[Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?

[Jerry Leichter]

On Jun 4, 2014, at 12:33 AM, Brian M. Waters <brian at brianmwaters.net> wrote:
> Last year IEEE published a two-part article called "What Happened to
> the Crypto Dream?" on why cypherpunk/Chaum-esque crypto protocols
> haven't caught on in the mainstream. He contrasts the relative failure
> of those ideas in the privacy realm to the success of encryption and
> digital signatures in the security realm:
> 
> http://randomwalker.info/publications/crypto-dream-part1.pdf
> http://randomwalker.info/publications/crypto-dream-part2.pdf
A nice pair of papers - especially the second.  I found the following particularly significant:  "[N]ot only does the usual crypto threat model greatly overestimate users’ trust in software running on their own devices, it equally underestimates trust in (some) third parties. Many crypto protocols treat service providers as adversaries, a model that’s nonsensical in the modern computing environment. Consumers don’t seek technological privacy protection against governments and service providers but against their peers, nosy neighbors, stalkers, employers, insurance companies, advertisers, and the like. Even when the adversary in a crypto protocol isn’t the service provider, it isn’t necessarily practical to use crypto. Often, it’s simpler for the trusted service provider to act as a privacy intermediary. Facebook’s ad-targeting platform is a good example—it never directly hands over user data to advertisers."
                                                        -- Jerry

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