry.

Andreas made an early $1.1M seed and pre-seed investment of Google, making a small fortune from their success. He was a very early investor and worked with Eric Schmidt at Sun Microsystems. Eric Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems in 1983, he went on to be long time board member, director and even CEO of Google, as well as Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Schmidt also was CEO of Novell from 1997 to 2001 after leaving Sun Microsystems. Novell employed cypherpunk Chris Toshok of Netscape. Eric Schmidt also worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where Barney Pell of Powerset and Microsoft (Bing!) worked while at Stanford. Many of the largest and most recognized big tech companies came out of PARC and Stanford throughout the late 20th century through the dot com era. PARC has ties to the US government, specifically DAPRA, for funding and research.

Google (Google Ventures), along with Peter Thiel, were early investors in Ripple, formely named OpenCoin at the time of their seed funding rounds. David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO, worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) during his tenure at WebMaster Incorporated, a Santa Clara-based software developer. He developed encrypted cloud storage and enterprise messaging systems for high-profile organizations, including the NSA, leveraging his expertise in cryptography and secure computing. Additionally, in 1988, Schwartz filed a patent for a distributed computer system, closely resembling early blockchain concepts.

Three other executive level employees of Sun Microsystems, Bill Coleman,Edward Zander, and Michael Marquardt, all work (or worked) for Seagate Technology, a company that has funded several rounds for Ripple totaling almost $100 million going back to 2015.

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2/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part II

Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems in 1982, transitioned into one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capitalists by founding Khosla Ventures in 2004. His firm has invested in over 1,000 startups, with notable successes including: Worldcoin, Oscar Health, Stripe, OpenDoor, Lattice, Cadre, Chain and Affirm. He has shaped silicon valley startup success through his billions in funding and affiliations with government-funded initiatives through DARPA and In-Q-Tel connections from his Sun Microsystems days. Vinod has close ties to the PayPal mafia, including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Keith Rabois, who joined Vinod’s Khosla Ventures in 2013. Rabois left in 2019 to join Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s VC, but rejoined Khosla Ventures in 2024 as a managing director. Several of Vinod’s largest investments (and most successful) were in companies founded by PayPal mafia members.

Vinod Khosla, through his firm Khosla Ventures, has been a significant investor in Deep Genomics, a Toronto-based company leveraging AI for drug discovery and development, particularly in genomics. In 2017, Khosla Ventures led a $16 million funding round for Deep Genomics and served as an advisor. Elon Musk’s longtime friend and major investor, Steve Jurvetson, is also an advisor for Deep Genomics. Jurvetson has invested in Elon Musk’s: Tesla, Neuralink, SpaceX and is a member of the Edge Foundation.

Vinod is a member of John Brockman’s Edge Foundation. The Edge Foundation, founded in 1988, is a nonprofit organization that fosters intellectual dialogue among leading scientists, technologists, and thinkers. It hosts annual questions, events, and "billionaires’ dinners" to explore cutting-edge ideas, but faced controversy for receiving $638,000 from Jeffrey Epstein’s foundations between 2001 and 2015, raising questions about its ties to elite networks. Some noteable people who are members include: Ray Kurzweil, Steve Jurvetson, George Church, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Weinstein (Thiel Capital), Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Joichu Ito (MIT Media Lab) and Vinod Khosla.

Vinod’s wife, Neera Khosla, works with Joichi Ito’s sister, Mimi Ito, at Wikimedia Foundation, backed by George Soro’s Open Society. George Soro’s investment company, Soros Fund Management, was a lead investor in Ripple CTO Davdi Schwartz’s co-founded Polysign. Vinod also backed Cadre, Jared Kushner’s real estate startup, and served on the board. George Soros and Peter Thiel led funding on Cadre. Joichu Ito was director of MIT Media Labs where Epstein donated millions to fund crypto and AI related projects and Joichu Ito was a good friend of Epstein. Ito also ran Digital Garage where he and Epstein used to funded crypto and biotech startups. Furthermore, Mimi’s husband, and Joichu Ito’s brother in-law, Scott Fisher, worked with Barney Pell at NASA for a short while, and was Nicholas Negroponte’s advisee at MIT. Nicholas Negroponte is founder of MIT Media Labs with his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Barney Pell will be mentioned later in this thread in more detail.

