Founding Fathers: How the Heresy of Parsons and Cypherpunks Paved the Way for Bitcoin
Pasadena, late 1930s. Young self-taught chemist Jack Parsons launches homemade rockets in the Arroyo Seco canyon near Los Angeles. At night, he immerses himself in the world of esotericism, and soon begins corresponding with English occultist Aleister Crowley. Decades later, Parsons' developments would help propel humanity into space, and his name would remain on a crater on the far side of the Moon. But the fate of this genius is a vivid example of how pioneers working on the periphery are often forgotten, while their ideas become mainstream.
Laboratory on the Outskirts: From the "Suicide Squad" to JPL
Governments and corporations fear risk. Radical novelty is rarely born in centers of power. Parsons, expelled from academia for an explosion and dropping out of college due to depression, became the archetype of an outsider. Together with the "suicide squad"—Ed Forman and Frank Malina—he developed composite solid fuel, which became the basis for the Minuteman missiles and the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters. In 1943, this group grew into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Parsons became a co-founder of Aerojet. Wernher von Braun would later call him the true "father of rocketry."
The Double-Edged Sword of Freedom
By day, Parsons was an engineer; by night, an occultist leading the California branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis. In his essay "Freedom is a Double-Edged Sword" (1946), he wrote a manifesto against repressive power, the erosion of privacy, and surveillance. "When the majority is deprived of liberty, barbarism appears on the horizon. But when the creative minority renounces freedom, the Dark Ages set in," he warned. Half a century later, these ideas would become a creed for the movement that gave the world Bitcoin.
Cypherpunks: Heirs of Parsons
The cypherpunks of the 1990s are an almost literal embodiment of Parsons' "creative minority." Eric Hughes, Timothy May, and John Gilmore founded the mailing list, and the "Cypherpunk Manifesto" (1993) declared: "Cypherpunks write code." Instead of the sword of freedom, they relied on strong encryption. Bitcoin grew out of this environment. In January 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block with a headline from The Times about bank bailouts. Over a decade and a half, "money without the state" turned into a Wall Street asset: in January 2024, the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Out of Format: How an Industry Forgets Its Founders
During the Cold War, Parsons was removed from classified work due to his ties with Marxists. His career collapsed: he worked at a gas station and made pyrotechnics for Hollywood. On June 17, 1952, he died in an explosion in his home laboratory at the age of 37. The press sensationalized the story: "Murdered Scientist—Priest of Black Magic Cult." The industry chose to forget its inconvenient founder. Biographer George Pendle attributes this to the cultural stigma surrounding occultism. His memory was preserved only in a crater on the far side of the Moon, named after him in 1972.
Survivorship Bias: Not Every Heresy Becomes the Norm
From Parsons' story, it is easy to draw an overly broad conclusion: since the future is born on the periphery, every persecuted idea must be right. But for every idea that changes the world, there are hundreds that fail. Alchemists never learned to turn lead into gold, and phrenology remains a curiosity. In the crypto industry, dozens of projects, like EOS with its $4 billion, promised to revolutionize the market and then vanished. Success is determined by whether the technology works and solves a real problem.
Today, neurointerfaces, decentralized science (DeSci), and the open AI movement are vying for the role of peripheral ideas. History does not provide forecasts, but it allows us to recognize recurring patterns. What looks like a ridiculous sect of geeks today could become a trillion-dollar industry tomorrow.
My Professional Opinion: Parsons' story is a powerful reminder that the crypto industry, like rocketry, is built on the shoulders of marginals whom the system first uses and then discards. Investors should remember: today's "crazy" ideas may become tomorrow's standards, but not every heresy survives. The key lies in the fundamental value of the technology, not its outsider status.