"Cash is an escape valve in our increasingly intermediated and therefore surveilled world." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #privacy #surveillance #freedom

"You can pay for access to a database, download a program, or have a prescription filled — without anyone being able to trace the transaction back to you." — David Chaum (Security Without Identification, 1985) #privacy #transactions #anonymity

"When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs." — Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2013) #bitcoin #satoshi #history

"The last characteristic which we note in the history of cryptography is the division between amateur and professional cryptographers. Skill in production cryptanalysis has always been heavily on the side of the professionals, but innovation, particularly in the design of new types of cryptographic systems, has come primarily from the amateurs." — Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #innovation #amateur #freedom

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #cyberspace #independence #government

"The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global social network." — fiatjaf (Nostr Protocol Documentation, 2020) #nostr #protocol #censorshipresistance

"Building security from day one is much easier than adding it on as an afterthought." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #security

"The tech powers that be are nothing without our data." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #data #power #resistance #techcompanies

"Because cash is permissionless, it is censorship resistant." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #censorship #permissionless #freedom

"'Swiss banks in cyberspace' will make economic transactions much more liquid and much less subject to local rules and regulations." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #digitalcash #economics #regulation #freedom

"Pretty Good Privacy empowers people to take their privacy into their own hands. There has been a growing social need for it." — Philip Zimmermann (Why I Wrote PGP, 1991) #pgp #privacy #empowerment

"Because Bitcoin's DMMS is computationally, and therefore thermodynamically, very expensive, alternatives have been proposed which seek to be economically and environmentally more efficient. One popular alternative, proof-of-stake, is frequently proposed as a mechanism for a cheap distributed consensus. As argued by the author in 2014, this is simply not workable." — Andrew Poelstra (On Stake and Consensus, 2015) #bitcoin #consensus #cryptocurrency

"If you have a certain amount of time to spend on advancing the cause of greater personal privacy, can you do it better by using the time to learn about cryptography and develop the tools to protect privacy, or by convincing your government not to invade your privacy?" — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #privacy #cryptography

"Some have predicted that the initial success of electronic money may be in the form of a technically illegal 'black market' where crypto-hackers buy and sell information, using cryptography to protect against government crackdowns." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #digitalcash #cryptography #resistance

"Perhaps we never fully understand that balance until one of those secret rights disappears without warning, because no one even knew it mattered until it was gone." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #rights #warning #privacy #freedom

"Privacy is the foundation that allows freedom of speech, thought, and association to thrive. Without it, these freedoms exist only on paper and can't be exercised in practice in a meaningful way." — Zooko Wilcox (Cypherpunk Technologies Press Release, 2023) #privacy #freespeech #freedom

"Tracking everyone is no longer inconceivable, and is in fact happening all the time." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #surveillance #tracking #privacy #warning

"If you encrypted your files, then if a court wanted your files they would have to come and threaten you and you would have the control to make the choice as to whether you would surrender your files or not." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #encryption #privacy

"Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries." — Edward Snowden (Permanent Record, 2019) #patriotism #constitution #whistleblower

"For Bitcoin to succeed and become secure, bitcoins must become vastly more expensive." — Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2011) #bitcoin #security #economics