It\u2019s been a life of hacks for Dr. Adam Back, the CEO and co-founder of Blockstream. One of the few people quoted on the Bitcoin Whitepaper, hacking highlights of Back\u2019s life are brought to life in the latest animated Crypto Story from Cointelegraph\u2019s video team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CoGYkZFIWxY<\/p>\n
Over a game of Jenga in a park, Back told Cointelegraph that he\u2019s always had a \u201ckind of security mindset.\u201d From his days as a student, he tinkered with door codes, pin pads and locks, testing out code and gaining access to places he \u201cwasn\u2019t supposed to have access to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back talks through the creation of Hash Cash, one of the early attempts at digital money. He uses the \u201cBirthday collision\u201d as an allegory for hash functions, demonstrating his aptitude to breaking down complex functions into intelligible language: <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a room full of people at a party or something, there’s a question which is how many people need to be in the room before there’s 50\/50 chance that there are two people with the same birthday.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He explains that while people would expect the outcome to be related to the number 365\u2013because of how many days there are in a year, the reality is far lower. This line of thinking, combined with an understanding of spam email, led to Back\u2019s coding up of Hash\u00a0Cash.<\/p>\n