The cypherpunks were a group of cryptographers and activists whose mailing list started in September 1992. Their creed, from Eric Hughes's 1993 manifesto: "Cypherpunks write code."
They worked on digital cash for decades. Bitcoin's white paper was first shared on a related cryptography mailing list in 2008 and cites earlier work by Wei Dai (b-money) and Adam Back (Hashcash).