The US National Security Agency was among the first organizations to propose a system very much alike Bitcoin.The intelligence organization has published a paper “How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash” back in 1996.The proposed system in the paper would work a lot like Bitcoin works today.
The paper elaborated about creating a secure and distributed system for transactions.Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper on Metzdowd.com cryptography mailing list almost a decade later, which has to be more than a co-incidence.Another interesting thing is that the SHA-256 hashing algorithm used by Bitcoin is created by NSA.
All these relations have led people to think that Satoshi Nakamoto is somehow related to NSA; perhaps he is or was a worker at the organization.In connected NSA news, it was revealed that the Freedom Act failed to pass in the Senate. It needed only 2 votes to win.Digital rights advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation decided to take actions but the effectiveness of their techniques is arguable.
It was announced in news that Tox, an encrypted and distributed p2p instant messaging platform, aims to replace centralized platforms like Skype.Along with instant messaging, Tox supports file sharing and A/V calling. It is very similar to Skype but offers significantly better security.Microsoft could theorically spy on Skype users by recording all conversations that passes through the software.
With Tox, all data is encrypted so no one else can know what the participants are discussing.The Tox team is considering using premium features to support their development. They want the users to pay for the service in bitcoin.
