You're not bullish enough.

Its similar to when people tell me Bitcoin is captured(by govt or whatever) while I'm using it totally sovereign and permissionless and just like, huh?

Fair point. The progress is undeniable, but isn’t nostalgia also a signal? Maybe not of wanting to ‘go back,’ but of something missing in the present. More options, sure—but are we still pushing the frontier, or just optimizing what already exists? The cypherpunk ethos wasn’t just about tech, but about relentless subversion. Are we still subversive enough? Hi juraj 😉🧡💜🏴‍☠️

Well said 🤠🤙

Hard to argue with @Juraj, it is basically a protopia: some things better, some things not like we wished. But we must not root out this nostalgic vibe to keep ourselves in check. I very much appreciate conservative, history-conscious approach. Who will ground the kumbaya crowds in order to continuously recalibrate all legs of the movement. The punks. Repsect those voices.

Grandma without ETFs here. Just taking your post to thank you cypherpunks for being who you are and doing what you do. Without you we would be lost. From the bottom of my heart: thank you! PS: Apart from the fact that it was fiat, I liked fiat in envelopes 😉

I basically agree with you bro!

Let's keep ourselves in check by building the future, which is always bigger and better if we build it.

Yes. My favorite pastime is listening to someone convinced something with Bitcoin is impossible while doing it literally every day 😁

What do you miss in the present? Counterculture is always captured and packaged, you can buy punk T-shirts in mainstream brand stores for ten bucks now. I think the main point to understand is that the masses will never want what we want, need and do build. They will oppose it. Even though they'll say they want the good parts. The existence of that ten bucks punk T-shirt does not mean there are real punks out there. Even within the Bitcoin ecosystem we'll be a tiny fraction. But still we're bigger and better than old times.

And hi Boniz! ❤️ Thanks for insightful comment!

Ho juraj nice to meet you ✌️🤝

Fiat in envelopes is still a thing! Checkout @bitpunk.fm is typing or Cypherpunk Bitstream podcast. Hi ! 👋

Grandmas who buy ETFs are in serious danger. Bitcoin is not like a stock, and some people just cannot fathom this. Who will explain to grandma why she owns blackcoin:tm: now? Or why she lost her coins after Coinbase got hacked. ETFs are a risk. Bitcoin is a trust machine. I would much rather see a world where grandmas trust their grandsons to custody their coins, as opposed to Blackrock or Leviathan.

I think every era, every historical moment has its pioneers! There is no better or worse. We are all privileged and ambassadors of this technology! Who for one reason who for another! Satoshi Nakamoto is very important! But the people who have accepted bitcoin today are equally. Satoshi is all of us! 🧡🏴‍☠️😉

We already also live in this world. Many grandmas with grandsons. There is no one thread, the society is complex and it's upon us to choose. This is one of the most fun features of both Bitcoin and free and open source software. You can find your way and have the choose. That's also the only downside. You have to make a choice, there are either no defaults or they are not very good

Celebrate both the wins and the roots.

Also one thing that deserves to be said is that by playing our own game, we may slowly introduce others to our game as well. The best way to introduce "normies" into our world is be showing them that we can thrive, be happy and be free with what we're building. We don't need to convince everyone, we only need to convince those we care about. Live free

I don't do it out of nostalgia. I do it because it works and avoids the digital domain altogether 😀

“We could not even imagine in our wildest dreams that we would arrive at the current moment.” We could, but we didn't want to. For us cypherpunks, this was more like a nightmare than a dream. We actively tried NOT to dream about this. “We had crampy slow mixmasters, command line encryption that no one used, fiat in envelopes and later centralized electronic gold custodians.” The performance of mixmasters can be improved, GUI can be developed, fiat in envelopes can be replaced by gift card codes (though there is nothing wrong with fiat in envelopes), and centralized gold custodians can be avoided. All that can be done WITHOUT kissing the government's ass. “but also these corrupted services did not exist at all in the before times” Yes, that's what makes those old times better. “Do we have more options or less? Definitely more.” Not really. If you are a cypherpunk, you won't count privacy invasive, KYC mandatory solutions as "options". The existence of options that do more harm than good is not something to celebrate. “Pissed about grandmas with ETFs?” Yes. “Even if you remove them, we are more than 1000x of what anyone expected.” No we aren't. What we expected was far more glorious than people giving their money to Black Rock so that Black Rock (not the people) can hold more Bitcoin while those people hold neither the fiat money they had nor the Bitcoin that fiat money could have bought them. All they hold is a debt issued by Black Rock. Just a promise on paper, enforced by human convention. “We thought we are going to be fringe like the 0.001% PGP users.” That would have been the more favorable outcome. Quality over quantity. “We don't need everyone to be cypherpunk.” Yes we do. There is no other way to take our freedom back.

Do you envision a future with two parties on the same chain or is there going to be a fork? I personally think there will be a fork when blackrock (((messes))) up their ledgers and tries to salvage "crypto" in the eyes of the plebs

Celebrating roots is not nostalgia, I'm all for celebrating roots!

nonsense. blabla without substance. privacy is a right. not an option. a bank account has more privacy than btc. btc has failed. no one uses it. the usage goes down even in el salvador and btc does not even perform financially. it is dead capital

Props to the cypherpunks for making decentralized, incorruptible money a reality. It’s wild that in 2025, anyone—rich or poor—can save and spend in money untouched by central banks and their political cronies. Sure, BTC has been embraced by governments and big business, but that was inevitable—the best money wins in a free market. I’m just grateful to live in a time where I can send value globally without permission and save beyond the state’s reach. As Bill Hicks said, “It’s a fucked-up world, but I’m glad to be part of it.” Onward!

Cipherpunks

Right now XMR is doing better than BTC. I love BTC and I hope it changes its current direction. I'm not a Monero maxi.

There are no rights. Only what you do yourself. Lightning has great privacy and that's how I use it. I use it every day. I don't care about others, they might choose to use it or not. It also does really well financially. Look at last five years. Pretty cool, right?

There are rights Open a good dictionary or something

maybe people like to tell those types of stories, like Matrix-like stories… where you need to rebel against the corruption. I don’t think it should be too cynical, but it’s good to stay aware or next thing you know, you could somehow be part of the corruption yourself. I think corruption starts with a belief in your own / your group’s superiority maybe.

Cypherpunk ideals are still relevant. Bitcoin's success is because of those ideals. Don't get complacent.

I agree, that's why we organize @Cypherpunk meetup I'm not taking about ignoring the ideals, I'm saying the ideals back then were just ideals, a dream. Now we can live the dream. That's why nostalgia is not so useful. There was no great past that we departed from. We have turned the dreams into reality.

Most of my cypherpunk nostalgia comes from the desire to have participated in those times like @npub1qg8j...24kw ... not spent as much time passively reading in 2000s.

To that I can relate, but you are doing now more than most people. That means your present is bigger and better than a non-existing past. Pretty good situation if you ask me 😉

Bitcoin was always too cool to be niche