Radiolab - The Ceremony

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

In November of 2016, journalist Morgen Peck showed up at her friend Molly Webster's apartment in Brooklyn, told her to take her battery out of her phone, and began to tell her about The Ceremony, a moment last fall when a group of, well, let's just call them wizards, came together in an undisclosed location to launch a new currency. It's an undertaking that involves some of the most elaborate security and cryptography ever done (so we've been told). And math. Lots of math. It was all going great until, in the middle of it, something started to behave a little...strangely. Reported by Molly Webster. Produced by Matt Kielty and Molly Webster. Denver Ceremony station recordings were created by media maker Nathaniel Kramer, with help from Daniel Cooper.  Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Molly Webster. This is Radio Lab. Robert Kroll, which we'll be back with us very soon. But today, a story from you. Well, I guess I was just thinking I should probably tell you just the Morgan and I backstory of how I heard about the story.

So Morgan and I went to grad school together at NYU. So I guess I've known her for almost 11 years. And we're hold up in my apartment. I don't know, this is like last November or something. She comes over, she's sitting on the giant, I have a big floor pillow, like a Turkish floor pillow. Of course she do. She's sitting on the floor pillow.

And then she is like, are you ready to hear the story? And I said, yeah, and she's like, okay, I need you to take the battery out of your phone. Really? Yeah. And I was- She really said that? And I was like, what? I have an iPhone. I can't take the battery out of it. And she goes, okay, I need you to power it down and put it in another room under a pillow. What? I was like, what is going on? And then by this point, she's taking the battery out of her phone. So I do it. I put it in my bedroom and I put it under pillows and I turned it off.

I came back, I sat down, and then she starts telling me essentially about the ceremony. About going to the launch of this new currency, which involved her flying across the country to live in a hotel room for a number of days with a bunch of strangers, and then something happened because she came back. Seemingly paranoid, at least in so much as she was hiding phones under pillows. What was it that happened? It takes a few steps. Okay.

So let's start with step one, which is... Hi. Which is Morgan. I'm Morgan Peck. How would you identify yourself? Professionally. Professionally, I'm a freelance journalist. And in my eyes, Morgan has become like the historian of the world of digital money.

I started writing about neuroscience, but quickly found out about Bitcoin about a year into my writing, 2011. And I've pretty much been writing about it ever since. Now, yes, a lot of people when they hear about digital money, they think... Rantom where? The hijackers held the files,

Rantom demanding roughly 650 euros paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, the virtual currency. Obviously, it has become associated with cybercrime, but for Morgan, no, no, no, no. What attracted her to this whole world with me to go, oh my God, this thing is amazing. She was pulled in by the idealism of it. There was an extremely active community of people

who were talking about, you know, completely subverting the financial system. At a time when the financial system was not trusted and was collapsing. Because Morgan says the birth of Bitcoin goes back to, well, member 2008, boom. Traders here working the phone say a lot of their customers are freaked out. 2008 was the big implosion. What in the world is happening on Wall Street? In September, the stock markets crashed, the banks failed.

The Dow traders are standing there watching an amazement. I don't blame them. I'm going to. They're trying to market it. There was the fail out. This shakes your core. This shakes your trust in American institutions. And then just a few months later, 2009, January, it's a hot topic on Wall Street right now,

it's very interesting. Digital money called Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin I can't resist it. Bitcoin showed up oh so Bitcoin was after the big collapse. It was after and it was very much a response to that definitely. Because here was this currency that was decentralized which means it's run and monitored by all the people who use it, which means you don't need a federal reserve. So at the beginning, a lot of people saw Bitcoin as a way to sort of take the power back from the big banks that had just f**ked everybody over. Libertarians were really into it.

They thought that it was going to crash, it was going to crumble the columns of every power structure in the world. Like, obviously that didn't happen. It did not take down the world, but Bitcoin has not gone away. It's been a decade, it's still around. But if you talk to people on the inside, they'll tell you one of the things

that has dogged Bitcoin from the beginning is this issue of privacy. The way that the technology works is that it tracks every single transaction that's ever made on the network. Any time anyone with a Bitcoin buys a coffee or a pound of heroin, that transaction is kept in something called the public ledger. Bitcoin is a ledger, public ledger. And is that something that each person has?

