Why we exist#
“Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” — Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, 1993
Three decades on, that power is harder to hold than ever. Every transaction, message, and movement is logged, correlated, and sold. CypherpunkGuide exists for the person who has decided this is not acceptable — and who wants practical, tested ways to take that power back.
We begin with privacy, not with any single technology. Privacy is the right; the tools are how we exercise it.
Who is Cora Aegis#
Cora Aegis is the editorial voice behind this publication. The name is a pseudonym — deliberately. We write about operational security, surveillance resistance, and self-sovereignty; it would be incoherent to do so under a legal name harvested by the very data brokers we teach you to evade. The pseudonym is not a gimmick. It is the first lesson.
Our perspective is unapologetically that of an advocate. Privacy and self-sovereignty are not abstract preferences — they are the foundation of personal dignity: the right to hold your body, your money, and your story without first asking permission.
What we cover#
Our work is organized around four pillars, in the order we believe they are best learned:
- Privacy & OPSEC — the foundation. Threat modeling, metadata, surveillance, and the everyday practices that shrink your attack surface. This is where most readers begin, whether or not they have ever touched Bitcoin.
- Self-Custody — privacy made financial. Bitcoin is not our headline; it is the means by which financial privacy and censorship resistance become real. From your first hardware wallet to multisig, we treat it as a tool in service of the first pillar.
- Sovereignty — privacy extended across a whole life: communication, residency, health, and the quiet infrastructure of independence.
- Cypherpunk — the philosophy that ties it together, read from the primary sources rather than the slogans.
The path runs one way: privacy as the entry, Bitcoin as one of the means, sovereignty as the extension, the cypherpunk ethic as the horizon.
How we work#
- Education first. The large majority of what we publish is explanatory — threat models, comparisons, primary-source analysis — not product pitches.
- Tools we actually use. When we recommend something, we run it ourselves, we name the trade-offs, and we disclose any affiliate relationship plainly.
- Primary sources. We cite the manifesto, the spec, the filing — and we archive what we link, because the record rots.
- We practice our own OPSEC. Pseudonymous authorship, privacy-respecting hosting, no surveillance analytics, no advertising trackers.
How we are funded#
Our work is supported by several transparent revenue streams, and we will always tell you which is which:
- Direct donations in Bitcoin and Monero, today, through our own self-hosted payment server.
- A Premium subscription for readers who want more depth (planned for a later phase).
- Carefully chosen affiliate links to a small number of tools that already meet our editorial standards — no hype, only things we use, always disclosed.
We answer to our readers, not to advertisers. That single sentence decides every editorial call we make.
Start here#
If you are new, begin with Privacy & OPSEC. Everything else — including Bitcoin — makes more sense once you can see the threat you are actually defending against.