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I thought this article by Isaich McCall in a very recent Medium would be of general interest to many. There represent:
Who is the creator of Bitcoin?
It’s Satoshi Nakamoto.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? No one really knows for sure.
We don’t know if Satoshi is a he, a she, an alien creature from another dimension. Some even speculate the name describes a collective group of people. He’s probably God.
It doesn’t really matter. Besides, Vitalik Buterin, creator of the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum said there’s a real benefit to staying anonymous in a business with no one central figure — hence crypto’s decentralized nature.
Everyone involved in crypto agrees, however, Satoshi changed the world. Here are a few words from the man who reinvented money.
Satoshi founded Bitcoin after the 2008 banking crisis with the aim of putting power into the people’s hands. He invented a finite deflationary currency that could eventually overtake the inflated U.S. dollar.
He created the Genesis (or first) block of Bitcoin’s blockchain with an encoded message meant to make fun of a Times article about a possible bailout for the banks.
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
Satoshi believed the salient issue with fiat currencies was centralization. ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ would be a phrase he would stand by.
Once power is in the hands of a small group of people (i.e. the banks), corruption ensues and then leads to big mistakes at the expense of average people.
Decentralization, or no one power, was his answer.
“A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990’s. I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.”
Bitcoin’s blockchain system is an authority without actually needing one central power. In a way, the system runs itself.
The power lies with the majority of the network.
“With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.”
Code is law in cryptocurrency. Changes in the code have resulted in multiple spinoff e-currencies.
Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, and Bitcoin Unlimited were the first hard forks in crypto, aka these people disagreed with some of the original ideas first proposed with Bitcoin. Satoshi knew if the formula kept changing it wouldn’t be truly decentralized.
Satoshi had to get it right from the jump.
“The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime.”
…
“I don’t believe a second, compatible implementation of Bitcoin will ever be a good idea. So much of the design depends on all nodes getting exactly identical results in lockstep that a second implementation would be a menace to the network.”
— Transactions and Scripts: DUP HASH160 … EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG
Satoshi is a philosopher. Here he (or her, or whatever) expresses one of the greatest modern ideas about money.
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.”
— Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency
Satoshi saw Bitcoin overtaking fiat currencies before anyone; he was the first real believer. He did create it after all.
Only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be produced with the last amount being given to miners around 2140. Before that time, however, Bitcoin will be one of the rarest commodities on the planet.
“In this sense, it’s more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.”
— P2PFoundation Comment by Satoshi Nakamoto
Early on Bitcoin was heavily used for every dirty deed under the sun. Satoshi wasn’t shameful, he realized this would happen. Today, Pornhubactually accepts Bitcoin. Satoshi would be proud.
Bitcoin would be convenient for people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to use the cards they have, either don’t want the spouse to see it on the bill or don’t trust giving their number to “porn guys”, or afraid of recurring billing.
Satoshi abhorred corrupt institutions. He knew Bitcoin would run into regulation issues eventually and would be called a “Ponzi scheme.” Albeit by people who probably invest in it now.
Ironically, the first Bitcoin holder won a U.S. Senate seat this year. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis bought her first Bitcoin in 2013 because she believes in the economic power of scarcity and the potential for Bitcoin to address some of the manipulations in the financial system.
I wonder what Satoshi would think?
“Yes (you will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.), but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.”
“Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”
— Satoshi Nakamoto Mail Archive
Bitcoin is playing for keeps. It isn’t going to be a middling form of currency the way gold has been for the last few years. Bitcoin will start a new era of money if it succeeds. Or it will fail.
“Right. Otherwise we couldn’t have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating. In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for [mining] nodes. I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.”
“If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”
“Sorry to be a wet blanket. Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.”
