It is of paramount importance that we have access to free and open channels to communicate our thoughts, and as much of the world continues to move into a digital landscape, preserving these channels will depend on innovative technology and idealistic human willpower. This is something that people have been thinking about for a long time, and is ultimately a root cause of why Satoshi Nakamoto brought Bitcoin into existence. Let’s travel back to a time when these ideas were first being discussed, and explore the similar threads that exist within their core messages.

The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto

In today's world, privacy has become a scarce commodity. Governments and corporations collect massive amounts of data on individuals, which can be used for surveillance, targeted advertising, or even sold to third parties. Digital privacy is crucial for protecting our personal information, financial transactions, and intellectual property. It’s also essential for protecting free speech and political dissent. In some countries, individuals who express dissenting opinions or criticize the government can face persecution or imprisonment. Free, open channels are thus extremely important for preserving individual autonomy and liberty.

In the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, written in 1988, Timothy C. May argued that technology was quickly advancing to a point where people would be able to start communicating better. As such, he believed that it was important that there existed technologies or mechanisms that were “based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification”. Because, ultimately, there is a lot of power in controlling narratives and communication channels - that’s a lot of data, and data is money. May saw the temptations that lingered over the data-hungry entities of the new world that was emerging, and the importance of having protocols to defend individual liberty.

Read it here: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html

The Cypherpunk Manifesto

“Cypherpunk” is a term that was originally coined in the cypherpunk email list as a person that is a proponent of cryptography and using decentralized, privacy enhancing technologies as a means of bringing about social and political change. The manifesto argues that the advent of computers and the internet has ushered in an era of unparalleled surveillance and control, and that the only way to resist these forces is to use technology to reclaim our digital privacy and sovereignty. At its core, it is a call to action for individuals to take control of their digital lives and protect their privacy from prying eyes. It argues that privacy is a fundamental human right, and that the erosion of privacy in the digital age poses a grave threat to individual freedom and autonomy.

There is an old saying in the community, “cypherpunks write code”. Ultimately, the code that they wanted to write was encryption. This is perhaps an ode to the importance of having strong, transparent systems for distributing power, that are based in mathematics and reason - and not human desire. There was a solid ethos built around human autonomy, and using encryption technology to preserve the rights of a free and just society. The manifesto sees cryptography as a powerful tool for resisting this encroachment on our rights, allowing individuals to communicate and transact with one another in secure, tamper-proof, and transparent ways.

Read it here: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Finally, we come to the Bitcoin White Paper, perhaps the solution to these long-expressed concerns. Created by the famously anonymous “Satoshi Nakamoto”, this technology was designed to encourage individual sovereignty through a trustless, distributed ledger. Bitcoin uses cryptography to secure transactions and maintain the integrity of the network, allowing for peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries. This means that users can have greater control over their financial transactions and personal information, while still maintaining the security and privacy of their data.

Think of Bitcoin as a foundational technology, in order to have any sort of “truth” in the digital world, we first need to have a piece of paper that’s not going to crumble away or change what we write on it. Bitcoin acts as a peer to peer network in which we can all verify what has happened, and it’s use of a distributed node system allows the power to be decentralized so that it cannot be shut down by just taking down a server room somewhere or something. Bitcoin is the bedrock in which we can build towards things and have a guarantee of that progress.

Overall, it is important that we recognize the importance of having free, tamper-proof channels in which to transact and communicate upon. “But if I’m not doing anything wrong then why should I care?”. You should care because as humans, we have certain unalienable rights - rights that allow us to work together as a society towards a better future. We need record keepers. We need a sturdy, tamper-proof canvas to record things - or pretty soon we could find ourselves in a very convoluted world in which truth is determined by the highest bidder.

To learn more about Bitcoin, read the white paper here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

P.S. It’s also pre-downloaded on every mac computer, and has been lurking there as an inconspicuous file for years…was it put there by a cypherpunk?

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