Thomas Fischerman from Die Zeit one of Germany’s most respected papers flew down to visit us at out company VERAX a month or so ago.

He has been working on an article about CypherPunks which has now been published under the name Pirates of the 21st Century .

The mention of us and NeuClear is down towards the bottom. While I do unerstand most of it with my now very rusty school German, I hope to get someone to translate it at some point.

This begs the question, am I a Pirate? If so, cool. I do like Rum (as Thomas discovered late one night) and I have a beard! However while I am trying to shake some things in the world of trade and finance, I guess I prefer to think of NeuClear more as a 21st century version of Statia famous in the time of the Pirates of the Caribbean.

BTW. I am misquoted in the article as saying “If you want, you can construct a Cyber-currency, that is based on gold as a security. Or better yet on opium.”

I have to say before the DEA drop in on me, that I didnt actually say “better yet”. I quoted and old joke within the digital currency comunity about Digital Opium backed Bearer Certificates. I always thought it was originally from Bob Hettinga but it appears that the originater is Perry Metzger and not Bob nor me.

Also I in no way condone or agree with issuance of such instruments. At VERAX we are actually building a NeuClear based payment system, with anti moneylaundering funtionality built in, that performs way beyound the required facilities of the FATF and the patriot act. Panama where we are based have anti moneylaundering rules that are much more stringent than those in the US or Europe. They have had to make them stringent due to a very liberal attitude eariler.

Anyway while researching this I found Bob Hettingah and Vincent Moscaritolo’s classic
e$: Digital Commerce for the Rest of Us which is always an inspiration.