A decade into the 21st century and they had almost won the war.

The Internet, a glimpse of what the Information Age offered our civilisation, was no longer a safe, anonymous haven. The promise of the Internet wasn’t lost in a major battle, not even a skirmish — society just surrendered themselves en-masse. Using our own data against us, they perfected methodologies to extract and profit from every digital crumb we left in our wake, they developed social media platforms and people proffered every aspect of their lives into the cloud.

In the aftermath of the first global financial crisis of this era, the corporate elite discovered that people had stopped paying attention to their money supply. When the gold standard was abolished in 1971, the majority of people seemed to forget about the concept of sound money, and the repercussions of currency debasement that history repeatedly showed us. Meanwhile, those in charge of the production of currency used the Cantillon Effect to elevate themselves above 99% of the population.

In the pursuit of freedom, our brothers and sisters, the Cypherpunks, knew we needed an anonymous digital transaction system, and they had repeatedly tried, and failed, to bring this reality to light. They were acutely aware of the pitfalls of human nature: a centralised system would inevitably lead to corruption. As we watched GFC1.0 play out, and the blatant looting of a civilisations’ wealth go unopposed, it looked like it was over — how could we ever recover from this? They had, it seemed, won the war.

On the 3rd of January 2009, The Times headlined “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. Satoshi Nakamoto seeded those words in the genesis block, and unleashed Bitcoin on an unsuspecting world. Building on the work of those who came before, Satoshi had done it: decentralised, sovereign, pseudo-anonymous, scarce digital money was finally a reality.

Since its birth, Bitcoin has been attacked from all angles and not just survived, but thrived. Satoshi has given us the final tool we needed to start pushing back in this war, and it is a force multiplier of staggering proportions. The consequences of a century of unsound money has brought us to the brink of collapse, and we are yet to fully pay that bill. The cleanup will be messy but the war is over, and we won.

The new world that is coming will be built on a foundation of sound money. This will allow us to utilise our full potential as a species of the Information Age. I want to live in a society with people like me, people with a thirst for knowledge, that want to build and trade fairly. People who value freedom, fairness and privacy. I will no longer be a slave to fiat currencies.

I am the person that had my savings stolen by a bank. I am the person that had my possessions or income seized by a government authority. I am the person that has watched cost of living soar while my wage is stagnant. I am Satoshi and I am you.

I am a Bitcoiner and this is my manifesto.