Author: cypherfigures

  • We honour Phil Zimmermann

    We honour Phil Zimmermann

    Phil Zimmermann, programmer, computer scientist and cryptographer. He developed the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software, which became the battle line for the cypherpunk movement. Since winning the Second World War by secretly deciphering German Enigma messages, the Five Eyes secret services have been intent on secretly deciphering all communications everywhere. PGP, which uses public-key encryption and the web of trust…

  • We honour Dr. Aaron Westrick

    We honour Dr. Aaron Westrick

    Dr. Aaron was the Research Director for Second Chance Body Armor (“SCBA”), supplier of body armour in the United States. Westrick warned top officials at SCBA and Zylon manufacturer Toyobo Co. Ltd. that covering up defects and ignoring the problem would risk the lives of federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies and lead to disastrous…

  • Lyn Alden

    Lyn Alden

    We honour Lyn Alden, Macro Economist and Bitcoiner. She has a background in engineering and takes an analytical approach to the study of finance and economics. In addition to her own investment strategy practice, Lyn appears on Bitcoin and economic podcasts. She is sought out for her penetrating insights, detailed analysis and great communication. Check out her…

  • Kim DotCom

    Kim DotCom

    Kim DotCom, once notorious for being behind a file-sharing service that frustrated USA copyright holders, is now the founder of mega.nz, a zero-knowledge file-sharing service. Zero-knowledge services are the epitome of the cyberpunk ethos — they provide privacy from the service provider and, therefore, from the service provider’s government.

  • Mike Godwin EFF

    Mike Godwin EFF

    We honour Mike Godwin, Lawyer, first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF),  general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, and policy and privacy lead at Anonym, a privacy-safe advertising startup. Mike has worked tirelessly to promote privacy in the Internet age.

  • Chelsea Manning

    Chelsea Manning

    We honour Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower on US Army deeds in the Iran/Iraq war. She leaked materials to WikiLeaks. The leaks shocked the world, and one can understand why the US Army would not want the information out. She is now free and may even run for the Senate; Assange is not fairing as well.

  • Peter McCormack

    Peter McCormack

    We honour Peter McCormack, What Bit Coin Did podcast. Peter’s superpower is asking dumb questions of brilliant people. He has a throng of well-chosen guests who he does not always see 100% eye-to-eye with.

  • Donald Knuth

    Donald Knuth

    Donald Knuth, “father of the analysis of algorithms,” is a theoretical computer scientist and author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth managed to find beauty in his work and shared it with all of us.

  • Sherron Watkins, Enron

    Sherron Watkins, Enron

    We honour Sherron Watkins, Enron. Watkins was called to testify before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives primarily about her warnings to Enron’s then CEO Kenneth Lay about accounting irregularities in the financial statements.

  • Guy Pearse, Author

    Guy Pearse, Author

    We honour Guy Pearse, author and Researcher at the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia. He is the type of journalist who writes books rather than column inches.

  • Gavin Andresen

    Gavin Andresen

    We honour Gavin Andresen, programmer and early developer of Bitcoin core. He took over from Satoshi when Bitcoin’s success was far from a done deal. He also established the Bitcoin Foundation, later leaving software engineering to head the Foundation.

  • Crypto Cito

    Crypto Cito

    We honour Cryptocito, YouTuber and arranger of the COSMOSverse conferences. As one of the better cryptocurrency commentators, he has focussed on the COSMOS ecosystem. It might be his openness and transparency that bring in the audience.

  • BSD Daemon

    BSD Daemon

    We honour the BSD Daemon Mascot! BSD is great software and has a great Mascot, whether or not it has turned into a droid.

  • Toni Ellen Hoffman

    Toni Ellen Hoffman

    We honour Toni Ellen Hoffman, AM, nurse, whistleblower. She informed the  Queensland Politician Rob Messenger about Jayant Patel, a surgeon who was the subject of the Morris Inquiry and later the Davies Commission. She originally began to raise doubts about the ability of Patel with hospital management and other staff.

  • Satyendra Dubey, India National Highways

    Satyendra Dubey, India National Highways

    We honour Satyendra Dubey, an Indian Engineering Service (IES) officer. He was the Project Director in the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) at Koderma, Jharkhand.

  • Anonymous

    Anonymous

    We honour Anonymous, the militant hacker group, who attacks wrongdoers, often by doxing their wrongdoings. This is the other side to the cypherpunk’s ideals: these wrongdoers would have preferred to have their wrongdoings kept private.

  • Vitalic Buterin

    Vitalic Buterin

    We honour Vitalic Buterin, Ethereum co-founder. Vitalic has been the driving force for Ethereum from the beginning, and has found much admiration for his sincere and thoughtful leadership.

  • Zaki Manian

    Zaki Manian

    We honour Zaki Manian, co-founder of Sommelier and a COSMOS contributor to many areas, including IBC, smart contracts, and Agoric.