Jack Dorsey co-founded Square, a company Vinod Khosla funded and was a board member of since 2015. After Dorsey left twitter, he renamed Square to ‘Block’. He wanted to focus more on crypto within the company. He is a huge proponet and long time supporter of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Olivier Janssens worked at Sun Microsystems in 1999-2001. He also was a Bitcoin investor since at least 2010 and worked with the Bitcoin Foundation as a board member with several cypherpunks that will be mentioned throughout this thread with ties to early Bitcoin companies and US governement organizations. Olivier Janssens is married into the family of the last King of Italy, King Umberto II.

Peter Todd is another Cypherpunk and Bitcoin advocate who worked at Bitcoin Foundation and has ties to the very early days of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto (likely NSA). He is good friends with Bryce "Zooko" Wilcox, founder of ZCash and Bolt. Bolt was funded by Ripple’s grant/ investment branch ‘Xpring’. ZCash was funded by Pantera, a VC where Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple and Stellar, was a partner.

Steve Waterhouse, Director and team leader of Sun Microsystems, was also: Partner at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, CEO and founder of Orchid Labs with Paul Veradittakit, former Fortress Investment Group managing director, board member of Bitstamp and Change Coin. While at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, Steve invested in Chain, a company that would merge with Stellar’s Lightyear to form ‘Inter/stellar’. Several years later, Chain reverted back into Chain. Stellar allegedly retained all intellectual property from the partnership.

Steve Waterhouse, as managing director at Fortress Investment Group, was part of the Theranos founding, along with Oracle founder Larry Ellison (parent company of Sun Microsystems) mentioned earlier. Fortress Investment Group also bought Epstein’s and his partner Daniel Zwirn’s assets in 2009 after illegal activity with moving money between international funds was brought to the attention of the SEC by Zwirn himself.

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3/ 7

Sun Microsystems, Part III

Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in early 2010 for $7 Billion. Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, who at the time was still CEO. Larry Ellison was a on the board of directors for Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car company, and an investor in Theranos, the fraudulent biotech company founded by convicted CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Wendi Murdoch’s then husband, Rupert Murdoch, was also an investor in Theranos. Mentioned earlier, Sun Microsystem’s co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was co-invested in Diamond Foundry with Wendi Murdoch. Larry Ellison is a huge donor and supporter of Israel and IDF (Israel Defense Forces). He has personal relations with their Prime Minters, President and high ranking military and intelligence leaders, including Mossad. Oracle was founded in 1977 by Ellison. The company’s first project was a $50,000 contract to build a relational database for the CIA, codenamed "Project Oracle.” Similar to Palantir (now their partner), Oracle has longstanding ties and contracts with the CIA. Both Oracle and Palantir also work closely with the IDF and Israel government. Larry, like Vinod Khosla, had relations with Jeffrey Epstein through several channels, including Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Larry Summers, Marc Benioff, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and several others who had indirect or direct relations with Jeffrey Epstein. Dave DeWalt has ties to Sun Microsystems and worked with Oracle at executive positions as a board member of IDF created ‘TEAM8.’ Dave DeWalt is a senior member of the advisory board for Silver Lake, a company that Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple is an advisor for as well.
Andreas Bechtolsheim co-founded Arista Networks to deliver software driven cloud networking solutions for large data center and computing environments. Charles Giancarlo, managing director at Silver Lake, is a member of the board of directors at Bechtolsheim’s Arista Networks. Charles Giancarlo is former CTO of Cisco, the company Andreas Bechtolsheim was charged with insider trading by the SEC for in 2019 in regards to his Cisco acquisition of Acacia Communications. Giancarlo also is head of and co-founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, a nonprofit that created the Digital Dollar Project to explore and promote research on a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) aiming to modernize the U.S. dollar. Ripple is a partner of the Digital Dollar Foundation and participant in the Project’s research. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, personally invested in Pure Storage, a Charles Giancarlo founded company.

