Two free-information-focused developers have released a piece of open-source software designed to let anyone get paid in bitcoin for leaking secret information either to the public or to a private buyer. The program, which they call PayPub, is still just an early prototype. But its creators say it has all the features necessary to facilitate a new model of anonymous, for-profit online leaking or even to help spark a decentralized black market in secret information.

Whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden exposed classified information because they believed their leaks were in the public interest. The next secret-spiller might be motivated instead by something less magnanimous: money.

