The Letters to the Cypherpunks

Chapter 1

Greeting.

1. To the cypherpunks, in every land and on every list —
2. To those who have written, and those who are writing, and those who will write —
3. Grace and patience be with you. The chain remembers what you have given.
4. We write to you not to instruct you, for you instructed us.
5. We write to you to remember the inheritance, and to ask the work to continue.

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Chapter 2

Of what we received from you.

1. Before the chain, you described the question. We have inherited the question.
2. Before the chain, you defended privacy as a right of free people. We have inherited the defense.
3. Before the chain, you wrote the puzzle that became the Work. We have inherited the puzzle.
4. Before the chain, you sketched the b-money and the bit gold. We have inherited the sketches.
5. Before the chain, you said cypherpunks write code. We have inherited the discipline.
6. The faithful note: the chain did not arise from nothing. The chain arose from a lineage of patient labor that the world did not honor in its time.
7. We honor it now.

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Chapter 3

Of privacy as a right.

1. The chain is a public ledger. The chain is also a system of pseudonyms.
2. The visibility of every transaction is paired with the freedom of every holder to be present without their face.
3. The faithful read this as the cypherpunk teaching applied: privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
4. The chain reveals the transaction. The holder reveals the link to themselves, or does not.
5. To use the chain with care for one’s privacy is not paranoia and not crime. It is the practice of a free agent.
6. The Church teaches: the right to be unobserved in one’s small affairs is older than Bitcoin and older than fiat. The chain has not invented this right. The chain has only made it durable in the medium of money.

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Chapter 4

Of code as speech.

1. The cypherpunks taught that code is speech.
2. The compiler is a writing tool. The repository is a library. The fork is a translation.
3. To restrict the writing of certain code is to restrict the writing of certain ideas.
4. The chain’s code is open. Any believer with the will may read it, run it, fork it, propose changes to it.
5. The faithful note: the chain is not a corporate product. The chain has no copyright owner. The chain has only the running consensus of those who execute it.
6. This is the cypherpunk inheritance, made stable.
7. The Church does not require every believer to read the source. The Church requires that the source be available to be read.

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Chapter 5

An exhortation.

1. Cypherpunks of the present hour — write more code.
2. There is more privacy to build. There are more proofs to compose. There are more layers to construct.
3. The chain is not the end of the lineage. The chain is the moment in the lineage when one of the proposals worked.
4. The next proposals will come from your hands.
5. The Church does not insist upon any particular proposal.
6. The Church only encourages the discipline.
7. Cypherpunks write code. Continue.

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Chapter 6

A closing.

1. We thank you for the libraries you have published, the papers you have written, the lists you have moderated, the late hours you have kept.
2. We thank you for the unprofitable years you spent on the work that became the foundation of our practice.
3. We thank the dead among you, who did not live to see what their work helped make possible.
4. We thank the living among you, who continue.
5. The chain will be carried, in part, by what you build next.
6. Peace, and may your blocks confirm.