"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know.

To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak #cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy.

#Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society."

-The Cypherpunk Manifesto

Eric Hughes (1993)

Cypherpunks, particularly in the context of #Bitcoin, are modern day heroes.