The cypherpunks are the pioneers of a movement defending human freedom in the digital age. Bitcoin's intellectual roots cannot be understood without them.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the context was distinctive. Businesses and governments were beginning to exert increasing control over information technologies and the emerging Internet. This period marked the rapid development of these technologies, but also a growing anxiety about mass surveillance and the systematic violation of citizens' privacy.

Faced with this anxiety, libertarian and anarchist thinkers came together to act. Their vision was clear: to make anonymity and financial freedom accessible to everyone through digital cryptographic tools, thereby escaping government control. They set out to develop technologies that would allow citizens to preserve their privacy and autonomy in their everyday online activities.

In 1992, Tim May and Eric Hughes launched the first Cypherpunk mailing list. This platform quickly became the movement's nerve center, bringing together developers, cryptographers, and advocates of digital freedom. It was on this same list that Satoshi Nakamoto would share the Bitcoin White Paper for the first time in 2008.

In March 1993, Eric Hughes published A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, a relatively short but foundational text:

The fundamental motivation is clear: confidentiality is a key element of freedom, and it must be built by individuals themselves, not awaited as a gift from corporations or governments.

The cypherpunks place their trust in decentralized cryptographic systems rather than in centralized institutions such as banks or governments. This is a principle that reappears directly in Satoshi Nakamoto's design for Bitcoin.

Politically, they seek to build decentralized networks where decisions are made collectively, without any single entity being able to impose its will. All centralization is perceived as founded on coercion rather than on consent. This echoes the libertarian philosophy that consent is the fundamental norm of justice. Nothing can be just if it is imposed by a centralized authority through force.

The manifesto also states that confidentiality in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary system of this type. But in a digital society where cash is disappearing, a digital currency with the same properties of anonymity must be invented. And that is precisely what would arrive with Bitcoin.

The cypherpunks do not content themselves with hopes. They actively intervene to create spaces of freedom and autonomy. Hence the formula that concludes the manifesto:

For Eric Hughes, the path to freedom passes through the active construction of anonymous systems that render arbitrary political divisions irrelevant. Code becomes the fundamental tool for transforming an abstract idea of freedom into reality. This is why Satoshi Nakamoto would say that he wrote the entire Bitcoin code before even writing the white paper.

From 2008 onward, Bitcoin became the first successful concretization of an electronic currency that is uncensorable and sovereign. It offers a decentralized, pseudonymous monetary alternative that is difficult for authorities to control. Whether adopted by right-wing or left-wing activists, by defenders of freedom or equality, or simply by savers with no political label, it gives every individual the possibility of emancipating from the traditional financial system and regaining mastery over their money, and therefore over their freedom.

From this point of view, without explicitly claiming to belong to any political camp, Bitcoin bears the seeds of a silent revolution and joins the top of the dial in Nolan's diagram.