On the morning of the talk at Ethereal New York, as I was doing an AV check with my computer, this man with a white beard came over wanted to do an AV check as well. He saw I had a presentation clicker and asked if he could borrow it. I said sure, why not and it was at that moment when I glanced down at his lanyard that I saw his name.
“You’re David Chaum!” I said. “Yep, the one and only” he replied. I was a little shell shocked as the last time I glanced through the speakers list I didn’t see him there. I knew about David because I mentioned him in my Tokenomics books with Thomas. He is a renowned American cryptographer who invented the concept of blind signatures and ecash back in the 80’s amongst a whole bunch of other research, and started a company called DigiCash in the 90’s which used his invention of ecash and was essentially one of the precursors to Bitcoin. He is currently the co-founder of a company called Elixxir.