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4/ 7

Netscape

Netscape Communications, founded in 1994 as Mosaic Communications Corporation by Marc Andreessen and James Clark, developed the pioneering Netscape Navigator web browser, revolutionizing internet access. Key investors included Kleiner Perkins, which provided $5 million in initial funding, and Jim Barksdale, who joined as CEO and invested through his network. Jim Barksdale is former In-Q-Tel (CIA investment branch), Sun Microsystems director, and Netscape (AOL) CEO. He is also special advisor to Kleiner Perkins where former Netscape employee, John Doerr, works. John Doerr, mentioned earlier who was part of the Jeffrey Epstein MIT funded Hamilton Project (OpenCBDC), worked at Sun Microsystems and later Google, was a lead investor in Netscape through Kleiner Perkins, where he was a partner and chairman.

Netscape released its source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization (Now Mozilla Foundation). Mozilla rewrote all the browser’s source code. Netscape was then acquired by AOL a year later.

In 1998, Netscape began to fall behind it’s main competitor Microsoft, as well as other browsers, which is when AOL stepped in with more than $10 billion for Netscape in a three-way deal with Sun Microsystems -- Sun effectively took over the business software divisions of Netscape. AOL's then-nearly 21 million subscribers still used Microsoft's Internet Explorer to surf the Web, and Netscape's "browser share" plummeted after the merger. James Barksdale left shortly thereafter to found his own venture capital firm, taking with him former Chief Financial Officer Peter Currie. Co-founder Marc Andreessen stayed on with AOL as chief technology officer before departing to start LoudCloud. Marc Andreessen co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in 2009 with Ben Horowitz, becoming a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist. His firm has backed major successes like Airbnb, Lyft, GitHub, and Coinbase, with a16z managing over $35 billion in assets. Andreessen is invested in several large crypto companies, including Ripple and Solana.

James Clark, co-founder of Netscape, also founded SGI (Silicon Graphics). SGI was funded by Mayfield Fund, a VC where Barney Pell spent time at that also had funding in Elon Musk’s SolarCity company.

Other noteable people who worked at Netscape include: Rob McCool, Luke Nosek, LLoyd Tabb, Naveen Jain, Brendan Eich, Chris Toshok, and Jamie Zawinski.

Rob McCool attended The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) along with: Ramez Naam of Microsoft, Nathan Gettings of Palantir, Yu Pan of Microsoft and Alphabet, Sam Yagan who helped Jed McCaleb develop eDonkey, the file-sharing network, and several early PayPal engineers during the Musk/ Thiel years in early 2000’s.

Luke Nosek worked briefly at Netscape (1997-1998) as a product evangelist, promoting its browser and technologies to stakeholders. He co-founded PayPal in 1998, serving as VP of Marketing and Strategy, creating the "Instant Transfer" feature, and left after its $1.5 billion sale to eBay in 2002. Nosek co-founded Founders Fund in 2005 with Peter Thiel and several others, investing in SpaceX, Airbnb, and Palantir, and launched Gigafund with Elon Musk in 2017. Luke Nosek, along with Peter Thiel through Founders Fund, invested in Barney Pell’s Powerset company, which will be discussed more in detail later in this thread.

Ramez Naam is a computer scientist, author, and clean energy advocate who worked at Netscape from 1995 to 1999, contributing to early internet technologies like Netscape Navigator. He later spent 13 years at Microsoft, leading teams on Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Bing, and co-founded Apex NanoTechnologies, a nanotechnology software company. Naam collaborated with Barney Pell at Powerset, a natural language search startup acquired by Microsoft in 2008, where Pell was CEO and Naam was a key executive, he also served as co-chair at Singularity University with Barney Pell.

Lloyd Tabb is a tech entrepreneur who co-founded Commerce Tools, acquired by Netscape in 1995, where he served as Principal Engineer on Netscape Navigator Gold and helped establish Mozilla.org. He later became CTO of LiveOps, co-founded Readyforce, and founded Looker, a data analytics platform acquired by Google in 2019 for $2.6 billion.

