Cypherpunk is the term used to refer to die hard advocates of encryption for purposes of digital sovereignty and data privacy. Cypherpunks come from a wide range of disciplines such as computer programming, cyber security, economics, finance, and even politics.
As it relates to cryptocurrency, cypherpunks were the original group of people that built, tested, and improved digital assets. Cypherpunks typically reserve strong feelings of distrust towards government and chose to put their faith in mathematics and computer science (making them the perfect caliber of people to adopt sovereign digital assets).