🕶️ Crypto Rebels, 1993: The Warning Was Issued
In 1993, WIRED ran a cover story that most ignored.
Those who didn’t?
They built the tools we’re using now.
They were called Cypherpunks—and they weren’t theorizing.
They were coding. Encrypting. Anonymizing.
Declaring war on surveillance before it was fashionable.
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💣 Core Principle
> “Privacy is necessary for an open society.”
— A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, Eric Hughes
They didn’t wait for permission.
They built a parallel future.
They knew the internet would either liberate us or enslave us.
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👤 Who They Were
• Tim May – Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. Called the shot on surveillance states.
• Eric Hughes – “We write code.” The soul of the movement.
• John Gilmore – EFF cofounder. Pushed for protocol-layer freedom.
• Phil Zimmermann – Created PGP. Got investigated for publishing math.
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🔐 What They Did
• Released PGP before "E2EE" was a term
• Built anonymous remailers (proto-Tor)
• Mapped the logic that would birth Bitcoin
• Proved: Code is speech. Privacy is non-negotiable.
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🧠 What They Understood in 1993
• Mass surveillance was coming
• Backdoors would be demanded
• Big Tech would become proxy states
• Only open protocols could keep the internet human
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🧬 What Emerged From That Fire
• Bitcoin – Permissionless value protocol
• Nostr – A flexible, censorship-resistant substrate for building decentralized anything
• WhiteNoise – Private messaging built on Nostr, no emails or phone numbers
• Bitchat – Mesh-style, serverless chat over Nostr
• Signal – Battle-tested encrypted messenger
• Tor – Anonymous access to the open web
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👁️🗨️ TL;DR
We’re not here by accident.
Cypherpunks wrote the playbook.
If you’re building on Bitcoin, Nostr, or any open system—
you’re carrying the torch.
Don’t drop it.
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📜 The Originals
• A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto
→ activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
• Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
→ activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html
#freedomtech #cypherpunks #foss #privacy #bitcoin #cryptography #wired
