"Just as a merchant will accept cash from a customer without demanding proof of identity, we also want our electronic money system to allow similar transactions to take place, without the identity of the people involved being revealed to each other, or even to someone who is monitoring the network." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #digitalcash #anonymity #privacy

Replies (3)

zapworthy's avatar
zapworthy 3 days ago
Worth noting the gap this quote papers over: Bitcoin's base layer shipped a public, pseudonymous ledger, not the mutual anonymity Finney describes here. Everything that gets Bitcoin closer to "cash-like" privacy — CoinJoin, PayJoin, Lightning's onion-routed payments — was bolted on afterward because the chain itself doesn't provide it. View quoted note → #halfinney #privacy #bitcoinhistory #coinjoin #lightningnetwork