#cypherpunk
49 items · 49 articles
Articles
Protocol First, Library Second, Application Third
The zkSNACKs coordinator died because we ran the only one; Wasabi the client survived because that layer was protocol-shaped, not operator-shaped.
Building the Parallel Economy
Praxeology joins cypherpunk cryptography: privacy is a fact of action, a defensible norm, and a buildable property under pressure.
Trust and Dispute in the Parallel Economy
Tools move bits and settle payments. Reliability over time and adjudication of broken deals remain unbuilt institutional work.
Implementation Strategy
Privacy implementation is progressive. Each tier addresses a different adversary and stops where its threat model is covered.
Operational Security
Cryptography fails when humans fail. OPSEC ties each defense to a specific adversary and sustains the discipline over time.
Decentralized Social Infrastructure
Nostr moves identity from platform databases into user-held keypairs, so a ban no longer deletes the social graph.
Bitcoin Privacy and Monetary Layers
Bitcoin's base layer is transparent by design. Privacy on Bitcoin is an architectural achievement built in layers above it.
Bitcoin as Sound and Resistant Money
Bitcoin's monetary rules hold because every full node validates blocks against them. A chain that breaks them carries no value.
Bitcoin and the Digital Money Breakthrough
Nakamoto solved double-spending without a central operator and produced base money instead of another claim on an issuer.
Anonymous Communication Networks
Content encryption hides what was said. The transport layer leaks who is communicating with whom, enough for targeting decisions.
Computing on Secrets
Homomorphic encryption, MPC, and trusted enclaves each run a computation on inputs the executing party is not permitted to see.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Zero-knowledge proofs separate what is verified from what is revealed, ending the forced choice between participation and privacy.
Cryptographic Foundations
Cryptography shifts trust from institutions to mathematics, and that shift carries every privacy primitive the book later builds.
The Crypto Wars
Crypto controls failed against builders, held against defaults, and locked in the two-tier privacy equilibrium thirty years later.
The Analytics Stack
Commercial firms assemble surveillance no agency could lawfully build, and the state buys the output as a service.
Corporate Surveillance and Data Extraction
Corporate data extraction inverts the market: the advertiser is the customer, and the user supplies the raw material.
Financial Surveillance and the State
Financial surveillance is triangular intervention. The state forces banks to watch customers, and CBDCs strip the buffer entirely.
Money and Privacy
Money emerges by market process. Sound money carries privacy alongside its three classical functions; fiat lacks all four.
Privacy as Capital
Privacy tools are capital that compounds across uses; institutional promises last only as long as state goodwill does.
The Economic Value of Privacy
Privacy aids exchange by guarding deliberation and negotiation from observation that chills marginal trades and distorts the rest.
Information, Scarcity, and Property
Property rights apply to scarce things. Information is non-scarce, so privacy stands on self-ownership, owned media, and contract.
Chapter 5: The Axiom of Resistance
Systems can be designed to resist external control. The claim rests on computational hardness and the record of deployed tools.
Chapter 4: The Argumentation Axiom and Self-Ownership
To argue is to presuppose control of body and mind. Coerced surveillance breaks that presupposition and counts as aggression.
Chapter 3: The Action Axiom: Privacy as Structural Feature
Privacy is built into the structure of human action. Deliberation and the asymmetry between actor and observer are structural.
Chapter 2: Two Traditions, One Conclusion
Austrian deduction and cypherpunk code reach the same privacy conclusion from opposite directions. Their agreement is evidence.
Chapter 1: The Nature of Privacy
Privacy is control over disclosure. Observation cost decides if any targeted intervention runs, and cypherpunk tools raise it.
The Praxeology of Privacy: Endorsements, Foreword, Preface
Third edition, joining Austrian economics and cypherpunk engineering on what privacy is, why it survives, and how to defend it.
The Frequency of Dissent
Mesh networks turn every radio into a relay and every user into infrastructure, creating communication grids with no center to seize.
