Bitcoin white paper day—Thanks again, Satoshi!
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin White Paper on the Cryptography Mailing List and introduced the world to the first scalable peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
I have developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin. It is completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. Try it out, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper. – Satoshi Nakamoto
It would be several months before the network went live and the first block was mined, but October 31st will forever be the day the idea of Bitcoin was released into the human consciousness.
Immediate misunderstanding and doubt
As Dr. Craig Wright, who we now know to be Satoshi Nakamoto, has said many times, almost immediately, a peculiar combination of anarchists, criminals, and social misfits began twisting, doubting, and misrepresenting Bitcoin.
Figures such as James Donald doubted it could scale even though Satoshi repeatedly explained that it could already compete with Visa at release and “never really hit a scaling ceiling.” Others misunderstood Bitcoin as a shadowy, untraceable cash system that could be used to subvert the state and commit crimes with impunity, leading misguided individuals like Ross Ulbricht to a prison cell that he will likely never get out of just a few years later.
Indeed, even now, 14 years after Satoshi released the Bitcoin White Paper, few understand it. Most Bitcoin advocates have completely abandoned the idea of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (it’s in the title, duh!) and have bought into the digital gold wholesaler.
Everyone should read the Bitcoin White Paper
Indeed, all anyone needs to do to immediately see through the lies and deceptions that still surround Bitcoin today is actually read and understand Satoshi’s white paper. It’s amazing that such a simple task is beyond the reach of people who want to pour huge amounts of money into BTC and other altcoins hoping to hedge against inflation and get rich.
What can we learn from the Bitcoin White Paper? How about the following simple points?
- Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It says so in both the title and the introductory abstract. Satoshi talks about how commerce on the internet has been dominated by trusted third parties and how Bitcoin is a solution to this problem.
- Bitcoin was designed to facilitate pure peer-to-peer transactions. It does not require intermediary systems like the Lightning Network, and payments should travel from Alice to Bob directly rather than through a series of hops and nodes.
- A coin is defined as a chain of digital signatures. Therefore, we can reason that protocol changes that break this chain of signatures, for example SegWit, redefine the very meaning of a Bitcoin as outlined by the inventor of the system in the white paper.
- Nodes collect transactions and put them into blocks, and find proof-of-work solutions for blocks.
- Over time, Satoshi intended transaction fees to act as an incentive to run nodes. In paragraph six, he said, “Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can shift entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation-free.”
Bitcoin was hijacked but it has recovered and there is no stopping this time
Fourteen years after Satoshi gave the world the first functional, scalable, peer-to-peer electronic cash system, Bitcoin has been through hell and back. However, after all the misunderstanding, the deliberate twisting and the blatant misrepresentation, Satoshi’s Bitcoin, as outlined in his white paper, has been restored and is working as intended.
Today, Bitcoin trades under the ticker BSV, and the original protocol implementation is known as Bitcoin SV. It processes millions of transactions daily, and a Cambrian explosion of innovation, app development and use cases is underway. Eventually, the small, random transactions and pure peer-to-peer network that Satoshi designed will flourish, and this time there is no stopping.
Happy Bitcoin White Paper Day! Although the last 14 years have been wild, we haven’t seen anything yet. Thanks again, Satoshi!
See: BSV Global Blockchain Convention Presentation, How Bitcoin Serves as the Base Layer for Other Blockchains
width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”>
New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin – as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto – and blockchain.
