Rick Falkvinge

Updated Jan 26, 2024 at 7:13 p.m. UTC

Rick Falkvinge is an advocate for bitcoin cash (BCS) and the creator of the Swedish Pirate Party, a political party that lobbies for individual freedoms and reforms pertaining to file sharing, copyright and patents.

Falkvinge began exploring bitcoin in 2011, and has described bitcoin as the “Napster of banking,” in reference to the former peer-to-peer file sharing service that was commonly used for sharing MP3 audio files. In May 2011, he revealed in an article that he had invested all of his savings in bitcoin.

On Nov. 12, 2017, Falkvinge published an “official statement” for bitcoin cash that jokingly declared him the project’s CEO and outlined a manifesto for the project. In January 2018, Falkvinge tweeted that he considered bitcoin cash to be the real bitcoin.

This article was originally published on May 20, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. UTC

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