Cypherpunks
Movement that created the ideological foundation for Bitcoin — privacy through cryptography.
Cypherpunks are an activist movement that from the early 1990s advocated for the use of strong cryptography to protect individual privacy and freedom from corporate and government surveillance.
Manifesto (1993, Eric Hughes): "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age." "We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence." "Cypherpunks write code."
Key figures:
•Eric Hughes — founder, Cypherpunk Manifesto
•Timothy C. May — Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
•John Gilmore — co-founder EFF
•Phil Zimmermann — PGP (email cryptography)
•Hal Finney — RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work), first BTC recipient
•Nick Szabo — bit gold (BTC precursor), smart contracts
•Adam Back — Hashcash (cited in BTC whitepaper)
•Wei Dai — b-money (BTC precursor)
•David Chaum — DigiCash, ecash (80s)
Legacy:
•Bitcoin is technically and ideologically a product of the Cypherpunk movement
•Tor, PGP, Signal — cypherpunk projects
•Right to privacy through code, not through petitions