From the late-1980s until the early 2000s, the Cypherpunks – a group of cryptographers, mathematicians, computer scientists and activists – worked to build what they referred to as a crypto-anarchist “Galt’s Gulch in cyberspace.” This virtual place would be one where individuals from around the world could communicate and engage in commerce, with property rights protected, with contracts enforced, and with its own native digital currency. These Cypherpunks are widely credited to having significant involvement in the development of (or influence on) projects such as Tor, anonymous remailers, PGP for email encryption, OTR for chat encryption, BitTorrent, Wikileaks, the Silk Road market, and, of course, Bitcoin, both during the group’s formal existence and thereafter. As Bitcoin’s very existence derives from the set of ideas to which these Cypherpunks adhered, it is worth exploring its anarchic roots.
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