I recently re-read The Cypherpunk Manifesto. These sections stood out:
“If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy.”
And
“For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society.”
Why these passages in particular?
Because months on I am still dumbfounded by a group of very high profile UK Bitcoiners (business owners, authors, old-hands on TradFi stages) who basically said they didn’t give a shit about privacy and were gonna stay on WhatsApp for the sorts of conversations they were having that should be more secure.
I’m SUCH a fresh newbie by comparison, and 100% could still learn a lot from many of them. But on this one thing I will never look at them the same again. Not that they care, nor should they.
And yet if they are trying to increase adoption, then without the strong underpinnings of privacy measured alongside the current abysmal state of the UK - they are just setting their fellow countrymen and countrywomen up to fail and fall right into the governments outstretched and thorn-covered arms.
I'm on holiday at the moment and have time to think about these interactions when they pop into my head. But as 2026 takes root for me on my return I really hope I'll forget all about this because it's serving me no purpose at all. Well, almost no purpose aside from the meme I made and stuck in my Nostr presentation at BitFest. I can still get mileage out of that at my next talk in March 😂
#StillinShock
