Block: 960397

Did you know that… on July 31, 1912, the highly influential free-market economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman was born?

Decades before our daily stack was even a possibility, Friedman became a conceptual beacon for the Cypherpunk movement. In a prophetic 1999 television interview, he accurately predicted that the rising internet would become one of the premier forces reducing the power and size of governments. Most notably, he stated that the one crucial piece missing from the digital world—which would soon be developed—was a reliable, anonymous "e-cash." He envisioned an untraceable electronic cash system where party A could instantly transfer value to party B over the web without ever knowing each other's identity.

Exactly a decade later, in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the whitepaper, turning Friedman's monetary vision into the very network we use to share these sats today.