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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://reason.com/blog/2018/12/16/tim-may-influential-writer-on-crypto-ana?utm_medium=email">https://reason.com/blog/2018/12/16/tim-may-influential-writer-on-crypto-ana?utm_medium=email</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I never realized Tm May was such a big deal. Through making his online acquaintance, I knew he was a really smart guy, very insightful. This is Reason’s write up. I see a lot of the old time ExI crowd in there, such as Wei Dei. What the heck ever happened to him? Anyone here friends with Dei? Please have him drop us a note and say hello to old friends.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><h2 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;font-weight:normal'><a href="https://reason.com/blog/2018/12/16/tim-may-influential-writer-on-crypto-ana"><span style='color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Tim May, Father of 'Crypto Anarchy,' Is Dead at 67</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></h2><h2 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:14.4pt'><span style='font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;font-weight:normal'>The Cypherpunk co-founder was a major influence on both bitcoin and WikiLeaks.<o:p></o:p></span></h2><p class=byline style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:9.5pt'><a href="https://reason.com/people/jim-epstein/all"><b><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Jim Epstein</span></b></a></span><span class=pipe><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:#CCCCCC;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>|</span></span><span style='font-size:9.5pt'>Dec. 16, 2018 11:31 am<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Symbol'>·</span><span style='font-size:10.5pt'> </span><span class=caption><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Jim Epstein</span></span><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Tim May, co-founder of the influential Cypherpunks mailing list and a significant influence on both bitcoin and WikiLeaks, passed away last week at his home in Corralitos, California. The news was announced Saturday on a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lucky.green.73/posts/10155498914786706"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Facebook post</span></a> written by his friend Lucky Green.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>In his influential 1988 essay, "<a href="https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto</span></a>," May predicted that advances in computer technology would eventually allow "individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other" anonymously and without government intrusion. "These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation [and] the ability to tax and control economic interactions," he wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>A deeply private person, May's aversion to outside intrusions defined his philosophical outlook. "'Leave me alone,'" he wrote, is "at the root of libertarianism more so than formal theories about the nature of man."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>"My political philosophy is keep your hands off my stuff....Out of my files, out of my office, off what I eat, drink, and smoke," he once <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525953205/reasonmagazineA/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>told</span></a> journalist Andy Greenberg.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Born in 1951, May grew up in in a suburb of San Diego before his family moved to Washington, D.C., when his father, a naval officer, was transferred there. At the age of 12, he joined a local gun club at the urging of his father and would become a lifelong collector. May was a loner, a science prodigy, and a voracious consumer of science fiction. In the summer of 1967, when entering his junior year in high school, he picked up a copy of Ayn Rand's <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'><a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191145/reasonmagazineA/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F'>Atlas Shrugged</span></a></span></em>. "It just spoke to me," he said in a 2017 unpublished video interview with <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Reason,</span></em> which is being incorporated into a documentary. "I read it nonstop for three days, and to the disdain of my teachers in school, I would write articles about the Anti-Trust Act and the evils of the Sherman Act."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>May went to college at U.C.–Santa Barbara, took graduate physics classes, and got a job at Intel. He solved a crucial issue plaguing the functioning of memory chips, publishing his findings in a <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1479948"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>1979 paper</span></a>, and then retired in 1986 at the age of 34, cashing in his stock options. He would never have to work again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>In 1987, May's friend Chip Morningstar introduced him to the economist and entrepreneur Phil Salin—a meeting that would lead May to formulate the concept of crypto anarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Salin was building the American Information Exchange, or AMiX, the first online marketplace for buying and selling information. "It was clear he was a strong libertarian of the Hayek sort," May recalled. "We all shared the same views." But Salin's vision of an e-commerce platform that would reduce transaction costs, facilitate cross-border trade, and make localized expertise more widely available didn't resonate with May's anarchism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>"People aren't going to be selling meaningless stuff like surfboard recommendations," he told Salin. May recalled suggesting that instead it could serve as "a high-tech version of Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden," paraphrasing himself.* "Or someone who can exfiltrate bomber plans for that B-1 Bomber." May later <a href="http://www.ussrback.com/crypto/misc/blacknet.html"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>fleshed out his idea</span></a>, calling "BlackNet," where "nation-states, export laws, patent laws, national security considerations and the like [are considered] relics of the pre-cyberspace era."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>He also perceived a crucial flaw: BlackNet couldn't function without a non-governmental digital currency. "I admitted to Phil the big problem was untraceable payments," he recalled. "They can be tracked when they send their Visa information." The next day, May dug up a copy of the October 1985 copy of <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Communications of the ACM</span></em> featuring a cover story by cryptographer David Chaum, titled "<a href="https://www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh/pub/secsem/chaum1985bigbrother.pdf"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete</span></a>."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>"It was an epiphany," May recalled. "It was like standing on top of the mountain and seeing that this is out there."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Chaum's work applied the tools of cryptography—mathematical techniques for sending secret messages—to real-world problems. His 1985 article sketched out a new digital currency system that used cryptography to hide a purchaser's identity. May saw Chaum's scheme as deeply flawed, but came away convinced that a decentralized, non-governmental digital money system was possible. Chaum's work also led him to focus on the political implications of public-key cryptography, a system first described in a <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>1976 paper</span></a> that allowed perfect strangers to exchange secret messages and establish provable, pseudonymous identities.