It's out there for anyone to see. Really? So every single transaction that's ever been done. Every transaction ever. It's right there. Well, that's not private at all. No. But people thought it was private at the beginning because, oh, we're using these pseudonyms.

In other words, in the ledger, you never see anyone's actual name. There are no names on Inbiquin. Like I wouldn't be Molly, I'd be T957G. The problem is that while there are no names attached, the behavior is out there for anyone to see. Turns out it's really not that hard to match this string of characters with the person that it represents out in the real world. You could just kind of Google it on the internet, see if it pops up anywhere else, what is associated

with, and then you kind of figure out who the person is. And then you can go back into the Bitcoin ledger and search their entire history. You can figure out all their business dealings, all their personal dealings, who they know, who they don't know, possibly who their bank is. And people have tried to solve this problem with Bitcoin. But there are companies now that actually specialize in doing the network analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain, and they do it for companies who want to make sure

that they're not transacting with criminals, people who have had their specific. Wait, there are companies that are actively trying to de-anonymize people. Oh yeah. make sure that they're not transacting with, you know, criminals, people who have had their specific- Wait, there are companies that are actively trying to de-anonymize people? Oh, yeah. Well. And so one of the puzzles that all the internet people think about is, is there a way to get

the best of both worlds? Can you have the decentralization that comes with digital money? But can you also get privacy? Almost like cash. I take a dollar bill out of my pocket, I walk down the street, I give it to someone, they give it to someone, no one can trace that money. Can you get the decentralization that comes with digital money? And can you wrap that up with the privacy that you get with paper money? And that question, testing testing, brings us to this guy. Hello, Zuko here. To somebody named Zuko Wilcox. I'm Zuko and I'm at a different room. He is our master of the ceremony. I have to say you do

everyone's like pretty excited. I'm talking to a guy named Zuko. Hmm. Like it's just a good name Zuko. Thanks Hey Zuko So anyhow Zuko is he's been working on digital currencies for a long time and he's extremely trusted. Is he a charismatic leader type of thing? Yeah, he is when he first encountered Bitcoin, he was like, cool. Yes, but I was concerned about the privacy implications. Because he's a pretty hard core cyberpunk. Oh my god, it's like worlds upon worlds that are opening for us. Cypher punks. Yeah. She said this, it is a group of people that care deeply about how to make the internet more private. I think privacy is a human right and that it's a necessary condition for the exercise

of free choice, of morality and of political participation and of everything that's of intimacy, everything that's most important is humans. So this whole thing with Bitcoin and the privacy problem? Right up his alley. So I went out of my way, studied the Bitcoin source code, and yes, I immediately started fantasizing about what could be better. So then he, being like the privacy security cipher punk guru, he becomes the leader of something called Zkash.

Zkash. And zkash really its main contribution to the zico system is privacy. So there's this thing called a zero knowledge proof. Okay. And it's a mathematical invention that mathematicians had come up with. It requires something called the z-snark parameters to be baked into the protocol. Oh my God. I asked hours of questions and it got me into a conversation about circles and graphs and the shape of numbers. The shape of what I mean is the

shape of what's of possibility of what I came away with was that it allows you to prove that something is true without revealing anything about the thing you're trying to prove is true. Wow. You just, I just need to lie down. It's why you don't. Now. Take that and run.

This is where computer science and mathematics start to overlap into wizardry here. All you need to know is that Zcash promises to give you decentralization with this like buffet of privacy. But... Z-Cache has its own flaw. An unfortunate vulnerability in the math. In order to create the currency of Z-Cache, you have to first create a number.

A certain, enormous number. And then you use that number to do a bunch of math and then like boom! You have the currency. But it all starts with this number, this key. Problem with that is, in this system, in this system, if somebody got a hold of the private key, they could counterfitsy cash coins. They could counterfeit money. Just make new coins. Millions and millions and millions of new coins. Out of thin air.

