The Bitcoin Game #59: Dr. Adam Back

The Bitcoin Game

Welcome to episode 59 of The Bitcoin Game, I'm Rob Mitchell. I'm happy to bring to you part one of an interview with Cypherpunk and CEO of Blockstream, Dr. Adam Back. Dr. Back talks about topics such as his first computers, his early privacy-oriented work, Hashcash vs. other proof-of-work, various early electronic money systems, and his work on Bitcoin Confidential Transactions. Get ready to soak in some history from one of the people whose "work" became an integral part of Bitcoin.

EPISODE LINKS

Adam Back (Adam3us) on Twitter https://twitter.com/adam3us

Dr. Back's Info Page http://www.cypherspace.org/adam

Blockstream https://blockstream.com

Malta (Crypto-friendly) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/how-malta-became-a-hub-of-the-cryptocurrency-world-quicktake

Dr. Back's First Computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum

PGP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Cypherpunks Mailing List https://cryptoanarchy.wiki/getting-started/what-is-the-cypherpunks-mailing-list

Adam's Credential Library for Ecash & DigiCash http://cypherspace.org/credlib

David Chaum's Ecash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash

Stefan Brands' DigiCash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash

Adam Back's Eternity http://www.cypherspace.org/eternity

Usenet News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Pseudonymous Remailers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonymous_remailer

Hal Finney (integrated PGP into remailers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist)

Adam Back's Hashcash http://www.hashcash.org

Spam Assassin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_SpamAssassin

Microsoft Digital Postmarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Postmarks

SYN Cookies, by Dan Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_cookies

Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail (PDF) http://www.hashcash.org/papers/pvp.pdf

Old communication between Peter Todd, Adam Back and Hal Finney https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/bluesky/2001-March.txt

Wei Dai's B-Money https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/B-money

Nick Szabo's Bit Gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold

Hal Finney's RPOW - Reusable Proof of Work https://nakamotoinstitute.org/finney/rpow/index.html

TPM - Trusted Platform Module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module

Confidential Transactions https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/confidential-transactions-how-hiding-transaction-amounts-increases-bitcoin-privacy-1464892525

Elements (Sidechain) https://elementsproject.org

Liquid (Sidechain) https://blockstream.com/liquid

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CREDITS

All music in this episode of The Bitcoin Game was created by Rob Mitchell.

The Bitcoin Game box art was created from an illustration by Rock Barcellos.

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