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>May became convinced that public-key cryptography combined with networked computing would break apart social power structures. It would create a virtual space that May compared to "Galt's Gulch," the fictional Colorado community in <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Atlas Shrugged</span></em> where Rand's heroes go to escape government intrusion and establish a capitalist paradise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>In September of 1988, May sat down at his Macintosh Plus "for an hour and a half" to bang out an essay loosely patterned after <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>The Communist Manifesto.</span></em> He titled it "<a href="https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto</span></a>." Running 497 words, it was his most influential piece of writing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>"Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure," he wrote, "so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>In September 1992, May and his friends Eric Hughes and Hugh Daniel came up with the idea of setting up an online mailing list to discuss their ideas. Within a few days of its launch, a hundred people had signed up for the Cypherpunks mailing list. (The group's name was coined by Hughes' girlfriend as a play on the "cyberpunk" genre of fiction.) By 1997, it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk#cite_note-:0-2"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>averaged 30 messages daily</span></a> with about 2,000 subscribers. May was its <a href="https://mailing-list-archive.cryptoanarchy.wiki/authors/by-posts/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>most prolific contributor</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>May and Hughes, along with free speech activist John Gilmore, wore masks on the cover of the second issue of <em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Wired</span></em>magazine accompanying a profile by journalist <a href="https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Steven Levy</span></a>, who described the Cypherpunks as "more a gathering of those who share a predilection for codes, a passion for privacy, and the gumption to do something about it."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black;border:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:2.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span class=caption><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Wired</span></span><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>The Cypherpunks list, which dissolved shortly after September 11, 2001 ("a lot of people got cold feet about talking about this stuff"), was deeply influential at a time when the U.S. government was fighting to keep public-key cryptography out of the hands of the public. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was an active reader and participant on the list, contributing his first posts in 1995 under the name "Proff."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Assange's 2012 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1944869085/reasonmagazineA/"><em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;text-decoration:none'>Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet</span></em></a> restated May's theory in grandiose terms, describing how "a strange property of the physical universe that we live in" (cryptography) made it possible to create "new lands barred to those who control physical reality."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Did bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, contribute to the Cypherpunks list under a different name? There's no way of knowing, but the core components of his invention incubated in its voluminous, technical correspondence. From the outset of their project, May and his fellow travelers were focused on creating an internet-based cryptographic currency shielded from government interference—completing the technical challenge Chaum had only begun to solve.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>The British cryptographer Adam Back <a href="http://www.hashcash.org/papers/announce.txt"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>first proposed</span></a> HashCash on the list, a system for creating digital scarcity (known as "proof of work") that was later cited in Nakamoto's white paper. Nick Szabo—the creator of "Bit Gold," who coined the phrase "smart contracts"—discussed his ideas on the list. Wei Dai, who Nakamoto contacted while formulating bitcoin, <a href="http://mailing-list-archive.cryptoanarchy.wiki/archive/1998/12/56d10cf5f88e5d6d68797c6a3b94a25e355e561a2b8636b6b1f53bd577802fb4/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>proposed his digital cash system, "b-money,"</span></a> on the list, citing May as a major influence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Another major contributor was computer scientist Hal Finney, who died in 2014. Finney came up with the idea of using Back's technology to create an e-money; along with, Nakamoto he was the most important figure in bitcoin's early days.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>May himself brought the attention of his fellow cypherpunks to a <a href="https://www.anf.es/pdf/Haber_Stornetta.pdf"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>digital timestamping system</span></a> developed by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, a primitive version of what would become known as a blockchain. "I can see these connections that are not fully formed," May recalled. "I can just tell something is going to be important."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>After the Cypherpunks list dissolved, May's influence faded—until Nakamoto's 2008 bombshell. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency spawned a new generation of techno-libertarians self-identifying as Cypherpunks. May's writings started recirculating, and the movement found a new home: Parallel Polis, a three-story building in Prague, home to the <a href="https://paralelnapolis.sk/institute-of-cryptoanarchy/"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Institute of Cryptoanarchy</span></a>, which puts on an annual <a href="https://neworder.hcpp.cz/#about"><span style='color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in'>Hacker's Conference</span></a> to advance the ideas of May and his fellow travelers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>May recently expressed disgust with the current state of the cryptocurrency community, citing its overpriced conferences and the advent of "bitcoin exchanges that have draconian rules about KYC, AML, passports, freezes on accounts and laws about reporting 'suspicious activity' to the local secret police."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>"I think Satoshi would barf," he told <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/enough-with-the-ico-me-so-horny-get-rich-quick-lambo-crypto"><em><span style='font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:#FF6C2F;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;text-decoration:none'>CoinDesk</span></em></a> in his last published interview. In my last exchange with May in November, he told me that he was done granting interviews with reporters, feeling burned out on the space. He preferred to spend his time playing with his new MIDI keyboard.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Did May's prediction of crypto anarchy turn out wrong, or is it too early to tell? In 2017, he was optimistic that many of the changes he foresaw in the late 1980s were beginning to take shape, speaking of a fork in the road—the world was moving toward either Leviathan or an "anarchic-type system." There would be no in-between.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>More recently, he quoted the epitaph found on Ancient Roman gravestones: "I was not. I was. I am not. I don't care."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.25in;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black'>Rest in peace, Tim May.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>