A Few thoughts for the cornell bitcoin club
“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society.”
These words are from a Cypherpunk's Manifesto by Eric Hughes on March 9, 1993.
16 years before the Bitcoin whitepaper was published. Right now, we are 16 years into bitcoin and privacy is arguably now more than ever under threat.
people
network
language
hello
family
friend
energy
educate
allow
galaxy
economy
effort
Those 12 words could be thought of as bitcoin. They theoretically might be a 12 word seed phrase. This document is riddled with seed phrases from the 2,048 words in BIP-39. Theoretically, it’s a non-custodial software which the government seeks to constitute as a money transmitter service and crack down on.
“An entirely new realm of economic activity that is not hostage to physical violence will emerge in cyberspace. The most obvious benefits will flow to the “cognitive elite”...For the first time, those who can educate themselves will be almost entirely free to invent their own work and realize the full benefits of their own productivity…In the Information Society, no one who is truly able will be detained by the ill-formed opinions of others…Merit, wherever it arises, will be rewarded as never before. In an environment where the greatest source of wealth will be the ideas you have in your head rather than physical capital alone, anyone who thinks clearly will potentially be rich” (17-18).
“Technology will make individuals more nearly sovereign than ever before” (22).
“In the Information Age, individuals will be able to use cybercurrencies and thus declare their monetary independence. When individuals can conduct their own monetary policies over the World Wide Web it will matter less or not at all that the state continues to control the industrial-era printing presses. Their importance for controlling the world’s wealth will be transcended by mathematical algorithms that have no physical existence. In the new millennium, cybermoney controlled by private markets will supersede fiat money issued by governments. Only the poor will be victims of inflation and ensuing collapses into deflation that are consequences of the artificial leverage which fiat money injects into the economy” (24-25).
“Governments will violate human rights, censor the free flow of information, sabotage useful technologies, and worse. For the same reasons that the late, departed Soviet Union tried in vain to suppress access to personal computers and Xerox machines. Western government will seek to suppress the cybereconomy by totalitarian means” (25).
The above are from the book The Sovereign Individual written in 1997.
I share all this to say that there’s an incredible amount of history to Bitcoin, and especially given recent events, I felt it important to historically contextualize the messages of this speech.
Bitcoin is not a first attempt, but there’s better. It’s not a fad. It’s not void of substance and purpose. If nothing else, bitcoin can be a tool for you to protect yourself from monetary debasement, overreach from powerful entities, and uncertainty. We’re on a mission to protect individual freedoms and support a sound money solution to a broken money standard, open-sourcing our efforts, our Proof of Work, for the benefit of the network.
Bitcoin is a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The Cornell Bitcoin Club is a Peer-to-Peer Educational Community of Students.
At the end of the day, community is everything. Your peer-to-peer network is everything. (h/t Natalie Smolenski)
A node on its own is just a node. But, all that is needed for a network is 2 nodes. The word Bitcoin is mentioned 2 times in the whitepaper (in the title & website). The word “network” is mentioned 21 times. Satoshi was too purposeful for this to be a coincidence.
It was a network who brought us bitcoin and it’s a network who are and will continue the mission to protect freedom, human flourishing, property rights, privacy, energy, agency, critical thinking, community, _______ worldwide.
When I started this club, I never could have imagined the network we created here would have 65 nodes. Thank you all for joining me this semester on this journey to build a community, to build a network. To build a space to have conversations on topics not often discussed and to think differently, together.
The Bitcoin network holds immense power to foster connection worldwide. Through Bitcoin, we can communicate with people worldwide, that we’ve never even met, whose language we don’t speak, whose stories we don’t know & say “I see you, I hear you, I value you, what you do means something to me — I respect you” in a way never before possible. And this, I feel, could be/is the deeper message of the whitepaper and why we’re all here.
When you think of a timechain, and while these demarcations are not exact and incorporate other elements, Layer 0 is the social/human layer. Layer 1 is the information layer, the record of truth and work. Layer 2 is the scalability/ transactions layer. This semester, we worked on Layer 0 and 1. We built our community and we established baseline knowledge and some Proof of Work. However, looking to next semester, we can begin to really think about transacting, engaging, interacting with Bitcoin and its network. On that note, different projects include:
A “Lawathon”
Bitcoin Students Conference
Bitcoin Mining Day/ Workshops
Financial Freedom in the 21st Century Research Study with Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute
Bitcoin Career Day
Author Visits & Film Screenings
One-off Events / Panels / Speakers / Workshop with leadings individuals and companies
It’s important to me that no one feels they need to change their interest to be interested in Bitcoin. I look forward to continuing covering a wide range of topics.
Further, we are a club that embraces values of decentralization, Proof of Work: Exert energy to do your own work. First Principles Thinking; Don’t Trust, Verify, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be organized and supportive of each other. I look forward to supporting our first E-board in their roles and reaching more people in our broader Cornell network. Further, we will continue to embody Low, Not High, Time Preference (delayed gratification), the Cypherpunk Vision (defending individual freedoms and human rights), and open-sourcing (sharing all we do) to have continuous growth.
The strength of Cornell Bitcoin Club lies in the members, in each of your interests, skills and passions. Without you all, I’d go back to being a lonely node. I'd like to support you all in pursuing your individual interests and have the autonomy to pursue them. Your voices and visions are crucial to our Club’s growth and success.
Thank you.
_
Ella Hough
“Speech” Prepared While Running for President
Block Height 841,832~