🎙️Decentralizing Digital Identity & Encrypted Messaging Ep. 107 with @erskingardner 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. ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you! 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 >>