I think at the core of their philosophy, summed up by the tagline, written by Eric Hughes,

and I think it was Cypherpunks manifesto was Cypherpunks write code.

I mean, these were technologists, and they believed that technology is the driver of history.

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com and nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDest.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, November 4th, and today I am so excited to share a conversation with Jim Epstein.

Jim is the executive editor of Reason, TV, and podcasts, and as part of that role, he recently produced a four-part documentary series called Cypherpunks Write Code.

It's the story of a movement that laid the intellectual and technology foundations

that still serve us today, most notably in the emergence of Bitcoin, as both an economic

and a political force.

This conversation is meant to serve as a companion

to that documentary, and we get to go deeper into some of the stories as well as the things

Jim learned interviewing the founders of that movement. If you're interested in the big ideas

that led to Bitcoin and that led to the fight for encryption that we're still having,

you're going to love this, you're going to love Jim's series. So without any further ado,

let's dive in. All right, Jim, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really excited about this. I love the series. I mean, I mean, a lot of the content that you guys do

is wonderful, but the series in particular, I thought, was particularly relevant for this moment,

certainly for this audience. And so I'm really excited to dive in, hear a little bit more about

how this project on the history of the cypherpunks came together and kind of what you learned

going through it.

...