**The Fake Cypherpunks**

ᶜᵒ⁻ᵒᵖᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵃⁿᵍᵘᵃᵍᵉ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵈᵉᶠᵃⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ⁱᵈᵉᵃ

If you can't beat them, join them, and corrupt them from within. The old and well-known Trojan Horse strategy remains effective.

Every era manufactures its impostors, but ours industrialises them.

Anyone with a cryptic logo and a privacy slogan calls themselves a cypherpunk, even if their entire business model depends on pleasing regulators.

Look at the contrast.

The Tornado Cash developers published code and got hit by half the state apparatus.

Samourai Wallet promoted real and operational privacy, but ultimately faced the same authorities, with its developers ending up in jail.

Those reactions expose a simple truth: effective privacy bothers power. And whatever bothers power gets hunted down.

Now compare that with the corporate cosplay version of a 匚ㄚρђ𝑒ｒρｕᶰķ, the Winklevoss twins.

Gemini, a fully registered exchange, Cypherpunk Technologies, a Wall Street-approved investment vehicle with heavy bets on Zcash, a chain created by a company registered with the government, which files financial statements with the IRS, and in which privacy is pre-filtered so that it never becomes a nuisance.

It is anonymity with a seatbelt, engineered not to upset the regulatory ecosystem.

The issue isn’t their existence; the issue is the narrative. They sell themselves as rebels while operating comfortably inside the palace walls. That appropriation is strategic.

Co-opt the language and defang the idea.

Fake cypherpunks don’t break rules; they manage them. They don’t challenge power; they stylize.

True #privacy lies elsewhere, in people's attitudes, in everyday practice, and far from press releases and balance sheets.