The Unschooled Bitcioners' Meetup
We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money1.
TUBM is for Bitcoin not Crypto…
The Unschooled Bitcoiners Meetup (TUBM) is a place for people to learn about and discuss how to participate in the Bitcoin network so that it stays decentralized and secure.
At these meetups, there will be no talk of “crypto,” unless it is being used in the sense of cryptography.
Why Bitcoin Only?
It was the Cypherpunks who used cryptography to ensure modern day technologies (including Bitcoin) can be used securely, without sacrificing your sensitive information. Crypto, in the sense used by grifters on twitter (i.e. when referring to alts/memes/ordinals or the cryptocurrency market in general) has nothing to do with security and privacy the way Cypherpunks conceived of the terminology.
For a deeper dive into the cypherpunk ethos in relation to Bitcoin’s origins, view Anita Posch’s presentation:
In their original conception of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto applied the concept of a decentralized, cryptographically secure ledger of transactions that could be stored on a blockchain. Furthermore, their idea applied Proof of Work to ensure that every transaction added to this ledger is immutable. This means, living on the Bitcoin timechain is a complete history of every single bitcoin transaction. Every transaction that ever was and will be is in the public domain and can be verified by anyone with so much as an internet connection. This was a powerful invention and a huge step forward in taking money out of the hands of a few central authorities.
Thus, in 2009 Satoshi pushed into motion what would grow into the massive, decentralized network that is today referred to as Bitcoin. Make no mistake, Bitcoin is the first and only important use for blockchain technology2.
Enter TUBM, the better Bitcoiners meetup
The aim of TUBM is in educating people about Bitcoin technology.
Some of TUBM’s themes will be:
- onboarding people to the Bitcoin/Lightning network;
- enabling business owners to transact over Lightning;
- and education on how Bitcoin technology contains the seeds of financial freedom for the world
So check the Upcoming Events and join us at the next one!
Eric Hughes, “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” alluded to the cypherpunk vision of using cryptograpy as a tool to enforce privacy rights online. Certainly, crypto (in the sense of cryptography) is relevant to Bitcoin, but the term has gotten co-opted by venture capitalists who are actually the enemies of Bitcoin. The result is that most times we hear the term, it is associated with scammers, grifters, slimy politicians or simply just people want to sell you their product. ↩︎
Every other application of blockchain or web 3 technology is conceptually superfluous, or in other words, a gimmick. There has never been another relevant use-case for the technology than that of storing the world’s peer-to-peer digital monetary transactions in a permission-less manner But please, if you can think of one, then have a shot at bidding for the 39% market-cap (that remains to date) comprising what Bitcoin has not already gobbled up of the ‘CrYPto market’. (You have been warned.) ↩︎