What is Cypherpunk?
A movement advocating for the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change.
The cypherpunk movement, originating in the late 1980s, laid the philosophical and technical foundation for modern privacy tools.
The Cypherpunk Manifesto (1993)
Eric Hughes wrote: "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any... Cypherpunks write code."
Key Figures
- Eric Hughes: Wrote the Cypherpunk Manifesto
- Timothy May: Wrote the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
- Phil Zimmermann: Created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
- Julian Assange: Founded WikiLeaks (early cypherpunk mailing list member)
- Adam Back: Invented Hashcash, which influenced Bitcoin's proof-of-work
- Wei Dai: Proposed b-money, a precursor to Bitcoin
- Hal Finney: Received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto
Legacy
Every privacy tool you use today has roots in the cypherpunk movement:
- Tor, Signal, Bitcoin, Monero, PGP, encrypted messaging, VPNs
- The principle: build the privacy tools yourself, don't wait for permission
Default Privacy's Connection
Default Privacy operates in the cypherpunk tradition — "amateur cypherpunks" who believe privacy should be the default, not the exception. We build tools and guide people toward privacy-respecting alternatives.
Related Terms
Open Source
Software whose source code is made freely available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute. In privacy tools, open source allows independent security researchers to verify that the software does what it claims and contains no backdoors or hidden surveillance capabilities.
Privacy by Design
An approach to systems engineering that takes privacy into account throughout the entire engineering process. Rather than bolting privacy protections onto existing systems, Privacy by Design builds privacy into the architecture from the ground up.
Privacy Coin
A cryptocurrency designed with built-in privacy features that hide transaction amounts, sender and receiver addresses, or both.
Have more questions?
Use our guided flow to get the right next privacy step for Cypherpunk.
Open Guided Flow