Bitcoin did not magically appear out of thin air. It was the product of more than 40 years of research and development. You can see many of these technical breakthroughs on this timeline:
An important takeaway from this visual is that bitcoin was not only built on top of the internet and cryptographic inventions, but it was also the culmination of years of hard work on the foundational ideas of the cypherpunk movement.
You can see Murray Rothbard produced “The Ethics of Liberty” in 1982. Timothy C. May created “The Crypto-Anarchist’s Manifesto” in 1988. Eric Hughes published “A Cyperpunk’s Manifesto” in 1993. May followed up again with “The Cyphernomicon” in 1994.
Throughout the years, the technology and the ideas of this movement attempted to create a digital currency.
There was Digicash in 1989. CyberCash in 1994. E-gold in 1996. B-Money in 1998. We even saw Liberty Reserve in 2006. Every attempt was met with some obstacle. The deficiency that was identified in the last attempt ultimately pushed the next attempt closer to success.
Finally, in October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper which would become the most successful digital currency to date.
I recently had Uncle Rockstar, a pseudonymous core contributor to BTCPayServer, on the podcast to talk about the cypherpunk movement. He shared the idea of “cypherpunks write code” but added a twist — we are all cypherpunks if we are working to see the ideals of liberty and individual rights become more globally accessible. Whether someone is writing code, creating media content, or simply talking with their friends, they are all working to push this idea forward.
Bitcoin is the technical manifestation of the idea, but the idea is unstoppable. As Victor Hugo once said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
That has been true throughout history and it is still true today.
Hope each of you has a great start to your day