Decentralizing Digital Identity & Encrypted Messaging - Jeff G | Ep. 107

My guest today is Jeff G, privacy advocate and builder of censorship-resistant communication systems using Nostr and open cryptographic infrastructure. Jeff works on White Noise, a decentralized encrypted messaging project designed to remove single points of failure from private communication. We explore how the internet was built without native money and how that mistake created a surveillance economy where users became the product. We break down why “nothing to hide” is a psychological trap, how self-sovereign digital identity works through public-private key pairs, and why portable social graphs threaten centralized platform control. We also cover the global push for digital ID and CBDCs, the structural weakness of centralized messengers like Signal, and why real freedom now depends on rebuilding parallel, permissionless systems instead of trying to fix broken institutions.

*This interview was filmed at Plan B Forum in Lugano.

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-- LINKS –

Jeff’s Twitter: https://x.com/erskingardner
Jeff’s Nostr: https://primal.net/jeffg
White Noise App: https://www.whitenoise.chat/
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-- CHAPTERS –

00:00 - Coming Up
01:09 - Introduction & Meet Jeff: Privacy Advocate and Tech Innovator
03:30 - Personal Responsibility, Privacy Online, and History of Internet Payments
06:20 - Misconceptions About Privacy
08:30 - The Future of Digital Identity and Decentralization
09:15 - Ad Break
12:00 - CBDCs & Digital IDs - Excessive Control
13:05 - Nostr: Revolutionizing Digital Identity
20:19 - White Noise: Revolutionizing Secure Communication
22:12 - Quick Fire Questions
27:10 - Final Thoughts & Call to Action