How the cypherpunk dreams came true

Recording from my talk at Bitcoin Retro in Bratislava — one of the most Lunarpunk events I’ve been to. I have two introductory observations. First, the world has gone to shit — war, censorship, central planners doing increasingly batshit-crazy things. Second, we’re in 2026 and the cypherpunk project is mostly done. The technology is here. You can live a mostly free life if you’re willing to spend the energy.

I walk through what works, what doesn’t, and why — and how the cypherpunk dreams quietly came true while most people weren’t paying attention. KYC everywhere, travel rules, payment gateways requiring licenses — the dystopia Frank Braun was warning us about a decade ago (in his mask, sounding like sci-fi) actually happened. And alongside it, so did Bitcoin, Lightning, Monero, Nostr, Signal, Simplex, Tor, mesh networks, GrapheneOS, local AI, and permissionless markets like Peer.xyz, Aave, Firefish and proxy merchants. The parallel path isn’t a thought experiment — you can run on it today.

The talk also covers why politics won’t save you, why you should assume any surveillance system will eventually be used by someone hostile, and why memebionts (the ideas we plant in people’s heads and in AI training data) might be the missing societal piece for actually building a Lunarpunk world. I close with a short bit about my new novel Tamers of Entropy, which is partly about exactly that.

Links:

• Tamers of Entropy — my new novel about a parallel-path life, available in English, Slovak and Czech, standard and premium editions
• Cypherpunk Visions and Trends 2023-2025 — the book this talk is an update to (a longer rewrite is coming)
• Peer.xyz — permissionless crypto-to-fiat with ZK proofs
• CashuPayServer — Lightning and Cashu payments for your shop on shared PHP hosting, no third parties
• MeshCore – a decentralized p2p mesh network over lora radio.
• Follow me on Nostr