Bitcoin History Newsletter #01

Greetings,

Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian, here, and this week we’re celebrating a special date – the 13th anniversary of the day WikiLeaks used the uncensorable Bitcoin network to break a global payments blockade.

An essential reminder of the power of Bitcoin, I was joined on YouTube by the legendary David Senior, who first bought BTC at $0.35 to support WikiLeaks. I also dropped an epic thread on its founder, the infamous Julian Assange on X.

My goal with this work is to document and share the history of Bitcoin’s 15 with a new generation, through two weekly newsletters.

Here’s some highlights from last week’s work.

How Julian Assange & Wikileaks Broke The Banking Blockade

• Raised 4,000+ BTC to break a global banking blockade

• Revealed U.S. war crimes and military corruption

• HODL’ed BTC since it was just $10

Read the full story:

Julian became famous as a fearless journalist with his media organization: Wikileaks. It burst onto the scene in the late 2000s, when Julian published documents revealing U.S. atrocities in the Middle East.

Videos like “Collateral Murder” (summarized by this news clip below) destroyed the credibility of the "War on Terror."

In retaliation, Wikileaks was massively censored by global governments. PayPal, Visa, and Swiss Bank all froze their money. This was despite the fact that Julian worked with major news publishers to share this material to the public.

To Julian, truth and justice were at stake.

But these secretive governments didn't know they were messing with a cypherpunk. A hacker since his teens, Julian had even infiltrated the U.S. Department of Defense.

For further reading on Assange’s early life, I highly recommend the book “Underground,” co-authored by Assange, which profiles his early days as a young hacker in the 1980s.

Besides being an early Bitcoin pioneer, the book shows how Julian was also an early internet innovator and world-class cryptographer.

The more technical minded can explore his works like Rubberhose (aka Maratukku) on GitHub. A deniable encryption protocol, it shows how as far back as the 1990s, Assange was looking into cryptography as a way to enable protest.

This early history was obscure, even to early Bitcoin users, perhaps with the exception of one of my favorite contributors, Amir Taaki.

I haven’t had the chance to share my research on his legendary contributions to Bitcoin, but they include helping to kick off the events that led by WikiLeaks and its historic decision to accept it for donations.

Elsewhere in the thread, I detail the more well-known ramifications of his outreach, including Satoshi Nakamoto’s high-profile objection to the idea.

A week later, PC World published the 1st major news story about Bitcoin. It fueled rumors that Wikileaks would accept Bitcoin. The rest, as they say, is history. Just days after, Satoshi left the project for good.

With few options left for fundraising, on June 14, 2011, Assange posted a Bitcoin address online. The blockade against WikiLeaks was instantly broken.

Ever since, 4,100 BTC has been sent to WikiLeaks. This war chest is $250,000,000 at current prices. A 233,000% gain – just by holding Bitcoin. And just like that, WikiLeaks outperformed all of Wall Street.

With the help of contributor Juan Galt, I was able to dig more into the data behind these early payments. This wasn’t published and is shared here as an exclusive to subscribers.

171 BTC was sent to WikiLeaks in the first week. The majority was donated from 2011 to 2015, when Assange was more formally prosecuted.

From there, Assange became a full-fledged Bitcoin evangelist.

For additional reading, I recommend “When Google Met WikiLeaks,” a book that shows how Assange was eager to extoll the virtues of Bitcoin among those who were well connected in the tech industry.

By 2014, Julian was praising Bitcoin, calling it the "most exciting development on the internet." He believed it couldn’t be stopped by governments. For Julian, it was as a new form of protest.

Sadly, the attacks by global governments continued. In 2012, Julian was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he lived there for years before his arrest in 2019.

Ever since, the Bitcoin that WikiLeaks raised has come to his aid.

In 2017, Julian formally thanked the US government for the blockade. WikiLeaks’ BTC investment was up 50,000%.

Support for Julian remains strong in Bitcoin, and there’s reason to hope for his future release.

Hundreds of WikiLeaks cables are now stored on Bitcoin via the controversial Ordinals protocol, making them completely uncensorable. There’s even a portrait of Julian in block #786501.

Today, Julian continues his fight. The American government is trying to extradite him to the U.S. He remains in confinement in Belmarsh Prison, one of the worst high security prisons in Britain.

But, Julian could soon be free Donald Trump has pledged to consider pardoning him Trump could end his years of abuse.

Today, Julian’s family continues to rely on Bitcoin to fight for his freedom. He is still accepting BTC today: https://action.assangecampaign.org.au/donate

We’ll end with a quote: “History is not was, it is” — William Faulkner

See you all on Friday,

Rizzo

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