Financing The Revolution: Safe And Private Value Transactions With Digital Cash

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Presented at Berlinsides 2010 by

Jeffery Paul

berlinsides.org

Torify your bank account. Description: In my talk I will outline the current state of the art of both centralized and decentralized, anonymous and pseudonymous value stores and transaction processing possibilities. Using these tools and services, those with a penchant for privacy can conduct trade away from prying eyes or controlling influences with impunity. The recent deactivation of credit processing accounts by PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa against Wikileaks underscores the need for covert, private, or otherwise unpopular organizations and individuals to have a secure and worry-free way of receiving, storing, and sending value, be it a digital representation of currency or plain-old deposited metals. The presentation will include brief overviews of Chaumian blinded tokens (the basis for many modern digital cash systems), the current p2p cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the Open Transactions project, and PKTP. I will provide detail about the strengths and weaknesses of current systems, notes and experience based on practical use of these methods, and explain areas in which additional thought, development resources, or users are needed to grow and expand the utility of digital cash. At the end, I will provide additional resources (irc, mailing lists, forums) for linking up with projects, users, and like-minded hackers. About the author: My name is Jeffrey Paul, aka sneak (sneak@datavibe.net), and I'm an American-born hacker and security researcher living in Berlin. In 1999, I founded datavibe.net, a non-profit hosting service for artists. Since 2009, my company EEQJ has been providing world-class security R&D and consulting services to an array of clients.