The Cypherpunk Movement - Meet the influences behind cryptocurrencies

What is the cypherpunk movement? With its early origins in the 1970s and official start with a mailing list in 1992, cypherpunks can be defined as digital activists who defend the idea of utilizing cryptography technologies to protect the general privacy and human rights of all individuals.

The Cypherpunk Mailing List: Created in 1992 right after the world wide web opened for the first time, it hosted an insane number of genius minds in technologies that would be virtually impossible to have in the same room today. Here are some examples to research later, as each deserves its own article and biography: Jude Milhon, Adam Back, David Chaum, Eric Hughes, Timothy C May, John Gilmore, Fen Labalme, Nick Szabo, Richard Stallman, Ron Rivest, Romana Machado, Lance Cottrell, Ulf Moller, Tatu Ylonen and Tim Berners-Lee - who created the open internet. The list is still active to this day with several more members.

Main Cypherpunk accomplishments throughout history

• The Internet
• SSL Cryptography
• Safe remote access
• Organizations for digital privacy and user rights
• Cryptocurrencies

As crypto investors and enthusiasts in the market, we often hear about what made crypto what it is today: leading minds like the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, early projects like Monero and Dogecoin, influencers like Mike Novogratz or recently Michael Saylor - the list goes on.

But despite Blockchain’s mysterious origin with Satoshi Nakamoto, cryptocurrencies didn’t suddenly appear out of context; they actually came from decades of ideas and discussion surrounding one particular movement - the Cypherpunks.

This article covers the fundamental details about the Cypherpunk movement; when it originated, main activists and the biggest impacts it had and still has in the world - one of them being the creation of the internet itself.

What is the Cypherpunk movement?

---

Still active to this day throughout the internet, a cypherpunk can be defined as an activist who defends the idea of utilizing cryptography technologies to protect the general privacy and human rights of all individuals.

The word “cypherpunk” gained a lot of traction in the 1980s, although its actual original comes even earlier than that. The cypherpunk activists held a decisive role in the evolution of cryptographic technology, now applied all over the world, and as public defenders of our privacy rights as internet users since the internet itself first came about.

Despite the movement itself being older than the 1980s, the word cypherpunk was first coined by Jude Milhon only in 1992. He merely mixed the words cypher, connected to technicalities of cryptography, with punk - meaning a rebel, much like the music genre itself. Oversimplifying the movement, cypherpunk means “the cryptography rebels.” If you’re hearing the word cypherpunk for the first time, I’m sure you’ve made a clear connection with another expression - cyberpunk - and it is no coincidence, as cypherpunks take plenty of inspiration for their projects and tastes based on what they’d despite the most, which would be a cyberpunk world where anarchy and hyper-capitalism without any privacy reign over society.

How the cypherpunk movement started

---

It can be argued that the cypherpunk movement started as early as the early 1970s, when computation became advanced enough to transform the security of public digital information into private cryptographed ventures. At the time, people who were interested in cryptography wanted to take the technology to spaces beyond purely military use, which was the focus at the time. Such perspective was unforeseen by most researchers at the time, but proven necessary thanks to the completely connected world that we now live in, where our data is stored and accessed from anywhere on the globe.

The very first cryptographer and potential cypherpunk was Ralph Merkle, who is considered by many as being the father of computational cryptography. In the late 1970s, Merkle was able to develop and introduce several different models of cryptography that are still used as references to this day, including the asymmetric cryptography model. Unfortunately for the times, Ralph’s work was treated as a joke by researchers who just didn’t see any use for what he was accomplishing.

Regardless, Ralph started working with two other fundamental researchers - Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffle, in developing more digital frameworks to improve cryptographic structures for computers. It was the very first step towards the creation of the cypherpunk movement.

