Crypto Week and the Ghost of Timothy May: A Cypherpunk’s Dilemma

The U.S. House of Representatives' declaration of "Crypto Week" would likely leave Timothy May, the late cypherpunk pioneer, conflicted. His 1988 crypto Anarchist Manifesto envisioned cryptography dismantling state control over economic transactions—yet here stands the government championing crypto adoption. The irony isn't lost: the same institution May sought to undermine now debates a "Crypto Czar" while banning a CBDC.

Market self-governance through mathematics, not legislation, was May's creed. The CLARITY Act's imposition of KYC/AML rules on intermediaries WOULD have struck him as antithetical. Stablecoins—those paradoxical bridges between anarchic ideals and regulated reality—embody the tension May foresaw. "The State will try to slow this technology," he wrote. Instead, it accelerates.