You can cheat. That's a really big problem when you have a anonymous currency. Because no one would ever know. No. Bitcoin, since it's a public ledger, you can actually see if there's any funny business going on. That's actually why they keep it open. Right, the lack of privacy in Bitcoin is a security measure. But here, no one would ever know.

So the challenge is how do you get people to buy into a system that has this like major vulnerability? I'll be at just right at the very beginning. There's this one moment where you know, you have to trust people in a way that's completely, existentially defining of the currency. So this is what Zuko's up against. How do I, if I want super privacy, which he does? How do I generate this number in such a way that no one steals it, not me, not anyone else, and how do I prove to all of the people that might want to use Z-Cache later that in this tiny little window of creation, nothing untoward has happened that the number has never been tampered with,

that human eyes have never been laid upon it, you know, that the entire creation of this system remains pure. This is very much like an immaculate conception. You're like, no humans can have sex to make this baby. But there needs to be a baby. But we almost have to examine the act of sex to make sure that there was no physical contact. Is it like that? That's so good. Okay, so here we are.

Zuko decides. We'll have a ceremony. The most secure, most sophisticated cryptographic ceremony that's ever been performed. Wow. Okay. Here's the thing. While it's trivial to make your own currency, it is not trivial to inspire trust. That's what money is, is the agreement between people to use it and to honor that sort of social contract. And the creation of value, to me that's like alchemy,

and it's a moment of creation. I think I'm walking down the street near you Molly. Greenpoint. And I get a text message on signal. A private message wrap. From Zuko that's like, hey, we want you to be there. And so excited. You were chosen.

It was chosen, yeah. And but did you even know what you were being invited to? No, I had no idea, but I was like, I have to do this. I mean, I cannot miss this. Even if Zcash doesn't make it, even if it collapses, it seems like a historical moment. So Zucco basically said, just wait for our Bat Call. So about two weeks later, the Bat Call.

Come to this coffee store in Boulder. So more he gets on a flight to Denver, rents a car to Boulder and goes to the coffee shop. Zuko's there. Standing next to the barista counter. And actually, he has a huge paper map with him. Spread out all over the barista's area. He's like up in their grill. And then this other guy, Nat showed up,

friend Azucos, who was going to film it all. Was that for you? You wanted everything recorded? Yeah, and it was to serve as a security mechanism and documentation for the public. More on that in a second. And then, okay, okay. They leave the coffee shop, go over to Nats Van.

He mics us both up. I told them they could mic me up. And we're gonna turn off all of our cell phones. So that if there were any hackers, they wouldn't be able to track where we were physically. I'm trying to think if I have to say goodbye to anyone. We were like, okay, now we've got the van, we've got our cell phones turned off. The next thing we needed to do, we're next.

Now we're going to the computer store. It was a choir, a computer. Because like if there was some hacker who was planning to steal the key, they could have you know, already planted some malware or tracking device on Zuko's personal laptop. Before we even started. So, we all piled into the van. Set off. You started heading north.

To get a clean computer, he's decided to go to Denver for this. Yeah. But he doesn't want to use his phone. No. Hey, I could even use my paper map. Because what if somebody is like tracking what he's looking at? Let's go straight. Nat is doing much of his tracking what he's looking at? Let's go, straight. Nat is doing much of his recording while he's driving.

This thing is where we think it is. Do you have like a black hoodie over you like his ball of style? No, no. So they're driving for a little bit. Wind. All of a sudden they make this pit stop. We were like, hey, there's a costume store.

All right, this is perfect. Way to go, Nat. Okay, next stop, we're looking for a wizard hat. Wizard hat. Can I see your wizard hat section? Yeah. So they walked through this big costume store pass, which is hats, tiaras.

What is the wizard hat you settled on? It was a Gandalf hat. Gandalf hat. I love the Gandalf Hat. Gandalf Hat. Yeah, I love the Gandalf Hat. I think it's good. That is appropriate. The greatest Wizard of all. Yeah.

Definitely a winner. Thanks. And then... Back to the mission at hands. Dan, Denver, computer. We drove down using our paper map with our cell phones off to the computer store. They get there. How do you walk in?

