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_getting_started/what-is-a-cypherpunk.md

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+---
+layout: static-informational
+permalink: /getting-started/what-is-a-cypherpunk
+title: What is a Cypherpunk?
+order: 2
+---
+
+Wikipedia defines "[Cypherpunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk)" as follows (2018-05-26):
+
+> A **cypherpunk** is any activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since the late 1980s.
+
+The following paragraphs are also worth including:
+
+> Until about the 1970s, cryptography was mainly practiced in secret by military or spy agencies. However, that changed when two publications brought it out of the closet into public awareness: the US government publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a block cipher which became very widely used; and the first publicly available work on public-key cryptography, by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.
+
+> The technical roots of Cypherpunk ideas have been traced back to work by cryptographer David Chaum on topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems, described in his paper "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" (1985).
+
+> In late 1992, Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May and John Gilmore founded a small group that met monthly at Gilmore's company Cygnus Solutions in the San Francisco Bay Area, and was humorously termed cypherpunks by Jude Milhon at one of the first meetings - derived from cipher and cyberpunk. In November 2006, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
+
+It should be noted that while the term "cypherpunk" *is* a humourous reference to the contemporary "cyberpunk" scene, the two philosophies/scenes are not as closely related as the name suggests.
+
+In terms of how "cypherpunks" would define themselves, we can actually look to founding cypherpunk Eric Hughes's words for a much more succinct definition:
+
+> Cypherpunks write code.
+
+This comes from "[A Cypherpunk's Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html)" which was posted by Hughes to the Cypherpunks Mailing List on 9th March 1993. In this document he argues for a cypherpunk ethos which elevates action over talk. He believed that instead of debating the fineries of theoretical systems, cypherpunks should get to work writing the cryptographic tools that will enable them to bring more privacy and liberty into the word.
+
+Modern-day cypherpunks still hold that ethos close to their heart. Just as "The Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto" was required required reading for that section, "[A Cypherpunk's Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html)" is essential reading for all newcomers.
+
+## tl;dr:
+
++ Essential reading: [A Cypherpunk's Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html)
++ Cypherpunks believe in favouring action over talk (cypherpunks write code) and that writing functional code is the best route towards bringing more liberty and privacy into the world via cryptography. 
++ See also [What is the Cypherpunks Mailing List?](/getting-started/what-is-the-cypherpunks-mailing-list)

_getting_started/what-is-bitcoin.md

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+---
+layout: static-informational
+permalink: /getting-started/what-is-bitcoin
+title: What is Bitcoin (And How is it Related)?
+order: 4
+---
+
+Wikipedia defines "[Bitcoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin)" as follows (2018-05-26):
+
+> Bitcoin (₿) is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator. The system was designed to work as a peer-to-peer network, a network in which transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and released as open-source software in 2009.
+
+During the 90s era of the Cypherpunks Mailing List, most of the components that cypherpunks felt were necessary were largely solved and fleshed out. These included chains anonymous remailers which allowed users to send email anonymously without recipient, or any of the remailers, being able to link sender, content and recipient. This technology was essentially a precursor to the "onion routing" used in the Tor anonymity network.
+
+One, absolutely essential, tool still eluded them though: digital cash. Academic cryptographer David Chaum had made some progress towards a digital cash system that gave transactional privacy to participants, however there was one major problem with all the known systems at the time. They all had central points of failure which governments could shut down. [E-gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold), was essentially an anonymous digital cash system that was issued (and backed with physical gold) by a company of the same name. This ended with criminal prosecution of the company's founders by the US Government as unlicensed money transmitters.
+
+Cypherpunks were left without this piece of their puzzle until 2008, when a person (or group) operating under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" released a whitepaper detailing a viable solution to the problem. "[Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)" outlined a system which was fully peer to peer (i.e. it had no central point of failure). Traditionally, a central authority had been required to ensure that the unit of e-cash was not "double-spent".
+
+To better understand the problem. Consider that to spend your unit of e-cash, you simply cryptographically sign it over to someone else and transmit that information to them. The money would then exist as a verifiable chain of cryptographic signatures (the transactions) going back to the issuer of that unit of e-cash. However there is a huge problem with this approach:
+
++ What is to stop you from making a copy, and signing the same unit of e-cash over to two different people?
++ How would those two people discover discover the existence of the other's transaction? i.e. that the chain had forked, duplicating that unit of e-cash.
+
+Bitcoin solved this problem via a global ledger that all network participants must agree upon. There are some very sophisticated game-theoretical incentives built into the system to keep everyone honest and using the same version of the ledger. I won't dive too much deeper into the details of how this works, but every ten minutes a new "block" of transactions is added to the ledger. If your transaction is included in that block, then the network will not accept an attempt to double-spend. This is because the network is now in agreement that you no longer own that unit of e-cash.
+
+This was a revolutionary discovery that re-engergised the now largely stagnant cypherpunk movement. It is highly likely that Satoshi Nakamoto is someone (or someones) who was active on the Cypherpunks Mailing List during its 90s heyday, and spent the next 10-15 years in the search of a solution. At this point it seems very unlikely we'll ever know who was behind the "Satoshi Nakamoto" pseudonym, which is, in a way, a great shame since their story is one that would almost-certainly be fascinating to hear. However, being birthed by a pseudonymous creator couldn't be a more "cypherpunk" beginning to the project.
+
+From Bitcoin, this paradigm shift has spawned innumerable immitations and attempted improvements on the underlying technology, many of which now have market-caps significantly exceeding $1 billion USD. Bitcoin itself has a market cap of over $128 billion USD at time of writing (2018-05-27).
+
+With a solution to its intractable problem, this ignited a wave of new interest in the ideas associated with the cypherpunk movement. A new generation of people who were children or not-yet-born during the 90s are now exploring the possibilities opened up by uncensorable, pseudonymous digital cash and strong anonymity/privacy.
+
+It is those people, technology historians, and nostalgic old-timers who are the intended readers of this site.
+
+## tl;dr:
+
++ Essential reading: [Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)
++ The cypherpunk movement stalled in its quest for social change due to a lack of good, uncensorable, anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) e-cash without a central point of failure that nation states could attack.
++ Traditionally, cryptographic e-cash systems have relied upon a central authority to detect and reject attempts to "double-spend" the same unit of e-cash.
++ Bitcoin solved this problem by finding a cryptographic and game-theoretical incentive structure which allows network participants to agree upon a ledger of e-cash ownership at any given time.
++ Now that the cypherpunks' central roadblock has been overcome, this has ignited a huge wave of new interest in their ideas.

