Richard Stallman – “We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin”

Richard Stallman, the fervently committed founder of the free software movement, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not – forgive the hair-splitting – a cryptocurrency.

Stallman seems to check all of the old school cypherpunk boxes: in addition to being an Edward Snowden admirer, he’s a hacker of the original ’70s and ’80s generation, a privacy activist, and a frequent invoker of liberty. As a result, cryptocurrency enthusiasts could be forgiven for thinking Stallman was also head-over-heels for bitcoin.

He’s not.

Before his oration on libertarianism was interrupted, he said that the right-wingers who made up a significant portion of bitcoin’s early adopters don’t really deserve the label. His own pro-freedom views are more “libertarian” than bitcoiners’ “anti-socialism,” he argued.

As we spoke, it became clear that Stallman doesn’t find the decade-old technology all that appealing, for more reasons than just politics.

“I have never used it myself,” he told CoinDesk.

arketyp.

Richard Stallman, the fervently committed founder of the free software movement, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not – forgive the hair-splitting – a cryptocurrency.