Term of the Moment
GIMP
Definition: crypto war
(1) (CRYPTOcurrency War) An adversarial relationship between the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) and governments worldwide. Because transactions are encrypted, the inherent privacy of crypto transactions is the issue. See crypto glossary.
(2) (CRYPTOgraphic War) An adversarial relationship between technology companies and governments worldwide. Authoritarian countries have been troubled by the easy availability of strong encryption. The first crypto war in the 1990s dealt with email and text communications. In the 2010s, the second clash involved whether governments could unlock the data in a smartphone of a criminal or suspected felon. See encryption, encryption backdoor, privacy and crypto rage.
Which Crypto War?
(2) (CRYPTOgraphic War) An adversarial relationship between technology companies and governments worldwide. Authoritarian countries have been troubled by the easy availability of strong encryption. The first crypto war in the 1990s dealt with email and text communications. In the 2010s, the second clash involved whether governments could unlock the data in a smartphone of a criminal or suspected felon. See encryption, encryption backdoor, privacy and crypto rage.
This issue of PC Magazine came out in late 2016 before Bitcoin made headlines when its price jumped 13 times in 2017. Although the "crypto" in cryptocurrencies also means encryption, the PCMag story dealt with governments wanting access to users' encrypted data. (Image courtesy of PCMag.com.)