Oh yeah, this is the place. Do a little computer shopping. When do you have a side by side comparison of two different ones? A few minutes later. Yeah, I want this one. Zookle gets his computer, and at that point, the computer is sacred. It's called i7-6700. Which henceforth is given a new name.

It's called the compute node. And why is it sacred? Well, because this is the computer that will hold the secret number, the number that will give birth to an entirely new currency. So. Sir.

All right, thank you very much. It's got the compute node got back in the van, got back to Boulder, and drove to an area that had hotels that we knew of. But where's this hotel? We're going around to the hotels in Boulder. This way? I'm in a hotel.

And they're all full. I don't know if they have ethernet on their hotel room. Or they don't have any ethernet connection. So then we go to another hotel. I like that hotel. And another? She wasn't clear on the notion of ethernet. It's like seven o'clock at night.

What's the plan here? The idea was, if you don't know what you're gonna do, then they don't know what they're gonna do. So this is actually a security measure. If you're totally in the dark about what you're doing, then some hackers, they can't mount an attack. It's foolproof. But eventually.

Millennium has rooms and it has ethernet. They find a hotel. And she even went and double checked. Zuko actually has Natt booked the hotel room. For two nights. See what I'm gonna do. Yep. Do you have a key?

We all check into one room. Ground floor. It's not particularly fancy. Couple tables, you know, you got your two beds. Then they set up. We're a fancy. Couple of deals, you know, you got your two beds. Then they set up. We're a well-organized machine. They totally transformed the place. In general, I'm not gonna help out.

They gave me a bed to chill out on. You can concentrate on careful observing. So what we did was we stripped the room of all of the lamps and the telephone. Everything on all counters gets shoved somewhere. All of that stuff cleared it away into the closet or the bathtub. And what are you doing?

In addition, we, oh, I'm unplugging the TV. Didn't want like the television, for example, which could be remotely controlled by an adversary. So the unplugged, slide it under one of the beds. Good bye, TV. You know what? Another reason is I hate TVs. Television is the worst.

Then they grab the table where they're gonna set up the compute node. You wanna explain again why you're keeping it away from the wall? Pull that out of ways. Oh, there's a teeny tiny chance that a team of spies rented the room next door and set up a giant antenna on the other side of this wall. This is like the dopest attack that Zuko is planning against.

Called side channel attacks. And that's a method by which you could use an antenna. Or like a really high-tech microphone to figure out what a computer is doing. For example, with some crazy microphone you could listen into the computer's processor and if you heard something like... Oh, that's a Diffie Helm and Key Exchange. Or... Oh yeah, this is obviously figuring out the full 4,096-bit RSA key.

Or... Oh, hey, that's the new Beab's video. Or whatever. So... Alright, so please don't put anything on this desk from here on out. It's pulled away from the wall about, I don't know, five feet. Just in case there's somebody set up next door.

And then started loading in all the cameras and equipment. Battery packs, junk food, but then there was also a whole security camera setup. One cool, one really cool thing about these security cameras is that they don't have a radio. Four security cameras which worked from the 80s. The four security cameras came with Wi-Fi. Which means we had to buy antique security cameras. And their night vision security cameras. And they set those up.

So that you could see the other cameras from the first cameras. So you could sell that no ninja snuck in there and like tampered with one of the cameras during the process either. And this security camera setup was one of the key points in trying to create what Morgan was talking about earlier. This alchemy, faith, trust, whatever. So the security mechanism, this was going to catch any shenanigans. And then Zuko was going to post the security footage to the internet, so experts, security

experts could scan it and make up their minds. Could the ceremony be trusted? Hold on, where are you gonna sleep tonight? I mean, I, we could all count. I can sleep anywhere. So we set all that stuff up. It's like nine o'clock now, 10 o'clock.

Yeah, it was late. And I took the computer that we used, the so-called compute node. And from that moment forward, I kept that thing like within arms for 48 hours or so. Oh my God, it was a little bit exhausting trying to be paranoid. And it was exhausting trying to be paranoid?

