Nick Szabo, known as the "father of smart contracts," revisited early decentralization efforts in a speech at the Bitcoin Conference in June 2021. Szabo highlighted discussions from 1995 in Extropy magazine about concepts like virtual banks and distributed networks, which were then in their nascent stages. That same year, Szabo introduced the idea of smart contracts. He also noted David Chaum's DigiCash, which utilized "blind signatures" to minimize trust, and its test currency Cyberbucks, considered the first private digital currency. Szabo further discussed how his Libtech mailing list facilitated exchanges of ideas that led to significant pre-Bitcoin projects such as Bit Gold, b-money, and RPOW. These initiatives laid foundational concepts for the development of Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency landscape.