WikiLeaks turns to Bitcoin blockchain to protect Assange's Afghan War Logs

Bitcoin was just getting started in 2010, the year Julian Assange released the Afghan War Logs. But it’s a tool that eventually helped — and still helps — WikiLeaks stay alive. 

The collection of tens of thousands of internal U.S. military and government communications contributed to a change in public understanding of what was officially called Operation Enduring Freedom. As the New York Times put it, this “six-year archive of classified documents offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war,” including the extent of civilian casualties and what has been euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation.”

While released into the public domain (first to journalists, then on  WikiLeaks.org ), there is still the chance that the Afghan War Logs could be suppressed. That’s part of why Assange and his friends and family are working to preserve them in a manner that will always remain accessible. 

On Thursday, 76,911 of these documents — i.e., the full extent of the archive released to the public — are being inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain using a tool called OrdinalsBot. The free mint, available via ProjectSpartacus.org beginning Dec. 5, aims to preserve the information Assange and Chelsea Manning made public.

The undertaking

Making sure the Afghan War Logs can't be altered or censored using the blockchain is a major task. The sheer size and scope of the project likely make it one of the most complicated mints yet. 

“There are 76,911 files, and because each individual inscription is by an individual person, it will span many different blocks,” OrdinalsBot founder Toby Lewis told The Block. “I think it will be quite a long process probably to mint — like, this isn't a 10K collection. We're hoping it will be one of those ‘forever’ iconic projects.”

Project Spartacus provides the interface for people to mint these assets. The Ordinals protocol was introduced in 2023 to "inscribe" data on individual sats (a.k.a. satoshis, the smallest unit of account in BTC), making that data as immutable as bitcoin. 

The endeavor isn’t being done to directly raise funds for Assange, who is currently seeking a full pardon from President Joe Biden. Lewis noted the only people getting paid during the mint are the miners. 

Following the initial mint, the Project Spartacus collection will go live on Lewis’ new Ordinals marketplace called Trio on Dec. 12. OrdinalsBot was tapped because of its reputation as being the “most robust infrastructure group in Bitcoin,” Shipton said. The platform has airdropped projects like Runestone, which had over 100,000 files. 

“We know the infrastructure we have built can handle things well,” Lewis said, adding OrdinalsBot runs one of the largest Bitcoin infrastructure nodes. “Obviously, if all 77,000 mint at once there’ll be some delay but we’re designed for at-scale mints like this.”

Assange's Bitcoin history

Beyond the realities of making the War Logs truly censorship-resistant, the mint is a statement piece that gives the cypherpunk community a way to show solidarity and engage with Assange's legacy, Shipton said. 

He noted that the legal fees to free Assange were over $30 million, mostly largely paid in BTC donations and fundraising via AssangeDAO and NFT collections.

Assange’s interactions with Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto are public and part of Bitcoin’s lore. To some extent, Assange could be said to have hastened Nakamoto’s disappearance from the project after WikiLeaks began soliciting donations in bitcoin, which was the first time many had heard about the digital currency. 

“It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us,” Nakamoto said on Dec. 11, 2010, on the Bitcointalk forum.

“That's why it's important to keep talking about these things, because there's a lot of people who are coming into this orbit who don't these things about the history of Bitcoin,” Shipton said. “I doubt Larry Fink knows that.” 

Shipton noted that keeping WikiLeaks afloat while facing a “global banking blockade” is “proof of concept” of Nakamoto’s vision for a censorship-resistant currency. 

“It's one of the strengths of Bitcoin — being able to withstand resist state-level attacks and keep publishing,” he said.