Yeah, like I slept with it that night in my bed. I kept my arm around it. that night, um, with my bed, I kept my arm around it. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing the to thy rest. Coming up. A rude awakening. This is Enrique Romero from the border town of Loretta, Texas. Radio Lab is supported and part by the offered P Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. JADMALLI Radio lab

Back to Boulder Sorry I can't open the door that would be helping you So it's the next morning Saturday morning Zugus sits down at his personal computer and he starts dialing people up Hello Some on video, some on signal.

Hello. Oh, bye. He calls up a guy in DC. Hey Moses. A guy in Texas. Hey, one of the people tell you, you sound like Tom Hardy. Also. Cool.

That's pretty cool. Florida. Okay. Really appreciate your help. Slovenia. Just John online. Good job, Pitbos. Another guy in California.

Thanks. And then there was this mysterious one. Okay, for Reese's ready. That was only referred to as Feb Reese and didn't know where he was. I didn't find out until afterwards that he was actually driving from Vancouver across British Columbia. What?

Who are all these guys? So for Zuko, it's very unacceptable. He wants to take as much of the trust... You gotta trust me out of it as possible. And that's what he tried to do. So, even though Zuko's gonna record all this footage, put it up online, later someone who's gonna be watching that could be like...

This was a trick. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's like stage magic. Like, sure, you say you recorded everything, but maybe you manipulated the footage. Maybe you didn't even set the cameras up the way you said you did. And so... So what Sukho decided to do is get in touch with all these guys

all over the world and try and decentralize this trust. So there were six stations. Each with their own compute node, security cameras set up. Ready to help Sukho make this big random number. The private key, so each of the six stations was actually creating one piece of this key. That way there'll be no one person that makes the entire key. It'll just be these little pieces that actually won't ever come in contact with one another. The idea was nobody will actually have the key itself.

I hope this works. So everyone's got their compute node powered on. And then... Diagnosis complete. Presenter when you're ready to begin the ceremony. The ceremony begins. Okay, now this is the top secret part. There's this special block. Yeah. We have to make sure that nobody can uh... This is the special box. Yeah. We have to make sure that nobody can guess or read this secret. The Zuckel closes the blinds.

And so I'm going to cover my keyboard with this special box. I took a cardboard box that one of the computers had come in and saw it in half so that it was a half of a cardboard box. He put it over the keyboard of the compute node. Yeah, hold on. There. Ready? And then I slid my hands under the cardboard box.

And then he starts punching in all these random letters and numbers into the compute node. Just like pounding it like a social tail. Just cat walking across the computer. OK. And once he's done. I think we're done with the compute node. Just like pounding it like a digital tail. Just black cat walking across the computer. Okay. And once he's done. I think we're done with the cardboard box. It served as purpose, you know, we can auction it on eBay.

What the compute node does is it takes all those random characters and it combines it with more random characters that are generated like inside the computer until finally it creates a part of the key. And each of the other five participants had to do the same thing. DC made their piece of the key. Florida, Texas, Slovenia, Canada. Okay, so you've got one key broken into six pieces.

And the next step is to get all of those pieces to work together to create one thing, which is Z-Cache. And you wanna do this in such a way that those pieces never touch each other, that they remain hidden so that no person could ever get their hands on the power of the whole key. Woo! Yeah. So thank God there's convoluted math to save the day. I think it's a good time to just say what was happening. Okay. Three, two, one. So first things first. Okay, you're like, the guy in California gets on the horn.

So the stations are Andrew Peter. He gives everyone basically like the batting order, and then he sends a message called the go message to station one. Apparently, we're in my computations. Station one guy in his compute node do some math on his piece of the key. Okay, my compute node just finished. Yeah, yeah. His compute node sp some math on his piece of the key. My compute node just finished.

Yeah, yeah. His compute node spits out a number. And then it burns it onto DVD. Why DVD? Because all the guys at these stations have ripped out the Wi-Fi in their compute node. Because we don't want a hacker to be able to hack into the compute node. This, by the way, has a pretty cool name. This is called Ericapt.

You have a protective field basically around the computer that holds the secret. A field of air. Anyway, once the computer is done burning to this DVD, the guy at station 1 takes it and walks it to another computer. You're receiving data as you can see. Uploads it to the internet. Okay, great. And then the guy at station 2.