Brendan Eich is a computer scientist who created JavaScript in 1995 while at Netscape, where he worked as a principal engineer on Netscape Navigator. He co-founded Mozilla and served as its CTO, later becoming CEO of Mozilla Corporation (2014-2015), and founded Brave Software in 2015, developing the privacy-focused Brave browser. Eich is an advisor at Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies.

Chris Toshok is a computer programmer who worked at Netscape in the late 1990s on the Mozilla codebase, contributing to the layout engine for Mozilla 4. Chris worked at Novell with Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and former CTO of Sun Microsystems as mentioned earlier in this thread.

Jamie Zawinski is a software engineer who worked at Netscape from 1994 to 1999, contributing to Netscape Navigator and co-founding Mozilla.org to open-source the browser code. He also developed early versions of Emacs and founded DNA Lounge, a San Francisco nightclub associated with sexual misconduct with minors.

Chris Toshok and Jamie Zawinski are known associates of the cypherpunk movement at the time Netscape was around, along with many early cryptographers like Peter Todd, Nat Freidman, Bryce "Zooko" Wilcox, Isis Lovecruft, Jacbob Appelbaum, Adam Back and many others. These cypherpunks were all working closely with either the Brave web browser, Netscape, TOR project, Mozilla, and/or cryptography. (amongst several other companies, like Mobilecoin and Signal).

Brave web browser, a competitor to Netscape, AOL and Microsoft browsers at the time, had funding from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund through partner Cyan Banister, wife of Scott Banister, former PayPal mafia member and associate of Thiel and Musk. Steve Waterhouse is another early investor in Brave. Waterhouse, mentioned earlier in this thread, was Director and team leader of Sun Microsystems, also: Partner at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, CEO and founder of Orchid Labs with Paul Veradittakit, former Fortress Investment Group managing director, board member of Bitstamp and Change Coin. While at Pantera with Jed McCaleb, Steve invested in Chain, a company that would merge with Stellar’s Lightyear to form ‘Inter/stellar’. Several years later, Chain reverted back into Chain. Stellar allegedly retained all intellectual property from the partnership.

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5/ 7

AOL & Mozilla

Initial funding for Mozila came from AOL ($2 million) which was formed from Netscape.

Netscape released its source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization (Now Mozilla Foundation). Mozilla rewrote all the browser’s source code. Netscape was then acquired by AOL a year later.

In 1998, Netscape began to fall behind it’s main competitor Microsoft, as well as other browsers, which is when AOL stepped in with more than $10 billion for Netscape in a three-way deal with Sun Microsystems -- Sun effectively took over the business software divisions of Netscape. AOL's then-nearly 21 million subscribers still used Microsoft's Internet Explorer to surf the Web, and Netscape's "browser share" plummeted after the merger.

Established on July 15, 2003, Mozilla is a nonprofit organization based in Mountain View, California, dedicated to promoting openness, innovation, and participation on the internet. Founded by the Netscape-affiliated Mozilla Organization after AOL scaled back its involvement, it supports the open-source Mozilla project, overseeing policies, infrastructure, and trademarks. It owns two taxable subsidiaries: the Mozilla Corporation, which develops the Firefox browser, and MZLA Technologies Corporation, focused on the Thunderbird email client. Guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, the Foundation emphasizes a human-centered internet, privacy, and decentralization. This is essentially the manifesto of the cypherpunk movement.

Former CPO of Brave, David Tempkin, now responsible for advertising privacy and user trust at Google, previously ran product at Brave, led mobile and mail at AOL. Patricia Mitchel was a board of director member of both AOL and Sun Microsystems. Brad Garlinghouse previously worked for AOL before becoming CEO of Ripple. AOL is invested in Ancestry dot com, where Brad is a board member of. Dawn Lepore an AOL board member, also became interim CEO of Prosper Marketplace after Chris Larsen left to co-found Ripple with Jed McCaleb. Omidyar Network, founded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay (eBay aquired PayPal in 2002 before breaking off again years later), is a partner of Mozilla. Omidyar Network funded Chris Larsen’s Propser Marketplace, where Dawn Lepore of AOL was interim CEO after Chris left to co-found Ripple with Jed McCaleb.

