Posts about Satoshi Nakamoto
Five years ago, Gary Gensler was a professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at MIT. He taught courses on blockchain technology. These are still available online. See https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63UUkfL0onkxF6MYgVa04Fn
In his lectures, Gary Gensler often spoke very fondly of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, and Satoshi Nakamoto.
He even told his students about Pizza day in his lecture on September 5, 2018. Pizza day is celebrated today and refers to May 22, 2010, when Laszlo had two pizzas delivered for which he paid 10K Bitcoins. This is a slide from Gensler's presentation:
https://i.redd.it/kpwwf9jy7f1b1.pngSee https://youtu.be/v2yoPmhncSY?t=340. Gary had a huge smile on his face as he proudly told his students the Pizza story.
https://i.redd.it/anzbqn8s8f1b1.pngA few years later, Gary Gensler was nominated by Joe Biden to serve as Chair of the SEC February 2021. He was sworn into office on April 17, 2021. Most people were so positive given his blockchain expertise. The top replies on the lecture, which was posted in March 2021, illustrate the positive vibe:
https://i.redd.it/4n7sc6ve9f1b1.pnghttps://i.redd.it/j8mbo1xg9f1b1.pngReplies to posts around that time here show the same:
https://i.redd.it/9q9checu9f1b1.pnghttps://i.redd.it/dbtlut03af1b1.pngFast-forward two years and Gary Gensler has basically become one of the biggest crypto villains. He has failed to provide any clarity of the rules - he cannot even answer the question of whether Ethereum is a security. He has also seemingly at random sued various cryptocurrency projects and exchanges. He has also failed to protect investors from harm. It's like he is slowing the growth of crypto on purpose.
https://i.redd.it/asyugu84cf1b1.pngHow is it possible that Gary Gensler went from a blockchain technology enthusiast who likely got many people to buy Bitcoin through his courses to the person he is today?
I think everyone here has at least once heard about the rich and interesting story about Bitcoins very rise. About how Satoshi Nakamoto made a project in 2009, that we call Bitcoin today and how he even was there in the early days to develop it further. But as great as Satoshi Nakamoto is, the idea of Bitcoin did not come out of the void.
In fact, there is over 40 years of history behind the cryptography that later developed itself into Bitcoin, after various successful and failing projects.
This graph perfectly shows it all, all the way from 1974 to 2009. In the first 10 years we had basic theoretical developments in the Cryptography sector by various pioneers and even the first ideas of “Untraceable payments“ by David Chaum for example. The next decade also had many ideas from the ordinary people about a system around Cryptography, for example the famous “Cypherpunk manifesto“ in 1993.
During the next decade we even had official products entering the market for the first time, like E-gold, Bit-gold, CyberCash. Since 2000, the idea of a digital currency even entered the mainstream with many video games having their own currencies and also many companies during the dotcom bubble having their online currencies. All of that crowned by Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney’s “Reusable Proof of Work“ papers, which most likely inspired Satoshi Nakamoto for his system too.
It really is a lot, the history of Crypto is not just 15 years old, but there are decades of events building up to the end-product that we now know as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the work of decades of technological development, which makes it even so much greater.
On Apr 23rd, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote one of his/her final emails. “I've moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”
A few days later, he sent one last message to the newly-assigned Bitcoin Core Maintainer Gavin Andresen.
This email, or email excerpt, was quoted by Gavin Andresen in an interview in 2014.
I don't know about you but I could be reading these emails for days. There is something about Satoshi being mysterious figure. I also believe that in that doing so he protected BTC in a certain way.
Nobody understands why did he dissapeared like that, creating mysterious-cultish figure around him, making people to ask questions without getting an answer to this day.
Reading his emails you could see how far ahead was he from anyone, and how he saw things clearly then most of the people back then.
Users of P2P Foundation forum are asked to select a date of birth when joining the forum. Someone found out a few years ago that when Satoshi joined the forum, he selected April 5, 1975 as his birthday.
What is the significance of April 5 and 1975 you may wonder.
April 5 is the day government became robber. On April 5, 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102 to confiscate gold by forbidding ownership of gold and requiring all persons to deliver their gold to the Federal Reserve. The Gold Reserve Act was signed by FDR on January 30, 1934 giving the President the authority to devalue the dollar, which he did the very next day.
https://i.redd.it/2os3y92sz1sa1.jpg1975 is the year US citizens were allowed to own and trade gold again, after Nixon unilaterally dissolved the existing Bretton Woods system and cancelled the convertibility of US dollar to gold in 1971, introducing the "paper standard". Nixon said this measure would be "temporary", but he lied. 52 years later, here we are.
https://i.redd.it/tyn1kfua12sa1.jpg