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> cypherpunks That's not what you think it means. The crowds behind the names you dropped are very different and have very little overlap.

Thorrez 7y ago
I agree somewhat. I was having a hard time thinking of a good term, but cypherpunk was the best I could come up with (better than crypto-anarchist, crypto-utopian, hacker, geek, nerd, cryptographer, crypto-enthusiast). I did intentionally include variety even though I know it weakens the overlap. There were a bunch of things I could have included instead that would have been more similar, but I thought that was a bit boring. The Wikipedia page for cypherpunk mentions Tor, Bitcoin, and Signal. So some of them are definitely cypherpunk. The 2 things I think are the least similar are RISC-V and homomorphic encryption. Both of those are mentioned in at least a couple threads on cpunks.org . In fact everything listed is mentioned on cpunks.org except Riot, Peertube, Dfinity, and Blockstack (although a different thing called Blockstack is mentioned). Riot is mentioned in /r/cypherpunk . There are articles linking Blockstack[1] and Dfinity[2] to cypherpunks. I guess the only one that really stands out then is Peertube. It has a slight link due to a cypherpunk-themed instance[3] and the @cypherpunk@mastodon.social account boosting toots about Peertube. There is one place where all those things are discussed: Hacker News. So I could have said "Hacker News user", but HN users have a reputation of being cynical, whereas I wanted a more optimistic term, and thought cypherpunk fit that. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/cypherpunk-dream-blockstream-developer-departs-build-bitcoin-web https://www.coindesk.com/cypherpunk-dream-blockstream-develo... [2] https://fortune.com/2018/10/23/dfinity-blockchain-assassination-market/ https://fortune.com/2018/10/23/dfinity-blockchain-assassinat... [3] https://watching.cypherpunk.observer https://watching.cypherpunk.observer

Thorrez 7y ago

I agree somewhat. I was having a hard time thinking of a good term, but cypherpunk was the best I could come up with (better than crypto-anarchist, crypto-utopian, hacker, geek, nerd, cryptographer, crypto-enthusiast). I did intentionally include variety even though I know it weakens the overlap. There were a bunch of things I could have included instead that would have been more similar, but I thought that was a bit boring. The Wikipedia page for cypherpunk mentions Tor, Bitcoin, and Signal. So some of them are definitely cypherpunk. The 2 things I think are the least similar are RISC-V and homomorphic encryption. Both of those are mentioned in at least a couple threads on cpunks.org . In fact everything listed is mentioned on cpunks.org except Riot, Peertube, Dfinity, and Blockstack (although a different thing called Blockstack is mentioned). Riot is mentioned in /r/cypherpunk . There are articles linking Blockstack[1] and Dfinity[2] to cypherpunks. I guess the only one that really stands out then is Peertube. It has a slight link due to a cypherpunk-themed instance[3] and the @cypherpunk@mastodon.social account boosting toots about Peertube. There is one place where all those things are discussed: Hacker News. So I could have said "Hacker News user", but HN users have a reputation of being cynical, whereas I wanted a more optimistic term, and thought cypherpunk fit that. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/cypherpunk-dream-blockstream-developer-departs-build-bitcoin-web https://www.coindesk.com/cypherpunk-dream-blockstream-develo... [2] https://fortune.com/2018/10/23/dfinity-blockchain-assassination-market/ https://fortune.com/2018/10/23/dfinity-blockchain-assassinat... [3] https://watching.cypherpunk.observer https://watching.cypherpunk.observer