The cypherpunk manifesto

In 1988, Timothy C. May circulates his "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto": strong cryptography will, in his view, transform society as deeply as the printing press did, by making possible exchanges and markets that states will be unable to surveil or tax. In 1992, May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore found a mailing list, hosted on toad.com, which will take the name cypherpunks.

On March 9, 1993, Eric Hughes publishes "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto." The central idea fits in a few lines: privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age, and no one will give it to us, we must build it ourselves. "Cypherpunks write code": cypherpunks write code, they publish their software so that others can use it, attack it, and improve it. Full text and translation.

The list becomes the laboratory for everything that follows: anonymous remailers, Phil Zimmermann's PGP, debates on digital money. Adam Back, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo and Hal Finney all take part. When the Bitcoin whitepaper appears in 2008, it does not come out of nowhere: it is the synthesis of fifteen years of discussions in this community, and it cites their work directly.

A detail that will matter for later investigations: this community is small. A few hundred active participants, who have been reading one another for years. Most researchers believe that Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he is, must have read and frequented this list or its successors.