The Rise of the Sovereign Individual - How power is re-aligning itself in an internet-native world | dergigi.com The Rise of the Sovereign Individual<br>How power is re-aligning itself in an internet-native world<br>591280 1 conversation 7 translations 🧡

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio. Here is a link to the audio instead.<br>Read by Guy Swann.Not too long ago, the internet was a fringe phenomenon. Very few people saw the benefits of a global communications network. Even fewer people had the vision and the foresight to see what it might enable. Today, most people take the internet for granted. It is simply expected to be there, like running water in your home.<br>Even before the internet became ubiquitous, technologists and visionaries realized the potential of this transformative technology. They realized that an undiscriminating network combined with the magical power of public-key cryptography tips the power-balance in the individual’s favor.<br>Eavesdropping-resistant communication which can’t be stopped is poison to authoritarian regimes, which, after all, are in the business of suppressing and controlling the flow of information. If people are still able to communicate and assemble, they can rise up and speak truth to power. We saw the liberating potential of communications technology during the Arab Spring, and we continue to see individuals rise up and fight authoritarian rule today.<br>What the cypherpunks understood 30 years ago is starting to play out right before our eyes: the tools of our information age have the potential to empower individuals like never before.<br>The Freedom to Transact<br>As I am writing these lines, hundreds of thousands of people are marching in the streets of Hong Kong, protesting against an extradition bill proposed by the government. As always, protests like these shine a light on the current power balance between individuals and the powers that be.<br>Unfortunately, the current system of surveillance, automated facial recognition, and cashless transfers enables not only a single point of failure, but also a single point of control in times of unrest. If the government doesn’t like your opinion or the fact that you were part of a (peaceful) protest, a simple truth becomes apparent: your freedom of assembly was an illusion, as was your freedom to transact freely.<br>In a free society, these freedoms should be guaranteed. How? Well, as we have seen in the past, information technology and strong cryptography — if used carefully — guarantee the right to speak freely. After all, no amount of violence will ever solve a math problem. In the same vein, an information technology exists today which guarantees the right to transact freely: Bitcoin.<br>It is easy to forget that “permissionless” and “censorship-resistant” are more than mere buzzwords. Under difficult circumstances, these words become a matter of life and death. The Hong Kong protests make evident once again what privacy advocates have been preaching for years, even decades: if censorship and surveillance are built into the system, it will be used and abused by those who are in charge. And if you don’t have the option to detach from your identity, free speech, free thought, and free action are impossible.<br>What is true for WeChat, Facebook, and Google, is also true for our current payment rails and the financial institutions of this world. No matter how noble the motivation of building central controls into communication or financial systems — power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the saying goes.<br>Decentralized and private payments are a necessary innovation for a digital future where we retain our civil liberties and personal freedoms.”<br>Alex Gladstein

Strong cryptography allows us to reclaim our right to private conversations in the digital age, thanks to end-to-end encryption. The same cryptography allows us to reclaim our right to transact freely in a digital world, thanks to digital signatures, cryptographic hashes, and the global machine of truth and freedom which is Bitcoin.<br>The Freedom to Remain Private<br>In today’s digital world — as Hong Kong protesters know — finding out who went to which protest is as easy as retrieving data from a database. Whether it is from people’s bank accounts, WeChat, Alipay, or other virtual profiles, the convenience of the status quo inevitably leads to a system of total surveillance, and thus total control.<br>The solution to this conundrum is enabling privacy by default, which has been the default setting for thousands of years. Neither the internet nor Bitcoin is perfect in these regards, which is why constant vigilance and the development of privacy-enhancing technology are a necessity.<br>In the last couple of years, efforts to encrypt all internet traffic by default have been made. In the next couple of years, we hope to see continued efforts being made to make every bitcoin transaction even more private than they are now (which is one of the reasons why Bull Bitcoin uses Wasabi’s...