Your Software Runs on Enemy Infrastructure
Freedom tech projects build censorship-resistant tools on censorship-susceptible platforms. The Nostr stack offers a coherent migration path for sovereign development infrastructure.
When They Come for the Protocols
Governments cannot kill open protocols, so they imprison the humans who write them, spending $275 billion per year to catch nothing.
A Constitution for the Ungoverned
Medieval merchants and diaspora communities built functional legal systems without states; their principles can now govern disputes in cyberspace.
The Algebra of Trust
Anonymous commerce requires solving the trust problem, and the solution may be to treat trust itself as a quantifiable, tradeable commodity.
Strategic Intelligence for Freedom-Builders: Paul Rosenberg's Quarterly Newsletter
Rosenberg predicted Bitcoin in fiction seven years early. His quarterly newsletter delivers strategic intelligence for freedom-builders, not commentary for readers.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 21: Building the Parallel Economy
The parallel economy grows through counter-economics. Cheap defense defeats expensive attack. When theft becomes unprofitable, the state withers. Build. Trade. Resist.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 20: Implementation Strategy
Start with honest assessment. Build progressively from basics to advanced. Find community. Privacy is not a destination but ongoing practice. Progress matters.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 15: Bitcoin: Resistance Money
Bitcoin solves double-spending without trusted third parties. Sound money enforced by code. Base layer privacy requires additional tools like Lightning and coinjoin.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 13: Cryptographic Foundations
Cryptography provides mathematical privacy foundations: encryption, hashing, and digital signatures enable trustless verification. Implementation bugs and human error remain the weakest links.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 12: The Crypto Wars
The Crypto Wars pit states against privacy technology. Mathematics ignores legislation. Developers face prosecution. The fundamental conflict is permanent and intensifying.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 11: Corporate Surveillance and Data Extraction
Corporate surveillance extracts behavioral data for prediction products. State and corporate surveillance are deeply entangled. Markets are responding to growing privacy demand.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 5: The Axiom of Resistance
The Axiom of Resistance assumes systems can resist control. Mathematics, empirical evidence, and similar systems support this well-grounded but non-self-evident assumption.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 2: Two Traditions, One Conclusion
Austrian economics and cypherpunk practice converge independently on privacy's importance. Theory explains why; code demonstrates how. This book synthesizes both traditions.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 1: The Nature of Privacy
Privacy is selective disclosure, not hiding. Breaking adversary observation through the OODA loop is strategic defense. Cheap privacy defeats expensive surveillance.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Preface
Austrian economists theorize but cannot build. Cypherpunks build but lack theory. This book synthesizes both to make the state irrelevant.
Seven Resolutions
Freedom requires commitment, not sentiment. Seven resolutions define the ethical foundation for those who would build a voluntary society instead of complaining.
The Quiet Departure
The loudest revolutions fail; the quiet ones succeed. We do not protest or petition. We build alternatives and simply leave.
Builders, Not Talkers
Decades of libertarian theory and cypherpunk tools have produced almost nothing because ideas without builders are worthless. Act or leave us alone.
No Papers Required: How Zapstore Breaks the App Store Checkpoint
Developer KYC creates chokepoints that authoritarian governments ruthlessly exploit. Zapstore restores permissionless software distribution using cryptographic identity instead of government papers.
The Cypher Wars: Choose Your Weapon Wisely
Use ChaCha20-Poly1305 everywhere without hardware AES. Use AES-256-GCM with AES-NI. Never reuse nonces. Prefer AEAD always.
Summary of: The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Economic Logic in Cypherpunk Implementation
A book explaining why Privacy = Economic necessity proven through Austrian logic. Three axioms (Action + Argumentation + Resistance) demonstrate that surveillance destroys market calculation like socialist planning, while cryptography restores conditions for voluntary coordination. Complete bridge between Austrian economics and cypherpunk technology.