_getting_started/what-is-crypto-anarchy.md

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+---
+layout: static-informational
+permalink: /getting-started/what-is-crypto-anarchy
+title: What is Crypto Anarchy?
+order: 1
+---
+
+Wikipedia defines "[Crypto-Anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism)" as follows (2018-05-26):
+
+> **Crypto-anarchism** (or **crypto-anarchy**) is a cyber-spatial realization of anarchism. Crypto-anarchists employ cryptographic software to evade persecution and harassment while sending and receiving information over computer networks, in an effort to protect their privacy, their political freedom, and their economic freedom.
+
+The term was coined by Timothy C. May in [The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html) which was distributed via the Cypherpunks Mailing List on 22nd November 1992. This document is essential first reading for the total newcomer and is relatively short.
+
+Crypto-anarchy is a form of market-anarchism where cryptography, anonymity technologies, digital pseudonyms and cryptographic digital cash are used to subvert the power of the state. The stated goal of the crypto-anarchist movement is to enable people to engage in unlimited free speech and economic transactions which are beyond the reach of the state's ability to tax and regulate.
+
+Some see this as a way to restore balance between the rights of the individual and the power of the state. Others see crypto-anarchy as a tool to forever render the state impossible. It would achieve this by denying the state the ability to raise funding or identify individual actors for law enforcement purposes.
+
+The more radical still, such as Jim Bell, propose using these same technologies to set up anonymously funded and trust-minimised Assassination Markets, where political assassinations can be crowd funded. He explained his proposal in detail in [Assassination Politics](https://web.archive.org/web/20180331030749/https://cryptome.org/ap.htm). He theorises that such markets would make the job of being a politician or high-level bureaucrat so dangerous that, in the end, no-one would want to do it. The state would then, in his view, wither on the vine, chronically understaffed and starved of revenue by the rapidly growing crypto-anarchist economy.
+
+## tl;dr:
+
++ Essential reading: [The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html)
++ Crypto-anarchists seek to use strong encryption and anonymity tools to create spaces outside of the reach of the state for free space and commerce. 

_getting_started/what-is-the-cypherpunks-mailing-list.md

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+---
+layout: static-informational
+permalink: /getting-started/what-is-the-cypherpunks-mailing-list
+title: What is the Cypherpunks Mailing List?
+order: 3
+---
+
+From the Wikipedia "[Cypherpunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk)" artice (2018-05-26):
+
+> The Cypherpunks mailing list was started in 1992, and by 1994 had 700 subscribers. At its peak, it was a very active forum with technical discussion ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in. An email from John Gilmore reports an average of 30 messages a day from December 1, 1996 to March 1, 1999, and suggests that the number was probably higher earlier. The number of subscribers is estimated to have reached 2000 in the year 1997.
+
+While an incarnation of the mailing list is still in operation (archives viewable [here](https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/)) it is generally acknowledged that its heyday way in the 90s through to around 2000. The (incomplete) archive of posts from this era can be found at [cypherpunks.venona.com](https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/). If you want to read a comprehensive description of what the list is/was all about, you can read [The Cyphernomicon](https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html) which is the "official" mailing list FAQ, compiled by Timothy C. May. It's quite lengthy but if you have the time, it is worth the read.
+
+It is during this period that the community was energised by a battle with the US intelligence establishment relating to the export of cryptography (which the US Government had at the time classified as a munition). This is a battle that the cypherpunk movement and broader civilian cryptography community largely won, though some variations of government proposals still pop up to this day.
+
+Reading the archives, you will notice that while it was subject to the usual trolling and spam, like most online communities both then and now, it had high signal to noise ratio. High quality technical discussion relating to maths and cryptography is found on the list.
+
+This community inspired a generation of people to start viewing this relatively arcane branch of mathematics (assymetric cryptography - itself only about 20 years old at the time) as a powerful tool for social change. Armed with these ideological convictions and technical toolsets, many cypherpunks made great contributions. Notable list participants include Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and Hal Finney (the receiver of the first Bitcoin transaction). Assuming Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) was not Finney himself, then this mysterious figure was also most likely a list subscriber (and maybe participant).
+
+The modern crypto-currency space can largely be considered as an offshoot of the community first formed on the Cypherpunks Mailing List.
+
+## tl;dr:
+
++ Optional reading: [The Cyphernomicon - Cypherpunks Mailing List FAQ](https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html)
++ Optional reading: [Cypherpunk Mailing List Archives](https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/)
++ The Cypherpunks Mailing List was the place where a community and ideology was founded that favoured direct action (in the form of software code) towards the ends of social change (namely an increase in privacy and individial liberty).
++ This community and ideology later inspired the creation of Wikileaks, Bitcoin and the current Cryptocurrency space.
++ The heyday of the list coincides with an important social and legal battle with the US government over the control of strong cryptography.
++ See also [What is a Cypherpunk?](/getting-started/what-is-a-cypherpunk)