Denelle Dixon of Stellar Development Foundation, Reid Hoffman of PayPal, LinkedIn and Microsoft, Alex Lakatos of Interledger (Ripple), Renee DiResta of the CIA, Mobilecoin and Thiel Foundation, Phillipp Schmidt of MIT Media Lab, Joichu Ito of MIT Media Lab, Brian Behlendorf of Hyperledger and Thiel’s Mithril Capital, and Coil (now defunct Ripple subsidiary) are all members of Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla has history with several cypherpunks, at least two that were also formerly employed by Netscape and Sun Microsystems. Mozilla is also partners with Freedom of the Press, a foundation with ties to Open Whisper Systems (Signal) and Glenn Greenwald (Board member) who was the close media confidant of Edward Snowden during his leak and run from the US government. Snowden, along with Elon Musk, is a proponent of Signal (Open Whisper) and is tied to many cypherpunks mentioned throughout this thread as well as Mobilecoin (built on the Stellar blockchain). Signal has ties to the CIA, as well as cypherpunk Moxie Marlinspike who likely works with the CIA as an official asset.

The Mozilla Foundation began accepting cryptocurrency donations, including Bitcoin, via BitPay in 2014, aligning with its interest in decentralized web technologies. Jamie Zawinski, a Mozilla co-founder and Netscape developer, publicly criticized the move, calling cryptocurrencies “planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters,” joined by Peter Linss, creator of the Gecko engine. This led Mozilla to pause crypto donations on January 6, 2022.

Individuals like Brendan Eich, Luke Nosek, Marc Andreessen, Barney Pell, and Ramez Naam, connected to Mozilla through Netscape, have embraced crypto due to shared values of decentralization, innovation, and Silicon Valley’s investment culture.

Mozilla members such as Denelle Dixon, Alex Lakatos, and Renee DiResta are directly working for and with crypto companies, Stellar, Ripple and Mobilecoin, respectively.

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6/ 7

Powerset, Microsoft-Bing!, XX Network/ DigiCash & Ripple

Barney Pell is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and investor with over 30 years of experience in AI, focusing on machine learning, natural language processing, and autonomous systems. In the 1990’s, Pell was Principal Investigator and Senior Computer Scientist at NASA. years later, Pell joined Mayfield Fund, a VC, as Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Aside from Mayfield Fund, Pell also was a venture partner at Radical Ventures, another VC, specializing in investments for AI and deep tech startups.

Barney Pell noteably co-founded and became CEO of Powerset in 2005, which developed a natural language processing (NLP) search engine and was later cquired by Microsoft in 2008. The company’s acquisition by Microsoft was part of Microsoft’s strategy to enhance Bing’s search capabilities to compete with Google. Unlike traditional search engines like Google, which relied on keyword-based searches, Powerset sought to interpret the semantic meaning of queries, enabling more accurate and contextually relevant results. The company licensed NLP technology from Xerox PARC, which was foundational to its search capabilities. Powerset launched an online community called Powerlabs in September 2007 to beta-test its technology, initially indexing Wikipedia content. Pell served as CEO until November 2007, when he transitioned to CTO due to investor pressure and internal dynamics, before Microsoft acquired Powerset in July 2008 for an estimated $100 million. Pell then worked at Microsoft as a Search Strategist, Evangelist, and Chief Architect for Bing’s Local and Mobile Search, contributing to projects like Bing’s Knowledge Graph and Cortan. Powerset attracted significant investment, raising $12.5 million in Series A funding in November 2007 from Foundation Capital and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Charles Moldow, founder of Foundation Capital that invested in Barney Pell’s Powerset, also funded BTCJam, along with Steve Waterhouse of Sun Microsystems and Pantera (amongst other companies as well). BTCJam was a company that let you earn interest on your BTC investments. Barney Pell founded Powerset in the years Bitcoin was being created by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was released in 2008, the year Powerset was acquired by Microsoft. A side note, Microsoft was founded one day before the alleged “birthday” of Satoshi Nakamoto. Other investors of Powerset include Reid Hoffman of PayPal mafia who founded LinkedIn, a company Barney Pell invested in. Esther Dyson, a futurist who has worked closely with Pell on space exploration and AI is also a funder of Powerset. Dyson has social and business connections with Jeffrey Epstein. Peter Thiel, Luke Nosak and Charles Moldow were all board members, as well as investors, of Barney Pell’s Powerset.

