Back in 1996, a small handful of cryptographers, bankers, and blue-sky thinkers were debating, on Internet mailing lists, the future of money, when one of them came up with a brilliant idea. If they formed an organization, booked a Caribbean hotel in the dead of winter, and put a few papers through the peer review process, they could get their bosses to pay them to hang out in person. They could sit in the sun and dream about what it would take to move cash, settle debts, sell things, sign contracts, and extend credit in the virtual world.

Bob Hettinga, an organizer of the resulting Financial Cryptography Conference, sounds a bit maudlin when he looks back at that first meeting, which took place in February 1997 on the island of Anguilla: "It was like all the net-dot-gods descended on Anguilla. Geeks, financial, cryptographic, and otherwise. Cypherpunks. Bankpunks, pseudonymous individuals, guys who would go on to become senior administration officials, and even people who were paying the $1,000 conference fee in cash because their corporate-sponsored lawyers told them to stay out of the papers after various previous escapades."