21 BTCGregory Maxwell
Gregory Maxwell: Early Bitcoin developer; proposed CoinJoin (2013); co-founder of Blockstream (2014). In June 2011 he argued on the forum that Bitcoin should default to deterministic wallets; BIP32 later credits him with “the original idea of type-2 deterministic wallets”. In August 2013 he proposed CoinJoin for on-chain privacy. Blockstream's 2014 seed-round post lists him among its co-founders.
Background
- Blockstream, co-founder (2014)
- Co-author of the Bulletproofs, Erlay and Confidential Assets papers
- Bitcoin privacy (CoinJoin)
- Deterministic wallets and backups
What is not known
No X account shown: @gmaxwell on X belongs to someone else.
Connections
- Pieter Wuille: Blockstream co-founders (2014); BIP32 builds on his type-2 deterministic wallet idea
- Adam Back: Blockstream co-founders (2014)
- theymos: Co-signers of the CoinJoin bounty escrow (2013)
In their own words
“Bitcoin really ought to offer and default to using deterministic wallets.” (18 Jun 2011, via bitcointalk)
“Bitcoin is often promoted as a tool for privacy but the only privacy that exists in Bitcoin comes from pseudonymous addresses which are fragile and easily compromised…” (22 Aug 2013, via bitcointalk)
See also
- Pieter WuillePieter Wuille: Bitcoin Core developer; author of BIP32 and co-author of SegWit, Schnorr and Taproot; Blockstream co-founder; now at Chaincode Labs. Author of BIP32, the hierarchical deterministic wallets behind today's seed phrases, and co-author of BIP141 (SegWit), BIP340 (Schnorr signatures) and BIP341 (Taproot). He proposed Taproot on the bitcoin-dev list on 6 May 2019; it activated at block 709,632 in November 2021. Blockstream's 2014 post lists him among its co-founders; his website says he now does Bitcoin research and development at Chaincode Labs.
- Adam BackAdam Back: Inventor of Hashcash, cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper; co-founder and CEO of Blockstream. Cypherpunk and cryptographer. In 1997 he proposed Hashcash, the proof-of-work that Bitcoin mining uses. In 2008 Satoshi emailed him before publishing the whitepaper, and he pointed Satoshi to Wei Dai's b-money. In 2024 he testified in COPA v Wright.
- theymostheymos: Administrator of the Bitcoin Forum (bitcointalk.org). One of the earliest members of the Bitcoin forum (member #35, February 2010), now its Administrator. On 15 August 2010, minutes after the first report about block 74638, he replied: “This could be a serious problem.” In 2013 he was one of three signers of the CoinJoin bounty escrow, together with Gregory Maxwell and Pieter Wuille.
References
- bitcointalk · gmaxwell bitcointalk.org
- GitHub · gmaxwell github.com
- bitcointalk.org bitcointalk.org
- bitcointalk.org bitcointalk.org
- github.com github.com
- blog.blockstream.com blog.blockstream.com