The 1980s: rise of the cypherpunks

---

The development of cryptographic technologies during the 1970s was essential for the movement, but it only really kicked off in the 1980s. Despite the advancements in the systems, the computational power of most hardware in the world was not nearly as powerful enough to hold these implementations - but that didn’t stop people from developing cryptography towards new levels. With ARPANET growing rapidly - that is, the first research-focused instance of what is now called the Internet - the 80s kicked off the world as an alive and connected network of information. During that time David Chaum, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali started working together on ways to better implement cryptographic measures on very rudimentary computers when compared to the following decade. It was only with the creation of the World Wide Web 1 that the cypherpunks were truly allowed to flourish - and that started with the Cypherpunk email chain.

The Cypherpunk Mailing List

---

At the start of the 1990s, what we now know as the internet had become a reality. Created by also-cypherpunk Tim Berners-Lee, the first worldwide network was fully operational - although at an inconceivably lower capacity than what we have today. Nonetheless, it allowed people to communicate instantly through their computers, which included researchers in cryptography from all over the world who decided to create an email chain.

Thus, finally and officially in 1992, the Cypherpunk movement was born. Called the “Cypherpunk Mailing List,” it hosted an insane number of genius minds in technologies that would be virtually impossible to have in the same room today. Here are some examples to research later, as each deserves its own article and biography: Jude Milhon (who gave it its name), Adam Back, David Chaum, Eric Hughes, Timothy C May, John Gilmore, Fen Labalme, Nick Szabo (Elon Musk’s guess as who Satoshi Nakamoto is), Richard Stallman, Ron Rivest, Romana Machado, Lance Cottrell, Ulf Moller, Tatu Ylonen and Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the world wide web).And the list is still active to this day. From 1992 until recent years, the Cypherpunk Mailing List has become an essential space for developing cryptography projects worldwide. It was also the pillar behind the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Main Cypherpunk accomplishments throughout history

---

As previously mentioned, cypherpunks seek to do their best to create tools that help us fight for our privacy. With that in mind and their proximity to technological advancement as a whole, here are the main contributions of the cypherpunk movement to the world.

The Internet

---

Although not officially at the time, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee joined the cypherpunk mailing list after his most ambitious project came online: the World Wide Web, allowing the simplest computing systems of the time to have access to an open network of information and data storage - opening the doors of the former ARPANET to the common folk. Shortly after its lunch, Berners-Lee became a major advocate in promoting digital citizenship through the privacy of data, the right of information and net neutrality.

SSL Cryptography

---

In its early days of access, the internet fuctioned without any form of cryptography, which meant anyone with the proper knowledge was able to monitor servers and connections and therefore explore their content. This was obviously a major problem for the future of digital citizens, and cypherpunk Ben Laurie was well aware of it. In 1998 he created Apache-SSL, a cryptography code allowing programmers to make their systems private.

Safe and private remote access

---

What is the biggest quality of the internet? The ability to access the same information anywhere in the world. The problem is, server protocols at the start of Web 1 didn’t exactly protect users from hacks and data information - in other words, accessing the internet through an open server was quite dangerous. That is, until cypherpunk researcher Tatu Ylonen created the protocol SSH, which is still used as a reference to this day to provide safe connections from all over the world.

Organizations that defend digital rights

---

As mentioned previously, the cypherpunk movement created initiatives such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, geared towards technological development that will benefit internet users and their rights as digital citizens. They also created the Free Software Foundation, with the goal of making major software available freely for users to tweak and explore as they wish. This foundation was directly responsible for projects like Linux and Android OS being free to use and customize.

And of course, the creation of cryptocurrencies

---

Although the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still a great mystery, it’s inherently clear that the creation of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology was directly influenced by the cypherpunk movement: the rights of privacy, freedom against centralized entities, anonymous transactions, the list goes on. Not only so, but all the most accepted theories surrounding Nakamoto’s identity revolve around cypherpunk leaders such as Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman. Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto was, one thing is very clear: he was definitely someone involved in the cypherpunk movement.



Author: Gate.io Researcher: Victor Bastos

* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.