Thread by @nopara73

As someone who invented the most private #Bitcoin Wallet to date, here's my finest philosophical take on the topics of Privacy, Fungibility and Anonymity 👇👇👇

The privacy challenges of the future will not be the same as those of the past🤯🤯🤯

Technologies of anonymous communication, anonymous currency, and reputation systems have been invented. They cannot be un-invented. These are all the ingredients needed to build a circular economy with strong privacy in cyber-space💪💪💪

Simultaneously, in meat-space our privacy is eroding. How long will doors and curtains — which are currently cutting-edge meat-space privacy technologies — hold against the advancements of mass surveillance?😱😱😱

As cyber-space grows — including VR, which is increasingly becoming immersive — meat-space is losing its relevance. For many it already has. Therefore, it won’t matter that we’ll be surveilled in meat-space because we’ll be just doing fine where it matters: in cyber-space.🙄🙄🙄

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FOR HUMANITY TO THRIVE, IT IS PARAMOUNT TO IMPROVE THE TECHNOLOGY OF MONEY
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What is the best money we might conceptualize❓

Aristotle identified the Properties of Good Money. Although economists (like @saifedean and @Breedlove22) are still debating the details, money must be durable, divisible, scarce, stable, acceptable, portable, and fungible.

#Bitcoin — or another cryptocurrency, but most likely Bitcoin — will flippen the USD and become the most valuable currency in the world

With the exceptions of stability, acceptability, portability and fungibility, #Bitcoin fulfils the properties of good money. I regard stability and acceptability as meta properties. As the market capitalization of a currency grows, these properties get satisfied✅✅

Portability is also something well incentivized to be taken care of, although the challenges of making Bitcoin cheap and fast are far from trivial, the brainpower⚡ directed towards achieving these goals is extraordinary✅

☝️☝️☝️This leaves us with fungibility as the primary property to focus. The most important thing one can choose to work on is #Bitcoin’s fungibility

Anonymity is a mathematical tool used to realize other values like privacy of the individual or the fungibility of a currency. It was first formalized in a 1998 research paper titled Protecting Privacy when Disclosing Information: k-Anonymity.
epic.org/privacy/reiden…

For example, Wasabi Wallet often brings together 100 individuals to make collaborative and shared transactions, namely coinjoins

wasabiwallet.io

These k-anonymized UTXOs are indistinguishable from each other. This is how anonymization, a mathematical tool, realizes the indistinguishability — also known as homogeneity or fungibility — property of a currency.

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FUNGIBILITY OF A CURRENCY ENSURES PRIVACY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
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Privacy is the individual’s ability to reveal themselves selectively to the world📚📚📚

A currency lacking fungibility takes away the individual’s freedom to keep their financial matters personal and define the boundaries of their financial life; therefore, lack of financial privacy is a direct consequence of inferior fungibility

A more legal strand of definitions emerged in 1890, when privacy was first proposed to be a fundamental human right and defined as “the right to be let alone”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right…

Privacy isn’t only a toy for lawyers or philosophers, since it encompasses an individual’s ability, it also has profound psychological relevance💀

We all begin life by having zero privacy. Then, as we grow, we learn to define our boundaries; learn who we let close and who not. Studies on children illustrate this: as they grow, they develop their Self concept.

jstor.org/stable/20014176

Studies of prison populations show that the opposite of privacy development occurs in these spaces. In such circumstances, the Self concept of inmates shrinks down significantly to their body, some immediate actions, and a few belongings.

jstor.org/stable/26751641

The fundamental political difference between people is: how many walls should there be around your stuff? The ultimate liberal answer is zero and the ultimate conservative answer is: “Bring on those walls!” - @jordanbpeterson

The privacy challenges of the future will not be the same as those of the past. I believe we're looking ahead of a world of strong privacy.

If you liked this tweet storm and want to dive deeper into the ocean of nyms and identities consider checking out my latest essay on the topic🙏🙏🙏

https://twitter.com/nopara73/status/1396790514909863938