These are the slides from my "Philosophy and Ethics behind Blockchain" presentation, June 14th, 2019. The purpose of this smart talk is four-fold: 1. I will contend why philosophy matters 2. I will then give a brief description of the Crypto-Anarchist and Cypherpunk philosophy 3. This will be followed by a description of the essence of the Bitcoin Blockchain. I will also draw comparisons between the Bitcoin Blockchain and Crypto-Anarchism 4. I will conclude that the cryptospace is moving towards the development of products that are very well in line with its initial philosophy. These products are Distributed Autonomous Organizations or DAOs in short.

1. THE PHILOSOPHY AND
ETHICS BEHIND
BLOCKCHAIN
Chhay Lin Lim
FinTech & Blockchain lecturer/researcher
Saxion Blockchain lectoraat

2. OVERVIEW
1. Why philosophy matters
2. What is Crypto-Anarchist and Cypherpunk
philosophy?
3. What is the essence of the Bitcoin
Blockchain?
4. What types of applications next?
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3. 1.
Why Philosophy
Matters
If we want to understand the practical and
social implications of Blockchain, we
cannot dismiss the philosophy that has
given birth to it.

4. 2.
What is Crypto-Anarchism
and Cypherpunk?
Philosophy that seeks the protection of
▰ Privacy
▰ Political freedom
▰ Economic freedom
Through the use of cryptography.
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5. “Crypto-Anarchy is the cyberspatial realization of
[libertarian anarchism]… For libertarians, strong
crypto provides the means by which
government will be avoided.
- Timothy May (1994)
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6. “Our civilization has reached a crossroads. In one
direction lies a future promoting “privacy for the
weak and transparency for the powerful”…
Cypherpunks advocate for the use of
cryptography and similar methods as ways to
achieve societal and political change.
- Julian Assange (2012)
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7. Crypto-Anarchists/Cypherpunks
Transparency: transparency of governments
Voluntaryism: voluntaryist social and
economic interactions
Privacy: right to privacy for everyone
Propertarian: strict property rights
Free markets: no government monopoly
Decentralization: decentralization of power.
Social order happens from bottom-up
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8. 3.
What is the essence
of Bitcoin Blockchain?

9. Crypto-Anarchists/Cypherpunks
Transparency: transparency of governments
Voluntaryism: voluntaryist social and
economic interactions
Privacy: right to privacy for everyone
Propertarian: strict property rights
Free markets: no government monopoly
Decentralization: decentralization of power.
Social order happens from bottom-up
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Bitcoin Blockchain
Transparency: open source and transparent.
Everyone can look into source code.
Voluntaryism: free to join and leave the
network. You are not coerced in using Bitcoin.
Privacy: anyone can create a Bitcoin wallet
without having to provide private information.
Addresses are pseudonymous.
Propertarian: no one can take away your
Bitcoin from you.
Free markets: competition in money
production.
Decentralization: distributed over network of
computers. The network is radically neutral.

10. 4.
What types of
applications next?
Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO):
▰ Organizations with no single point of decision-making
▰ Open and inclusive
▰ Ruled by machine consensus and not by the whims of
a select group of people

11. Imagine a…
Facebook without a Facebook company
YouTube without a YouTube company
Investment fund without fund managers
Autonomous cars owned by communities
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