“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.” — Eric HughesGM A friend once told me to buy a better graphics card to run a program that "created monetary value." I wasn’t new to distributed computing (think Seti@home), but this was different: 2011 Bitcoin mining. I tinkered, sold BTC on shady IRC chats via PayPal for $10–$20 a coin, and cashed out my last coins in 2013 when BTC was at ~$100, at my fiancée’s suggestion. "It’s a tidy profit," she said. We bought coal for the...

“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.” — Eric HughesGM A friend once told me to buy a better graphics card to run a program that "created monetary value." I wasn’t new to distributed computing (think Seti@home), but this was different: 2011 Bitcoin mining. I tinkered, sold BTC on shady IRC chats via PayPal for $10–$20 a coin, and cashed out my last coins in 2013 when BTC was at ~$100, at my fiancée’s suggestion. "It’s a tidy profit," she said. We bought coal for the...