I'm not invested in this stuff at all. I find it interesting because it teaches us how a non-governed trustless system behaves. If anything, it shows us how easily it is to fuck it up with innocently-looking features.
Yes, I consider bitcoin, unfortunately, totally fucked up - which doesn't mean I think it won't rise in price for the next few years or even decades - but as "money that makes free" it failed utterly as of now, 95% or more of its market cap sustained by greater fool theory, and probably less than 5% used as money in one way or another. And the last few months, I realized that this is mostly due to its design.
I'm sorry about that. I used to like bitcoin, and I used to believe that it could have been good money. It turns out it isn't. But it is a great gambler's token, and it is a great reserve currency for unregulated sleazy big business (but not for the normal user, only for the big sleazy guys). This is why I don't like it. I think Satoshi created a monster, and that, together with a lot of technical clumsiness of the design, makes my have some doubts about him being Nash. But I'm not emotionally invested into this. In other words, when I see the work, I think it cannot be the work of a genius, or at most of a genius in a bad day. Simply because the result doesn't look very well constructed, not because it has something to do with my "world view". Bitcoin turned out to be clunky and quite ugly. If you think that a genius created something clunky and quite ugly, be my guest. I'm just pointing out that for a math genius, things don't add up, and I haven't seen any explanation of why it doesn't add up. Your "you are wrong" are not arguments, but just expressions of your un-argumented opinion.
I can write a letter to Pythagoras, saying "you are wrong, but you are suffering from cognitive dissonance". That doesn't disprove Pythagoras' theorem.
If the elements I bring up WERE truly well-thought over, I'm sure that one could explain them clearly to me, or refer to Satoshi explaining them which would even be better. I haven't looked through all of the documentation, but I have never seen (so maybe I missed it) a convincing analysis countering the indications of clumsy design I mention here *especially on the math and crypto side* which is where we could expect a guy like Nash to be top-level.
The design looks rather like someone having some notions of cryptography, having read some elements of security (like double hashing, which is also used when useful and when not useful), being selectively paranoid (using RIPEM-160 and SHA-256 because of different designs so that back doors in them would not be simultaneously open), adhering to erroneous concepts like "the more the merrier" ("if one thing breaks, another will save it") and not able to count bits or coherently defining security, sometimes doing things to protect against quantum computers, not realizing that the rest of his design is broken under the same assumption.
I can agree with you on certain point, but I would still be more nuanced about it, it's why I said to me there are contradictory aspect to btc.
Cause on one side there are these clumpsyness , can be seen on many points.
But on the other side, still, only the fact it was by far the first working crypto currency, that it's still #1 after 8 years, and it integrate many aspect like distributed database, the sig scripts, and the whole concept still involve good design thinking. Not something pulled out in a sunday afternoon by a student .
But yeah after indexing tx on 256 bits is quite a waste. No data base system would ever do this. The only interest is maybe for separate storing of the tx, where the whole prev tx integrity can be checked by the hash, and another form of index could get wrong tx or block. But in the context of database indexing and transmission over network, clearly huge waste. Nothing use 256 bit hash of the data as index ! lol
It's why for me there are contradictory aspect making me think either it's a guy who was splinter gift in one area, and just average on others, or the concept and design from a guy, and the whole btc project made by a company to exploit it.
Either it's like work of genius where he doesnt need to put much care into things because he know exactly where he want to get at, and make the choice with a specific life time in mind with enough security for the use case in that time frame.
And sometime, the impression of security is more important than actual security, specially when talking to investors or the masses, since I saw the movie equity im not the same lol
It's why to me most of decision seem to have Been taken more in the context of startup thinking from a company, rather than by some nerds math genius.
But still the overall design is still smart, even if it contain lots of things that "look secure and good" for average and investor, but clumpsy and not optimal from expert analysis.
But I cant get out of my mind that there is still a brain behind the concept. Either the btc dev copied the base from something else, or he developped it iteratively, and left some things designed for something else.
But it still contain too much new things and mathematically / economically sound concept, still #1 after 8 years for me to think it's just a student in his basement.
For me the clumsiness can be explained by :
Complex math theories implemented in cheap code
Targeted more to investor traders and gamblers rather than to developpers or expert
Severe time constraint on the development
But again maybe maybe not, it's hard to be sure of anything, neither about the original intention or if it evolved as planned.