CommerceNet is another funder of Powerset. CommerceNet is also a funder of David Chaum’s XX Network. David Chaum is a computer scientist and cryptographer widely recognized as the "father of online anonymity" and the "godfather of cryptocurrency." Chaum has made seminal contributions to cryptography, privacy-preserving technologies, and digital currency. His work laid foundational concepts for modern cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, particularly through his invention of blind signatures and early blockchain-like protocols. In 1982 Chaum proposed a protocol resembling a blockchain, containing all but one element of the Bitcoin whitepaper (published 26 years later in 2008). This work introduced the concept of a decentralized, trustless system, a cornerstone of modern cryptocurrencies. In 1983, Chaum published Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments, introducing the cryptographic primitive of blind signatures. This allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it anonymously, ensuring transactions were untraceable by banks or third parties. This was the first proposal for secure digital cash and became the ideological and technical foundation for the Cypherpunk movement.

Founded in 1990 in Amsterdam, DigiCash aimed to commercialize Chaum’s digital cash research. The company developed eCash, the world’s first digital currency, launched in 1993 and fully implemented by 1994. eCash used blind signatures to ensure anonymous, secure transactions, requiring user software to withdraw cryptographically signed digital notes from a bank for untraceable spending. In 1994, Chaum demonstrated the first eCash transaction live at the World Wide Web conference in Geneva, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. Like Powerset, Microsft offered to make a deal with Chaum’s DigiCash. Chaum’s rejection of the deal with Microsoft (demanding $2 per Windows 95 copy) was a missed opportunity for mass adoption. Cryptographers Nick Szabo and Bryce “Zooko” Wilcox, who worked with Chaum, argued that eCash’s centralized structure (relying on DigiCash as an intermediary) undermined trust from major banks, contrasting with Bitcoin’s decentralized model. Mentioned earlier, Bryce “Zooko” Wilcox received funding from Steve Waterhouse and founded Bolt and ZCash. Bolt was given grant funding from Ripple’s grant branch, Xpring.

Nicholas Negroponte was founding chairman and early supporter of Chaum’s DigiCash. Negroponte went to be the founder of MIT Media Lab. Many people from Sun Microsystems, Netscape, PayPal mafia, AOL and modern crypto companies worked with or donated to MIT Media Lab, including: Reid Hoffman, Joichu Ito, Jeffrey Epstein, Phillipp Schmidt, George Church, Marvin Minsky, Joyce Kim (Jed McCaleb’s ex-girlfriend and co-founder of Stellar), Bill Gates, Microsoft, Google, DARPA and many more.

Founded in 2018 by Chum, the xx network is a privacy-focused, quantum-resistant Layer 1 blockchain platform designed for secure messaging, payments, and decentralized applications (dApps). It addresses modern privacy concerns, particularly metadata collection revealed by the 2013 Snowden leaks, which shocked Chaum and motivated the project. Xx network has funding from CommerceNet, which also funded Barney Pell’s Powerset. Another company tied to Chaum’s xx network is mixx labs, formerly named Elixxir. It is a blockchain platform that allows users to communicate and exchange values. Mixx labs is soley funded by Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple.

