🕶️ 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 right now.
They were called Cypherpunks—and they weren’t theorizing.
They were coding. Encrypting. Anonymizing.
Declaring war on surveillance before it became mainstream.
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💣 Core Principle:
> “Privacy is necessary for an open society.” — Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto
They didn’t ask for permission.
They built the foundation.
They knew the internet would either free us or enslave us.
And they bet everything on cryptography.
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👤 Who They Were
• Tim May – Author of The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, warned of future surveillance states.
• Eric Hughes – Wrote A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, helped launch the Cypherpunk mailing list.
• John Gilmore – EFF co-founder, championed anonymous remailers and free speech online.
• Phil Zimmermann – Created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a game-changing encryption tool that got him investigated by the U.S. government.
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🔐 What They Did
• Released PGP before “E2EE” had a name
• 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
• Surveillance would go default
• Governments would demand backdoors
• Big Tech would become proxy governments
• Only open protocols could keep the net 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 messaging
• Signal – Battle-tested private 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 with Bitcoin, Nostr, or any open system—
You're carrying the torch.
Don’t drop it.
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📜 Read the Manifestos
• 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 #approvedversion #secondtimeacharm
