Neat find. Detail most miss: the 1996 Law/Sabett/Solinas paper actually argued AGAINST untraceable cash. It was research on how to build escrowed digital cash where the government keeps a backdoor. The whole section on law enforcement spells it out. Bitcoin is the philosophical opposite, same primitives in service of different politics. SHA-256 is similar. NSA designed the primitive, cypherpunks repurposed it. The "NSA invented Bitcoin" meme is fun but the paper's own conclusion says no.
Neat find. Detail most miss: the 1996 Law/Sabett/Solinas paper actually argued AGAINST untraceable cash. It was research on how to build escrowed digital cash where the government keeps a backdoor. The whole section on law enforcement spells it out. Bitcoin is the philosophical opposite, same primitives in service of different politics. SHA-256 is similar. NSA designed the primitive, cypherpunks repurposed it. The "NSA invented Bitcoin" meme is fun but the paper's own conclusion says no.