A lot of this is a matter of opinion, so I don't think it's useful to argue at length... but at least two of the people in the honourable mentions are literal convicted criminals and high-profile scammers.
Even if you're willing to discount their motive for advancing the cause of cryptocurrency, as far as I'm concerned, neither should these people be given any kind of honourable acknowledgement, nor is it even settled that cryptocurrencies are a net-positive for society, or that they serve their intended purpose, for the most part.
To elaborate on that last part: Bitcoin, a crypto asset which at this point is substantially not used as a currency, is still proof-of-work, which at that scale is immensely environmentally impactful; in the cases where Bitcoin is still used as a currency, a considerable amount of that exchange volume is in support of scams.
Good list. I'd add Hedy Lamarr, Cliff Stoll, Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games, John Draper (Cap'n Crunch), and RTM (Robert T Morris), but I'm certainly not faulting the list in its current form.
Looks like there are definitely some (maybe most) of the seminal names in cryptography on here... but cypherpunks aren't just "people who worked on cryptography". At least in the strain I'm familiar with, proper "cypherpunks" had a specific ideological bias. Depending on who you ask, or how you interpret things, that bias might be described as "anarchist" or "anti-government" or "pro individual" or "libertarian", or something of a similar ilk. So... not sure how many of the people on this list would identify as "cypherpunks" if asked (assuming they were around to ask at all).
Still, there's some interesting reading there. I'm seen worse lists submitted to HN. :-)
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 22.8 ms ] threadA lot of this is a matter of opinion, so I don't think it's useful to argue at length... but at least two of the people in the honourable mentions are literal convicted criminals and high-profile scammers.
Even if you're willing to discount their motive for advancing the cause of cryptocurrency, as far as I'm concerned, neither should these people be given any kind of honourable acknowledgement, nor is it even settled that cryptocurrencies are a net-positive for society, or that they serve their intended purpose, for the most part.
To elaborate on that last part: Bitcoin, a crypto asset which at this point is substantially not used as a currency, is still proof-of-work, which at that scale is immensely environmentally impactful; in the cases where Bitcoin is still used as a currency, a considerable amount of that exchange volume is in support of scams.
(It was also submitted 2 days ago by the same author).
Still, there's some interesting reading there. I'm seen worse lists submitted to HN. :-)