Real Satoshi Nakamoto, please stand up!
Bitcoin is soon to celebrate his fourteenth birthday later this year and yet, we still have no idea who stands behind it. One could almost say that the general public doesn’t even care. Well, since when was average brain-dead consumer caring about anything really… But even between so called ‘Bitcoiners’ this topic seems to be surrounded by a shady atmosphere.
Satoshi himself helped to fuel the whole mystery with his genius conspiracy. In what a better way should he kickstart such a controversial project than putting an opensource program out into the cloud and quickly vanish. In fact apart from the Bitcoin whitepaper, there aren’t many documents or mentions about this secretive entity. Was it really some Japanese guy from his mothers basement, coding his way to enormous riches, or a group of international cryptoanarchists secretly fighting the monetary system? Or even better, was it the government itself?
As a content creator I am aware of the role that sensation, emotions and good storytelling plays. In this way, the agenda behind Bitcoin is almost perfect. Not only that the creator himself doesn’t need to move a finger, he actually become almost overnight Superstar with millions of followers around the world. Some people fantasizing about crypto more, some less. But if you have ever paid attention to what forces are moving the industry, you had to have spotted some kind of tribalism and almost religious fanaticism. Bitcoin is a cult. Period.
As one of many examples I can mention Roger Ver, the former CEO of Bitcoin.com. Roger was so enthusiastic about this form of digital cash, that people started calling him a Bitcoin Jesus. I remember watching one documentary where he was interviewed and got so emotional, he nearly cried about how Bitcoin can solve the world’s poverty problems. He might have been right, the third world’s countries are actually starting to adopt BTC as an alternative payment mechanism to US dollar or their native currencies. But he is truly the tip of an iceberg, but if we dive deeper, we find out that the bigger part of an iceberg actually lies under the water level…
Humanity, since it’s inception was fascinated with the unknown. We have walked the world there and back to discover it’s far away destinations. It is the unknown, the hidden, that fuels the desire of the bravest of us to go and risk their life for something bigger. Most of the native legends and stories follow this simple paradigm. A hero figure searching for love, life’s meaning or resources for his or her people.
The crypto story is no other. Community surrounding it is full of meme creators, bullshit artists, scammers, believers and heroes as well. It seems that anybody can find a role model to look up to in this new world of magical internet money. But Satoshi did not created all of this. The followers did. Again, all of this was possible thanks to his Superstar status. He is truly the biggest meme out there. But wait a second now, how could a meme created such a sophisticated ‘Ponzi’ scheme you might ask? Let’s find out more…
Out of many possible scenarios of who could be the real creator, few scenarios stands out. I will start with the one that is the most optimistic and realistic at the time of writing. We have to constantly consider new facts and revaluate on our speculations. We are in fact all investigative journalists on the hunt for Satoshi’s head.
You might have heart that Bitcoin was not the first attempt to create some form of digital money out of the state controlled structures. There were projects like Ecash and E-gold, that preceded Bitcoin, but they failed on it’s mission. The founders were often persecuted, or their project was lacking solid technological basis to support it’s existence. But thanks to these coin dinosaurs, we have some indices pointing us towards the theory, that Bitcoin might have been created as a community effort to begin with. Quite possibly Bitcoin could have been created by the group of so called cryptoanarchists. People just like you and me, but deeply devoted to personal liberty and opensource ethos. With the idea of sharing is caring they developed the code that could be used by everyone in the world with access to the internet.
This theory is widely accepted by many followers of Austrian school of economics, whom are now inclining towards Anarchocapitalism as a reaction to world wide totalitarianism. These people tend to like the idea of Satoshi being ‘one of them’ and fantasize, hope, believe, or are absolutely sure that he comes from within their circles. If it is just another sect, that I will leave to your own conclusion.
Now, almost a decade and half later, we are first discovering the hard facts and truths about the origins of this alien technology. The governments are busy writing laws to regulate cryptocurrencies or ban them totally. It is interesting to see how some countries like El Salvador are very Bitcoin friendly and yet others are trying to criminalize the use of cryptography. Take China and Russia for instance. But there is one rather concerning detail, circulating around the circles of Bitcoin conspirators. And that is the thesis, that the governments or the banking industry are actually behind the whole creation. Could it be their beta version of soon to come central bank digital currency? The future will tell, but something is for real. The NSA was working on similar technology in the past and might be as well continue doing so. Even Edward Snowden admitted that one part of the hashing algorithm — a vital part of the blockchain functionality — is a copy of NSA program. Now, without getting too much into the technical side of things, would it be possible that the secret services created Bitcoin themselves?
Every fundamental analyst should have a hard time sleeping tonight. Can you imagine what would such break through news do to the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies? I am of an opinion that it wouldn’t do any good. Most people I know invest into Bitcoin, between other reasons, for it’s supposed anti-government rhetoric and history. It was after all promoted as digital cash for the common man right…
Well, one thing is for sure. Bitcoin is pretty deep rabbit hole to dig into and one can get easily lost in the process. Many wannabe gurus or straight on scammers are waiting on every corner and will try to get your attention and potentially money. So, remember that Bitcoin is already speculative enough and you don’t need to do those extra steps to increase your risk tenfold. After all Satoshi Nakamoto might as well be the master scammer of them all…
Until next time,
Tomi Drakov
