The price of decentralization is eternal surveillance

Noble missions require focus. Trying to jugulty multiple disparate interests often leaves more than fatigue. At a time when distractions abound, there are privileged minds that have their clear purpose. This is the case of Adam Backfounder of blockstream, creator of HashCash and first person to receive the White Paper from Bitcoin by the hand of Satoshi himself.

Back does not believe, like Nietszsche, that Life without music would be a mistake. When we asked him about what he liked to listen, he replied with a disdainful and generalized of everything. Nor is a reader considered, although, when entering the Cypherpunk post list, he did read the classics they recommended there: Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner; Neuromancer, from William Gibson; But the book that caused a more significant impression on it was Snow crash, by Neal Stephenson:

“If you read it you probably find some Bitcoin issues, although it was written forty years ago. He talks about the implications of electronic money and a much more decentralized society, without government.”

Adam Back

These are the interests of Adam Back: electronic money, cryptography, decentralization and free market. In other words, individual freedom through technologyand precisely thus defines the work Cypherpunk: “Develop technology to help people help themselves.”

And this what was prepared to do once he noticed that the Bitcoin project “had started.” It was not involved immediately. He remained a while on the margins, seeing the news, until after the first halving, when half of the supply had already been broadcast. Upon learning that the capitalization of Bitcoin, after being non -existent, had exceeded one billion dollars in 2013, confirmed that the project had not only started, but “it was quite fast.”

Today Bitcoin is completely different from what it was at that time. Great corporations, even governments are getting involved rapidly because they have been aware of the shortage of this asset.

Despite this, Back thinks that the Cypherpunk spirit is still present in Bitcoin, because that is part of what makes it valuable: being an unconfiscable asset with which transactions can be made without permission from and from anywhere in the world, giving it the opportunity to access the market to all those people who work in informal economies, without bank accounts.

However, the pioneer of cryptography and electronic money It does not rule out that Bitcoin can be captured. As happened with the Internet, that people give control over their identity or services to third parties, subtract property and sovereignty about their digital content, and the same can happen with Bitcoin.

“The price of decentralization is eternal surveillance. So people are always questioning everything. They want to know, is this safe? Is this centralized? Is this bad?

Adam Back

From Back’s perspective, one of the advantages that this tireless surveillance has in an open market like Bitcoin is that there are no monopolies, but options, and people can choose to change services or provide themselves services that fit their principles, without anyone preventing it. “There is a natural balance: if service providers begin to be aggressive and impose too many opinions from the establishment, people will simply leave. While today there is not much departure,” he says.

To enjoy the full interview, you can access the following video: