The Cypherpunk movement does not have an exact date of birth. Its origins can be traced back to the mid-1970s with the US government’s publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie's pioneering study on public-key encryption.

Before this, cryptography as a technological field was extremely niche. It was only used by the military and intelligence agencies, and a huge amount of work in the field was classified.

In 1992, three friends Eric Hughes, Timothy May, and John Gilmore, convened for a meeting that would eventually give rise to the cypherpunk movement. The idea would be to try and create a digital version of cash, which like email, can be sent and received between people worldwide, without the need of any intermediaries.

I have been in cypherpunk movement for a while. Many Cypherpunks as we know, have evolved over time, some stuck to mathematical principles (e.g. key cryptographers like Hal Finney, John McAfee, and others like, Roger Ver) whereas, other well respected OGs were driven by human psychology (Max Keiser, etc.).

I want to, for the first time help viewers understand the true Cypherpunk movement and the human psychology at play, with Cryptocurrencies. I will let the data speak for itself, and you could be the judge. Nothing is made up and I will only give a projection of where we are heading, into the future.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin was presented to the world by Satoshi Nakamoto in the year 2009. It was initially only (gaming like) token. Its real-world value ($0.008) was only derived on exchanges in early 2010. Until the year 2012, it remained a true cypher-punk movement, where it was a peer-to-peer electronic cash, 0 fees, and people used it in droves. People were excited to see a new digital era emerging, it was gifted around for people to use, many were involved in Bitcoin mining, minting tokens, and it was the true belief that it was border less, censorship resistant cash, and it can never be traced. People knew this was the solution to the tyrannical government and financial breakdown of 2008. It was a true digital cash, no doubt - it was.

2009 - 2011

It was designed with the following goals in mind (in Cyperpunk movement):

• Peer-to-peer "currency" with "quick confirmations"
• Zero fees ($0.001)
• Uncensorable, borderless
• It was never Gold v.2.0 (it was cash for the people)
• Primary currency in dark web (for buying drugs, meds, guns, you name it). It was bad boys cash and for common man's good use). Bad guys trusting it, means it is good cash, really fcking good! because they will use what is uncensorable, with lowest risk and it was Bitcoin.
• People who used it, were against government control, tyrannical control. This was the main driver. Period.
• Fungible means, My Bitcoin = Your Bitcoin (no one questioned it, back then, until..)

2011-2014

By the year 2014, Bitcoin had already seen a run-up of 1,000x gains (graph shows this later), and a lot events happened between 2012 - 2014. Silk Road was busted, Mt. Gox got hacked, Blockchain analytics firms started showing up. The Bitcoin dominance was at 100%, while other altcoins (such as Ripple & Litecoin) existed.

2014-2022

As the scarcity of bitcoin kept dropping with 4-year-halvenings, the numbers kept going up, bitcoin became more mainstream, the theme around it started getting changed to HODL HODL, instead of being promoted as a peer-to-peer digital cash. The fees started going up (from $0.001 once to $150 per transaction, a few years later) as more people started using it. Soon after, we would end up with Block size debate, intending to help accommodate more user transactions. But, once that proposal was rejected the new "Bitcoin Cash" chain was born. BlockSteam, a profit driven company (wanting to drive adoption of Bitcoin's Layer 2 (a layer on top of main bitcoin blockchain - today's lightning network), was being born.

So, we understand - P2P Digital Cash (2011) -> HODL (2022)

Nothing wrong with HODLing, it is after all human psychology, and most of us HODL. After all, we never know how something as new as a digital currency will play out in future, right? But something went wrong with the "Core principles on which bitcoin was built". A currency needs to adapt with growing technology or it risks to perish over time. Today, there are 10,000+ currencies, with Bitcoin dropping its market dominance to 38%.

