We know that in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto inscribed on the Genesis Block that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer had bailed out the banks.
But few know that one hundred and forty-one years earlier, another cryptographer had a British Chancellor on his mind.
That cryptographer was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as 'Lewis Carroll'.
Carroll, the author of both Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, was also a Mathematics Professor and invented two types of algorithms to encrypt/decrypt messages.
Carroll mentioned in his diary that after inventing one of these algorithms, he showed it to George Hunt, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time.
Dodgson's diary for this same date refers to a "new" cipher: "Sitting up at night I invented a new cipher, which I think of calling the 'telegraph-cipher'".
His diary entry for 24 April 1868 also refers to the Telegraph-Cipher and his showing it to George Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Carroll first coined the rabbit-hole metaphor to describe falling and going deeper into a subject or a search than ever we could have thought.
The culture of the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole has several Carroll-inspired references. We describe 'Alice' is a participant when describing Bitcoin transactions. We use terms from The Matrix to describe choosing to see the world differently. It's fair to say that his work inspired the films. Both Alice and Neo decide to stop playing the game and in the end come to see through it all.
If Carroll, the cryptographer and writer, were alive today, he'd surely would have stumbled into the Rabbit Hole by now. After all, in a minor way he helped forward the science and literally created the original Rabbit Hole.