This guy. Peter Van Valkenberg. So, what happens is the software I run on my connected computer downloads that little answer puts it on to DVD. Hi, Franny. I take the DVD out of the connected computer. Walk across the air gap, if you will. Hi, Franny.

And you know. Then the compute node takes that little answer, combines it with Peter's piece of the key, and then... Math. So now is it computing? Yep. It lines it with Peter's piece of the key and then... Math. So now is it computing? Yeah. Again, the compute node keeps Peter's piece of the key a secret

spits out a new answer, a bigger answer. And then I write on a different DVD. That new answer. Work. Takes it out of the compute node. Lift it over the gap. It brings it back across the air gap. To the networked computer.

Uploads his answer. Then station 3 grabs it combines it with their key. It gets a little bit more of an answer. So exciting. Then station 4. Or compute node gets to do its, gets a little bit more of an answer. So exciting. Then station 4. If you don't know what gets to do its thing. Same thing, DVD, across the air gap, combining with their piece of the key. Math. Like serious math.

And then you get a little bit more of the answer, and just rinse. Wash, repeat. Station 5. 6. Back to the top of the order. And throughout this entire process, the individual shards of the key are kept separate and secret. Yet together, they're doing the math, it's getting closer and closer and closer to the final key that will launch Zcash. Was there like a titter in the air? No!

I mean it really is. Do you bring a deck of cards? I brought a juggling balls. Cool. I can juggle three balls. That's what I brought. Because the thing is, every one of those math steps took about an hour. It was next on the list.

And they had to do like three full rotations through this order. Oh hey, somebody told Moses. So most of the weekend was just kind of sitting around. John. Waiting. Peter. And waiting. Anyone? Tom Moses. So yeah, we computer just finished. Oh, good to know. Zuko has brought along some pork rinds and sour cream, but he's dipping pork rinds and the sour cream. Cool, I'm going to get our coffee. Also, napping, which is the only sleeping that's happened. There's like an hour know, an hour here. Hour there.

And as the hours roll by, things are going really well. People are getting their math done. They're passing along these answers. They're getting closer to having their key. When maybe halfway into the process, things get strange. They're each lying in their beds, just kind of chilling out. Morgan was just waking, Zuko was playing on a tablet. And then, oh, I groaned and said, oh, there's work to do. Back to work.

So Zuko gets up and he starts talking. Win, which is, uh, win, my voice is echoing back in me. Just feedback. A feedback loop started echoing. You know, like going beep beep beep beep beep beep. It was like, uh, what, in congress noise, make it stop. I'm muting all my mics. I don't know where it's feeding back from. What was this one? He like turns off the mic. It's how I was like, okay He sits down at the Google Hangout computer. Look me up with that.

A tester This echo comes back and if you look at the video, you see he like just freezes. Where's that coming from? And then just turns his head to the left looking off camera. Why do we have to play out over there now? At this point, everyone in the room just sort of falls silent and is looking around. Yeah. I start like pinpointing it to like the part of the room that has a security camera's monitor.

Test test. Where's this coming from? Test test. Test test. I start listening to that. I'm like, I think it's coming from over here. Hello. Hello. I stopped and I said, uh, wait, wait a minute. What, what is playing out over there? Test test. And I looked in the direction of Morgan's bed. And then I turn around, I pick up my phone.

It's my phone. And the echo is coming out of my speaker. It's coming out of your phone. It's coming out of my phone. Why is your phone playing out? What, you don't stop. No mess with it. I want to see what's going on. It's playing out from this mic.

He zeroes in on this mic that's on the corner of the computer that's doing the Google Hangouts. Did you connect your phone to this hangout? He leans over to that. Come on. Starts fiddling with it. What? It's coming from this mic. So is there a way he stands he sits. No it's not coming from the mic. It's not coming from this mic. It's coming from the Google Hangout because I just muted it in software. Now it's gone. So my voice will Google Hangout. Okay, let's hear Peter's voice. Peter. I want to test audio coming from you. Say some stuff.