  • Nic Carter

    Nic Carter

    We honour Nic Carter, Macro Economist and Bitcoiner, who has been analysing Bitcoin for many years. He is a partner at Castle Island Ventures and believes “The Bank Secrecy Act is unconstitutional and must be repealed”. He is not a Bitcoin Maximalist. He is a popular contributor to podcasts.

  • Nick Szabo

    Nick Szabo

    Nick Szabo, a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer, developed the phrase and concept of “smart contracts”, popularised by Ethereum.

  • St. Jude Mihlon

    St. Jude Mihlon

    St. Jude Milhon, a self-taught programmer, civil rights advocate, writer, editor, advocate for women in computing, hacker and author.  Jude was someone whose spirit led her to be a cypherpunk, and the programming and activism followed.

  • Hal Finney

    Hal Finney

    Hal Finney, a computer programmer militantly concerned with privacy, ran two anonymous remailers and worked for PGP corporation until his retirement. He received the first Bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

  • David Lee Chaum

    David Lee Chaum

    David-Lee Chaum, computer scientist, cryptographer, and cypherpunk, did the important initial work on decentralised blockchains He invented digital cash and developed eCash.

  • Andy Müller Maguhn

    Andy Müller Maguhn

    Andy Müller Maguhn, principally known as a hacker and a member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), had a close association with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

  • Adam Back

    Adam Back

    Adam Back, cypherpunk embracing bitcoin and blockchains. He invented Hashcash which influenced Bitcoin, where he has also been involved and is the CEO of Blockstream, which was born out of the Bitcoin revolution. He also is very much a professional cryptanalyst.

  • Eric Hughes

    Eric Hughes

    Eric (“Cypherpunks write code”) Hughes, mathematician, computer programmer, and core founding cypherpunk, did important work to help found the movement with the anonymous remailer; he administered the Cypherpunk mailing list and authored the Cypherpunk’s Manifesto.

  • Adi Shamir

    Adi Shamir

    Adi Shamir, mathematician, cryptographer and computer scientist. He is the joint inventor of the  Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) cipher and a joint discoverer of differential cryptanalysis.

  • Ryan Sean Adams

    Ryan Sean Adams

    Ryan Sean Adams, co-host of Bankless. The concept behind Bankless, is financial freedom without having to have a bank account.

  • David Hoffman

    David Hoffman

    David Hoffman, Bankless co-host, came to cryptocurrencies through ethereum and innovated with real-estate real-world assets (RWA) on the blockchain.

  • Julian Assange

    Julian Assange

    Julian Assange, programmer, hacker, cypherpunk, publisher and founder of WikiLeaks. In 2010, when WikiLeaks published the Chelsea Manning leaks, Julian was targeted by the United States for extradition.  You are forever in our thoughts.

  • Satoshi Nakamoto

    Satoshi Nakamoto

    We honour Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person(s) behind Bitcoin. So we do not know who he/she/they/it is/are. We probably never will. It seems fitting that someone being such a key person(s) behind such a key cypherpunk initiative should be pseudonymous and then vanish.

  • Andreas Antonopoulos

    Andreas Antonopoulos

    We honour Andreas Antonopoulos, who has been one of the best entertaining and most important speakers on Bitcoin. His arguments changed the minds of many in the early days of Bitcoin.

  • Richard Stallman, FSF

    Richard Stallman, FSF

    We honour Richard (Matthew) Stallman (rms), Free Software Foundation (FSF), programmer and father of the free software movement, to allow users the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify software.

  • Jonathan Mohan

    Jonathan Mohan

    We honour Jonathan Mohan, podcaster on the Speaking Of Bitcoin (formerly Let’s Talk-Bitcoin) podcast. This was a great podcast in the earlier years of Bitcoin and Ethereum and helped share the message.

  • Whitfield Diffie

    Whitfield Diffie

    mathematician, cryptographer and pioneer of public key cryptography. His important work on key distribution, the Diffie–Hellman key exchange, gave birth to asymmetric key algorithms.

  • Julian Assange

    Julian Assange

    Julian Assange, programmer, hacker, cypherpunk, publisher and founder of WikiLeaks. In 2010, when WikiLeaks published the Chelsea Manning leaks, Julian was targeted by the United States for extradition.

  • Zooko Wilcox

    Zooko Wilcox

    Zooko Wilcox O’Hearn, Electric Coin Company, ZCash. Zooko is a cryptographer and a cypherpunk who worked on DigiCash with David Chaum and was behind establishing ZCash, a privacy-based cryptocurrency.

  • Alan Turing

    Alan Turing

    Alan Turing, mathematician, computer scientist and cryptanalyst. Until his work on decrypting the German enigma machine during the 2nd World War was made public, he was known mostly in computer science for his papers on computability, specifically for Turing Machines.

  • Linus Torvalds

    Linus Torvalds

    Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

  • Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was a giant of mathematics and theoretical physics. His life was an inspiration to those who followed him. The rise of Hitler early in his life led to his immigration to the USA. He was not afraid to speak out on politics and society, similar to cypherpunks.