Cypherpunk

The cypherpunk movement formed in the early 1990s around a mailing list started by Eric Hughes, Timothy May and John Gilmore. Its members argued that privacy in the digital age would require cryptography that anyone could use, and that code, not laws, would protect it. Eric Hughes's 1993 A Cypherpunk's Manifesto summed up the idea: cypherpunks write code.

Many building blocks of Bitcoin came from this community or its circle: David Chaum's ecash, Adam Back's Hashcash proof of work, Wei Dai's b-money and Nick Szabo's bit gold. Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin in 2008 on a cryptography mailing list with roots in the same culture, and Hal Finney, a cypherpunk, received the first bitcoin transaction.

The label is now used for developers and users who prioritise privacy, self-custody and censorship resistance, sometimes in tension with the regulated, institutional side of crypto. Projects such as privacy tools and open-source wallets often describe their values as cypherpunk.