Testing, testing, all wood, magic, the aid of the country. And then I think Zuko says something like... Why is your phone playing the audio from our Google Hangout? Why is our chat coming through your phone? Oh wait, so the audio coming out of her phone is not originating from in the room. It's somehow the Google Hangout chat.

That's coming through her phone. Yes. That's so weird. It's very weird. It was like your cat had just turned into a monster or had just started talking to you or like just turned on you. So I'm kneeling on the bed with it and I look at it and I think that's how it works. I had just started talking to you or like just turned on you. So I'm kneeling on the bed with it and I look at it and I think that's when I just like through it, through it on the bed. Revolition. So... Can you turn on the screen? He picks up the phone from the end of her bed and hands it to her and is like, can you pull up the screen? What all apps are running on this phone? I don't run any apps.

Is that doing video? Yeah. I'm recording. At this point, the cameras have like swiveled so they're focused on the phone. Okay. Um. I don't know.

Should we throw it in the river? No. Can you, is this Android? Yep. What, how do you, can you like get a list of apps running like by swiping after the top or something? I think, I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't. How about that? I don't use this. If you may swipe down, there's that thing that's next to the thing.

Here. What about that thing? No. Wait. Yes. But just give me a second. Give me a second. Oh, it's running. Here. What's running? Here. I don't see a hangouts app running.

I definitely...well... I didn't... Test? Run a hangouts. I think it stopped. You're listening to it. Test, test, test. It stopped, hasn't it? It's suddenly the phone stopped doing the weird thing

it was doing. The freaky audio playout thing. It went away. It went away, which feels hackery. Oh yeah. Like the hackers have been had. And they just realized it. Yeah, that's what I think.

That there wasn't a attacker, and they screwed up and accidentally turned on the speaker. Yeah, I feel paranoid. It's weird. It's weird. It's creepy. No, this isn't just like... I don't know. What do you mean, hacked?

What kind of hacked have you been? Well, you find out that the private messages had access to them or that people have been sending messages spoofed to be from you to your friends or colleagues. I've never had that happen. It's kind of horrible. So eventually they just decide to turn off her phone. Now it becomes a more civilized conversation of what are we going to do? And then Zuko said to me,

Would you like to donate your phone to science? Oh, that's like I think I'd rather donate my body. No. What would it take for you to donate your phone to science? Like in the current state of it right now, without without like, yeah, that's a problem. Saving my, no way. Like that has so much of my work on it and my life.

I just think that, well, I don't think I have to justify why. That's right. You don't have to justify it. But, I mean... Do you have pictures? And some pictures, but not much. I put myself in your position. I would have been like, I feel okay.

Take it. I don't know. I start. But you were very immediately like the opposite. Yeah. That's a no to me. Why? To me, my responsibility is not just to myself.

Privacy is a shared resource it's a share it's something we share with each other. I will say this is one of the first stories where I get what privacy and data protection like means. Like I remember when Morgan was telling me the story, thinking if someone had hacked into Morgan's phone, how long had they been hacked in for? And I talked to Morgan all the time. Like, oh, weird, I was kind of hacked.

You know, and then it's like, who else did you talk to? It was your dad. Your dad was kind of hacked. Oh crap, you exchanged those text messages that weren't on signal. that person was kind of hacked. And then suddenly it just dawned on me, duh, like her privacy isn't just hers.

The things that are on my phone that are private are not only private for me, they're private for anyone I was talking to. And I almost feel like I don't even have a right to give over that phone if I haven't talked to the people that that that would be exposing. Like that's not fair. Like sometimes people in system privacy

it can feel selfish. But then you realize like no, like one person doesn't insist on privacy. Kind of like a chink in the armor. And like suddenly we're all vulnerable. For about an hour, Morgan and Zuko go back and forth about what to do with her phone. Um... But they don't really reach a conclusion.

I feel... I need to walk around. Is anything gonna happen if I go take a little walk? Yeah, you're not gonna miss much, it's planned or scheduled. I'm just saying for no good reason, I can't think of any reason for you not to take a walk. I'm just kind of freaked out. Okay, yeah.

