In the theater of digital finance, Bitcoin is too often reduced to a price ticker — a volatile asset swinging between euphoria and despair. But for developers like nopara73, the real stakes are far deeper. It’s not about gains. It’s about freedom. And freedom, in the 21st century, starts with privacy.
Best known for building Wasabi Wallet, co-authoring Programming Bitcoin, and now launching a radical anti-aging sport called Longevity World Cup, nopara isn’t your average Bitcoiner. On his recent appearance on The CoinRock Show, he laid out a case for Bitcoin as the last line of defense against the surveillance state — and a foundation for human sovereignty that extends beyond finance and into biology.
Bitcoin Was Never Meant to Be KYC’d
Long before Bitcoin reached institutional adoption, it was an anonymous act of rebellion. Satoshi didn’t include KYC prompts in the whitepaper. Bitcoin was peer-to-peer electronic cash — borderless, permissionless, and uncensorable.
But as governments and corporations have crept in, so have their rules. Know-Your-Customer mandates. Central Bank Digital Currencies. Privacy trade-offs dressed as regulatory compliance.
Nopara doesn’t rage against these trends with slogans. He dissects them with precision.
“I do agree that [CBDCs] are going to be probably catastrophic… But if I could have a centralized entity, then you would have perfectly private, freely transferable money. I could build it in no time — if I could relax the problem of, hey, who holds the keys?”
To him, the tragedy isn’t that CBDCs exist — it’s that they represent the road not taken. Digital money could have liberated us. Instead, it’s being engineered for control.
Wasabi, CoinJoins, and the Fight for Anonymous Money
When nopara founded Wasabi Wallet, he wasn’t chasing a market. He was fighting a silent war. The right to transact without being watched.
Using coinjoin technology and Tor integration, Wasabi lets users blend their Bitcoin with others — scrambling the chain of custody and protecting financial identities. It’s complex work, both technically and ethically.
Wasabi was never about hiding criminal activity — it was about preserving dignity.
“What do we want? The functions of good money… We want to send money instantly, privately, and freely. That’s what we should be improving on at the core level.”
But privacy development isn’t easy. Developers face backlash. Exchanges delist. Regulators hover.
“It became clear to me that being the Bitcoin privacy pioneer is something that’s gonna make you end up in an Ecuadorian embassy in London for the rest of your life. It’s not something that you wanna do,” Nopara revealed.
Even pioneers like David Chaum, the creator of eCash, compromised in their later iterations.
“As I was looking into it, it was already having these compromises of let’s know your customer, our users and stuff like that. So even the legend himself couldn’t make it work.”
Still, the mission remains. To give people the option of truly private, non-custodial digital money. Not because they’re criminals. But because they’re human.
From Digital Privacy to Personal Sovereignty
If Bitcoin protects financial sovereignty, what protects your body?
That’s the question nopara is now exploring with his most eccentric — and perhaps most visionary — project yet: The Longevity World Cup.
It’s not a supplement brand or a wellness retreat. It’s a global competition where the game is reversing your biological age. You enter, you test, you train. The scoreboard is your bloodwork. The prize is youth.
“With age, everyone starts looking more into how not to die,” Matthias and Nopara agreed bluntly during the show.
And he means it. But beneath the shock value is a serious point. If centralized systems control your money, your data, and eventually your biology — how free are you, really?
“Imagine a system where we are using cash, but that cash represents Bitcoin… That’s easy to build. And once Bitcoin is big enough to move the rest of the economy, the dollar has no chance.”
For nopara, privacy isn’t just a preference. It’s survival. It’s what lets you say no — to a tracked transaction, a manipulated economy, a slow death you didn’t sign up for.
Bitcoin is the first layer of that rebellion. Total Privacy is the next.
The Price of Privacy Is Eternal Vigilance
Nopara73 doesn’t believe in utopias. But he believes in options. And every line of code he writes — from Wasabi Wallet to Longevity World Cup — is a bid to create them.
Bitcoin may win the war for money. But the deeper battle is for agency. To choose how you spend, how you live, and even how you age. It’s a radical vision. But as nopara would argue — what’s the alternative?
“So again… how can this fail? This cannot fail. And that’s the good news.”