Today's version of it is very different:

• Store of Value, with 10- 60 minutes "slow confirmations"
• Fees > $3- $25 per transaction
• Lightening network Layer 2 is great (0 fees, but has its own drawbacks of merchant adoption & privacy concerns)
• Gold v.2.0
• Institutions & governments are adopting it. Common man, looks for alt-coins.
• non-Fungible means, My Bitcoin != Your Bitcoin (blockchain analytics firms & exchanges, track you)
• Less and less used as digital cash.
• Dark web adoption of Bitcoin between 2011 - 2022 has dropped from 98% to < 10% today. What does this mean? They don't trust Bitcoin anymore, because they fear getting caught (whether they use it for legitimate or illegitimate purposes, is not the question). Common man can get their exchanges frozen, if it ever came from dark web (yes, even when you are not involved).
• "Clean" bitcoin (directly mined) have a 10-15% premium over any other Bitcoins (called, "Dirty")

Critical Analysis

If you have followed me word to word, thus far. Then, I have some data to present. I had recently downloaded the blockchain data from Bitcoin, Ethereum (not interesting enough) and Monero, to understand the Cypherpunk movement and human psychology at play. Without further ado, feel free to analyze the data yourself, I will leave the reference (BTC, XMR data).

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Year-on-Year (YoY) Bitcoin Vs. Monero transactions (Red - marks reasonable projections based on averaged out past trends, with accuracy)

As we see below, there was a drive of Bitcoin being used as Digital peer-to-peer cash between 2009 - 2011, after which it started slowly but surely, go towards the HODL transformation.

Bitcoin transactions over time

Monero

Monero was born in the year 2014, with a coded-from-scratch ideology, that adopted CryptoNote protocol. Just like Satoshi Nakamoto, nothing is known about the original author of CryptoNote, "Nicolas van Saberhagen.". Some speculators say, it was Satoshi himself in disguise, as Satoshi himself envisaged in 2010, the concepts Monero is built on.

CryptoNote is an application layer protocol designed for use with cryptocurrencies that aims to solve specific challenges identified in Bitcoin, mainly:

• Traceability of transactions
• The proof of-work (PoW) algorithm
• Irregular emission

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Monero transactions over time

Monero, was a movement born out of advanced Cypherpunk, true peer-to-peer digital cash that is:

• True Swiss bank account in your wallet (Privacy built-in, by default)
• Transaction fees? (< $0.01 per transaction), now and always (based on adaptive blocksize), and reduces transactions fees if number of transactions were to blow up.
• Uncensorable (just like Bitcoin in 2011), but really uncensorable
• Untraceable - 3rd party cannot trace it (cannot trace sender, receiver, and amount sent/received)
• Adopted by majority (90%) of dark web & to replace Bitcoin completely within a couple of years.
• Already addresses by design, what happens when all coins are mined (Look up - Tail Emission)
• 4th most active Github development team (after Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana), mostly anonymous.
• Driven by hard-core principled privacy advocates. "My business is none of Your business."
• Introduced (peer-to-peer) Atomic Swaps in 2021, CakeWallet, localMonero and decentralized exchanges like Haveno have been introduced.

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Monero, has seen a tripling in transactions, in any consecutive 2-year period, horizon. As its development fast pace in 2022, its transaction count and trust only seem to trend upwards. This is in spite of the fact, that Monero as a currency, has been forbidden to be purchased directly from fiat (only a matter of time, this is lifted) as Atomic Swaps have swung into existence.

Summary

No one will debate that Bitcoin is now a real store-of-value, and cannot easily go back to peer-to-peer cash (in spite of introduction of Lightneing network). It is now adopted by institutions,soon the governments and censorship is coming to us, people. If it can be intercepted then it cannot be transacted with.

Monero, on the other hand will increase its use-case as peer-to-peer cash whether we like it or not. Irrespective of it being a store-of-value or not, in future. It addresses in its code-base, true advanced Cryptography (literally, way more advanced than that of Bitcoin). If you want to make some money, you can break apart Monero and earn $625,000 bounty from the IRS.

This is just to show everyone the mirror, on what the next few years will bring.

Bitcoin - Store of value

Monero - Peer-to-peer digital cash