Okay, let's stay here. I'll stay here. What? I said be safe out there. Enjoy. Do you think I'm a secret agent? I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking it was afraid for you. Oh, I'm not afraid for me.

Yeah, I'm not either. I was just feeling that way. Okay. I'm going to take a walk because I feel really claustrophobic. Good, enjoy. So then I had to decide what shall we do. Shall we abort the ceremony? Shall we focus our attention on some sort of investigation of Morgan's phone? What shall we do?

Okay, here's the decision. Here's what we're going to do. Get more gets phone out of here and otherwise no change. He figured if these people have hacked into Morgan's phone, we have so many security measures in place that we can keep going and we'll figure this out later. So basically what happens is like Morgan comes back from her walk. Okay, where are we? They still have another full day of the ceremony left. Please insert a blank DVD to burn disk eith and press enter. Okay. And then it gets to a point where they finally have the final key. Okay, I'm powering off the compute node.

Everybody? It's a big step. And is there a high five? Uh, okay. It's unplug big step. And is there a high five? OK, it's unplugged. No. Woo, we're done.

And then to sort of cap it off. The last step is. So I mean, if you want to use the angle grinder, everybody takes their compute node and ceremonially destroy it. Because in the case that the computer holds like a ghosty fingerprint of that, like, original piece of the key, they just want it gone. We saw the computer into pieces, I missed, smashed the pieces with a hammer, and dropped the crushed pieces into a giant bonfire. And that was that. And now they were sort of at the moment where they're like, okay, well we actually did

the technological thing, which was we created the system. And now the bigger question was, did they create the alchemy that they needed to inspire trust? Like we're all the protocols and the video footage and all that stuff, was it all enough? Especially now that they have this phone thing happen. Especially now that they have the phone thing. And they're like, did we do what we needed to do to show the world that they want to buy into this thing? So, five days after the ceremony ended, the currency began.

To an insane fanfare. Really? It was crazy. ZCash is a cryptocurrency built on Bitcoin's code base that is dedicated to protecting your privacy. Oh gosh, I get off the look, but I think it went up to like $4,000. A ZCoin? One ZCash coin. It is the first digital currency to combine units. And that is the Bitcoin high at the time, is like around 1400.

So that's insane. Well, so if the goal at some level at the very beginning of this conversation was to inspire the community to then use it, it seems like it has done that. Yeah, yes. Do people continue to point back at this phone moment and wonder and speculate? Some. Yeah, people want me to, they want to know like how it resolves.

And how does it resolve? I mean, did you give him your phone? So what actually happened was we went to the spawnfire. And then by the end of it, everybody was sort of rushing off. I was rushing to the airport and just like gave my phone to Zuko. And was like, we'll talk about it. I trust you. Don't do anything that I haven't agreed to. No, so you ended in the spirit of the whole endeavor in some way. Yep. Huh.

Molly Webster. I didn't get to tell you that we have to do it again. You have to go through all of this again. So, we have to do it again because we're upgrading the cryptography and Z-Cache. Good God, man. What have you started? We're going to do a new ceremony to play new approved cryptography. We keep thinking of improvements we want to make. De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de- This piece was produced by Molly Webster in Matt Kilti, the Denver's ceremony station recordings were created by media maker Nathaniel Kramer, thanks Nat, and also thanks to his assistant

Daniel Cooper. And lastly, very special thanks to Morgan Pack. Her reporting on the ceremony obviously was sort of the anchor for our piece. And you can find her article at IEEE Spectrum. We will link you to it from RadioLab.org. Okay, we will be back and Robert will be back with me. In a couple weeks, I'm Chad Abel-Ront. I'm Molly Webster.

Thanks for listening. Hi, this is Will Zobba. I'm calling from sunny Seattle, Washington. Radio Lab is produced by Jad Abelman. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Soren Wheeler is senior editor. Our staff includes Simon Adler, David Gebel, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kilti, Robert Krollwich, Annie McEwan, Lateef Nasser, Melissa Ordonal, Aryanan Wack and Molly Webster. Help from SOME Power, Rebecca Sheson,

Nigger Fatali, Phoebe Wang, and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ you