Crypto has always been libertarian, which is a sub-branch of republican. It was never liberal or democratic leaning in the slightest. It's just a techno-fancy remix of the libertarian fixation on the gold standard.
You may be correct with respect to some pop culture version of libertarianism, but I'm a libertarian and none of that resonates with me.
First, I'm not a Republican, and libertarianism is not a "sub-branch" of that party. Second, crypto is basically a scam, there are stupid libertarians like there are stupid people in every political alignment (I'd like to be able to pretend they're not "real" libertarians or something) that have been tricked into thinking the decentralized aspect of crypto aligns with their ambitions. But I think there is a difference between the philosophy around the importance of individual freedoms, and how it manifests, including in alignment with mainstream political parties (neither of whom have individual freedoms as a key issue) or specific technologies, especially poorly understood, scammy ones
David Chaum is the first person to propose and create an anonymous digital cash so far as I'm aware. I'm not finding overt politics in a brief search, but his general leanings and statements I do find seem to be strongly libertarian, away from centralisation and government monopolies.
version_five|4 years ago
First, I'm not a Republican, and libertarianism is not a "sub-branch" of that party. Second, crypto is basically a scam, there are stupid libertarians like there are stupid people in every political alignment (I'd like to be able to pretend they're not "real" libertarians or something) that have been tricked into thinking the decentralized aspect of crypto aligns with their ambitions. But I think there is a difference between the philosophy around the importance of individual freedoms, and how it manifests, including in alignment with mainstream political parties (neither of whom have individual freedoms as a key issue) or specific technologies, especially poorly understood, scammy ones
dredmorbius|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum
Chaum is one of the names mentioned in this Reason retrospective --- the publication itself being a Libertarian mouthpiece.
https://reason.com/video/2020/10/07/before-the-web-the-1980s...