CypherpunkNow Shares Original Print + NFT Series ‘Cypherpunks of the World’
CypherpunkNow, also known as Martin Fischer, is a dedicated cypherpunk artist specializing in silk-screen printing in large formats. In the early days, he was a member of Ztohoven, a crypto-anarchist collective in the Czech Republic that founded Paralelní Polis and its Institute of Cryptoanarchy. Since then, he’s been producing Bitcoin-focused prints and NFTs for the hodler community.
The Founding Fathers of Cypherpunk
CypherpunkNow describes his latest series — Cypherpunks of the World — as “a tribute to the people who defined cypherpunk, described the idea and wrote the code.” Among the collection’s eleven portraits are:
Satoshi Nakamoto
The anonymous creator(s) of Bitcoin and inventor(s) of blockchain technology.
John Gilmore
Sun Microsystems’ fifth employee; co-founder of the Cypherpunks and the Electronic Frontier Foundation; project leader for FreeS / WAN.
Timothy C. May
Former Assistant Chief Scientist at Intel; co-author of “A Crypto Anarchist Manifesto” and the “Cyphernomicon”; a founding member of the Cypherpunks mailing list.
Eric Hughes
Founding member of Cypherpunks; co-author of “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto.”
David Chaum
The technical roots of Cypherpunk ideas on topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems, described in his paper “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete” (1985).
Hal Finney
Cryptographer; main author of PGP 2.0 and the core crypto libraries of later versions of PGP; designer of RPOW.
Phil Zimmerman
Original creator of PGP v1.0 (1991); co-founder of PGP Inc. (1996); co-founder with Jon Callas of Silent Circle.
Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder, journalist; co-author of “Underground”; author of “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet”; member of the International Subversives. Assange has stated that he joined the list in late 1993 or early 1994. An archive of his mailing lists can be found here.
Wei Dai
Computer engineer, developer of the Crypto ++ cryptographic library, creator of the b-money cryptocurrency system.
Adam Back
Inventor of Hashcash and of NNTP-based Eternity networks; co-founder of Blockstream.
Nick Szabo
Inventor of smart contracts; designer of bit gold, a precursor to Bitcoin.
Cypherpunk History Lesson
The centerpiece of the collection is Satoshi Nakamoto, whose portrait is the only one with his eyes open and gazing forward. The other ten are profile shots that face Satoshi, their eyes closed, dreaming of a future where digital freedom and online privacy are commonplace.
Each portrait dawns a faceless, white mask that resembles the ones featured in Wired magazine’s 1993 article titled Crypto Rebels, which featured Timothy May, Eric Hughes, and John Gilmore on the front cover, and is largely seen as the first mainstream recognition of the movement.
The title of the series also has a basis in the history of the cypherpunk movement: Timothy May opens his now-famous email where he shares the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto with the line, “Cypherpunks of the World.”
Mint on Raretoshi
We’re currently onboarding artists, with many more in the pipeline to be featured! To make sure you don’t miss the latest and rarest drops of Bitcoin-centric art, be sure to follow us on Twitter or join our Telegram to meet and hang out with featured artists as well as discuss NFTs with the team.
