Hi Bitcoiners...
This Thread is a response to this thread -
What Do you think Satoshi Would Think About Today's Bitcoin?In my
comment there, i said i was going to make a thread on that which is being discussed there soon, This thread is that thread i said i was going to make.
So what exactly is or was Satoshi's true intention or vision when he created Bitcoin?- in my quest to find answers to this question, i dived into doing some research , and luckily, i found a post on X(formerly twitter) which is not just insightful, but also very educative in regards to what Satoshi's true vision, intention for Bitcoin was or is..
Without wasting much time, lets dive in, i am just gonna share the same post here, please read carefully for better understanding.
Satoshi intended for Bitcoin to be digital gold AND digital cash, but with the emphasis on digital gold.
Don't believe me? Think I'm just a crazy maximalist making stuff up? Read and learn. The first thing Satoshi wrote publicly, after the white paper was the following -
“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.” - Satoshi
He also describes Bitcoin as a commodity multiple times in his communications -
“Bitcoin [is] more like a collectible or commodity.” - Satoshi
"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” - Satoshi
“As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties: [not useful/no utility]. And one special, magical property: can be transported over a communications channel” - Satoshi
“If there were nothing in the world with intrinsic value that could be used as money, only scarce but no intrinsic value, I think people would still take up something. (I'm using the word scarce here to only mean limited potential supply)” - Satoshi
“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” - Satoshi
He also timed the release of Bitcoin to the middle of the 2008 banking crisis. What did he put in the genesis block?
"Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks".
Clearly Satoshi was focused on the Store of Value properties of Bitcoin, and not so much on the velocity of payments over its rails,
But what about the fact that the white paper calls Bitcoin a Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System"? Doesn't that mean Bitcoin was meant to compete with VISA?"
The answer is "No."
What is Cash?Cash is simply a bearer instrument, In the words of
Danheld.
"cash represents a pseudonymous push payment in contrast to a credit-based system."
In the words of
Pierre Rochard"He wrote the paper to fit his target audience, but the source code implementation were his product specs. “If the Bitcoin Whitepaper is the Declaration of Independence, the Source Code is the Constitution”
So, the white paper was marketing. The important info that reveals Satoshi's intentions was in the source code. The white paper didn't mention the 21m hard cap, the 10 minute block times, or the 1mb block caps either, but these details were included in the original source code and reveal a great deal about what Bitcoin was intended to be, and what problem it was intended to solve.
If Satoshi intended to design a currency to be a high velocity currency FIRST, he would have designed it differently and he would have made it inflationary instead of deflationary.
Satoshi knew that the store of value problem was the big opportunity. They also knew that Bitcoin would have to disrupt central banks FIRST, before BTC could become a medium of exchange.
If only Satoshi had come back one last time to clarify his intentions. But he didn't. And here we are, arguing about what he/she/they intended for Bitcoin to be, Look at the clues Satoshi left behind and decide for yourself. To me, Satoshi's intentions are abundantly clear.
So what do you guys think...?