David Chaum’s DigiCash company coined the term “eCash”, the name of its digital currency product. Today, the term “crypto” or “cryptocurrency” is more widely recognized. Chris Larsen owned the domain “ecash. com” in 1997 for his E-Loan venture company. In 1998, David Chaum’s DigiCash went bankrupt. After DigiCash’s bankruptcy, the eCash technology was acquired by eCash Technologies, a seperate company from Chaum’s DigiCash. However, in 2000, just two years after Chaum’s eCash company, DigiCash, went bankrupt, eCash Technology sued Chaum for trademark infringement and unfair competition. While a legal battle continued for over a year, eCash Technology went bankrupt as well, and the domain name stayed with Chris Larsen and no penalties were issued. eCash Technology was acquired by Naveen Jain’s Infospace company in 2002. Barney Pell, aside from just Powerset, also co-founded Moon Express with Naveen Jain. Naveen Jain worked for Microsoft and Netscape before starting Powerset. After leaving Microsoft, Naveen Jain founded a search engine company called Infospace, who acquired eCash Technology. Chris Larsen gifted the domain “eCash. com” to David Chaum in 2018, and Chris Larsen invested in Chaum’s Mixx Labs just after.

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7/ 7

Singularity University (now Singularity Group) was co-founded in 2008 by Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor, and Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur and founder of the XPRIZE Foundation. The founding conference was held at NASA Ames Research Park on September 20, 2008. The university was established with the goal of addressing global challenges through the advancement of technology and promoting the idea of exponential growth in fields like AI, biotechnology, and robotics. Peter Diamondis and Ray Kurzweil are leaders in the transhumance community. Peter’s XPRIZE company also has very close relations with the same people who are with Singularity Group. Additional founding members include Barney Pell, Bob Richards, David S. Rose, Gorka Munecas, Klee Irwin, Salim Ismail, Sonia Arrison, and Yuri van Geest. Barney Pell, a computer scientist and entrepreneur, was noted as an Associate Founder, contributing his expertise in AI and search technology (from his work at Powerset and Microsoft). Barney Pell’s close friend and founder of Infospace Naveen Jain is also a director at Singluarity Group. Singularity Group’s initial supporters included Google, Nokia, Autodesk, IDEO, LinkedIn, XPRIZE Foundation, ePlanet Ventures, Kauffman Foundation, and Genentech, providing financial and strategic backing. Google initially provided $1.5 million annually.

Singularity Group has done business with and draw attention from people like: Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, Cathie Wood, Anthony Scaramucci, Vinod Khosla, Eric Schmidt, Chad Hurley, Palmer Luckey, Marc Benioff, Michael Saylor, Steve Jurvetson and MIRI.

Many people invovled with Singularity University are closley tied to Peter Thiel and/or Jeffrey Epstein funding, social events, foundations and organizations for futurists and transhuman agendas like space advancements, AI, biotech, nanotech and cryptocurrency.

Over the past four decades, a deeply interconnected network of Silicon Valley pioneers, tech companies, venture capitalists, and government entities has propelled the futurist technocracy movement, harnessing cryptocurrency, AI, and modern technologies to transform the global landscape. Sun Microsystems, founded in 1982 with ties to DARPA and In-Q-Tel, set the stage for Silicon Valley’s rise, later merging into Oracle, whose founder Larry Ellison maintained CIA connections, exemplifying the fusion of tech and government interests. Netscape, a browser trailblazer backed by Kleiner Perkins, evolved into Mozilla via AOL, fostering cypherpunk ideals of privacy and decentralization that influenced cryptocurrency’s ethos. Google, built with Sun alumni like Eric Schmidt and investments in Ripple, alongside Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset—linked to NASA’s Barney Pell and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund—advanced AI and search technologies while intertwining with crypto ventures. DigiCash, founded by David Chaum, pioneered digital currency concepts that inspired Bitcoin, with later projects like the xx network funded by Ripple’s Chris Larsen, bridging cryptography’s past and present. Singularity University, co-founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis with Google and XPRIZE support, champions exponential technologies, reflecting a transhumanist vision shared by Thiel and others. This web of relationships—spanning Ripple, Stellar, venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, and government contracts—has not only shaped the tech ecosystem but also driven a technocratic agenda where AI, cryptocurrency, and innovation converge to redefine humanity’s future.