What five things did Satoshi Nakamoto correctly predict about Bitcoin?

Author: Daniel Kuhn, CoinDesk; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Satoshi Nakamoto and others Correspondence between earliest collaborator Martti Malmi was released as part of ongoing litigation in the UK over the true identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator. For some, the documents offer a new avenue of research for anyone who wants to conclusively determine Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity. For others, the120-page email (also posted to Github) provides a glimpse into the long-gone developer New insights into character and personality.

As Bitcoin historian (and former CoinDesk editor) Pete Rizzo points out, these emails largely fit and confirm what the world knows about Satoshi Nakamoto , Satoshi Nakamoto was an active participant in message boards such as BitcoinTalk and the cryptography mailing list between 2009 and 2011, and listed his ideas in a formal white paper.

However, through file dumps, new information has come to light, including Satoshi Nakamoto’s support for early Bitcoin development author’s efforts, his anxiety about developing Bitcoin use cases, and his prescient commentary on some of the biggest debates that have defined Bitcoin’s development, including block size and energy consumption.

Here are five things Satoshi Nakamoto predicted about Bitcoin before he quit the project.

Energy consumed by Bitcoin

Proof-of-work (the algorithm that powers Bitcoin) is by design a fundamentally wasteful process. Even in the days of Satoshi Nakamoto, people realized that if Bitcoin was to succeed, the amount of computing power needed to secure the network would be enormous. Satoshi Nakamoto anticipated this debate and responded to critics, writing: "It would be ironic if we ultimately had to choose between economic freedom and protection."

In a message to Malmi, Satoshi Nakamoto pointed out that Bitcoin can only be truly effective "without a trusted third party." ’s peer-to-peer, unlike previous attempts at centralized electronic money that were the first cryptocurrencies. He wrote: “If it does grow to consume a lot of energy, I think it will still be more expensive than the labor force it replaces [sic] and Resource-intensive traditional banking activities are less wasteful.”

In fact, a report published by Galaxy Research found that the global banking system uses 263 terawatt hours per year, which is Twice the coin network usage.

Regulation in the United States

Today, due to the decentralized design of the Bitcoin network and the lack of clear stakeholders, Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency recognized by U.S. financial regulators. It is undoubtedly the cryptocurrency of commodities. But In the early days, Satoshi Nakamoto must have been keenly aware of the shadow cast by the SEC and the "long arm" of American law.

This is probably why Satoshi Nakamoto took precautions when discussing Bitcoin as an investment, even though he once said "Buy some Bitcoin just in case It might make sense for it to catch on”. Satoshi told Malmi that he was “uncomfortable” with the language on Bitcoin Sourceforge telling people to “treat it as an investment.” It's okay if people realize it themselves, but they should be wary of "selling" it, he said.

Less Anonymous

Similarly, privacy advocate Satoshi Nakamoto realized early on that Bitcoin was not An anonymous technology, even if he tried to design it to be one. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote that if people take proper precautions (such as never reusing key pairs) and are careful not to use Bitcoin By linking transactions to their real-world identities, Bitcoin can be anonymous. He also worried that it would make Bitcoin sound "shady."

Nowadays, considering that most people acquire Bitcoin through exchanges, these exchanges are required by law to implement " Know Your Customer” procedures to identify users, making it difficult to protect privacy when using Bitcoin. It’s unclear whether Satoshi Nakamoto saw this coming – especially since Bitcoin was designed to eliminate the need for intermediaries such as exchanges – but he is still Consider describing Bitcoin as private, interpreting this as misleading users and spreading distrust of the project.

“I think we should de-emphasize the anonymity angle,” he wrote to Malmi, who said in the FAQ that Bitcoin “can be hidden” (Satoshi praised the wording as “cautious” ). "I think those who want anonymity [sic] will still figure this out without us promoting it."

Satoshi Nakamoto and Malmi often discuss the potential uses of Bitcoin because they know the network needs a killer use case or application to drive adoption. Generally, Satoshi Nakamoto noticed that the timestamping function of the blockchain could be used to help verify real-world events.

But Satoshi Nakamoto also considered Bitcoin’s place in the world of digital payments, and thought it could be used to surround existing currencies such as Liberty Reserve (which no longer exists). There are digital currencies that create more liquid markets. He predicted that Considering that BTC was easily generated through mining at the time, people who wanted to improve their privacy might switch from Bitcoin to Free Reserves, Then move on to dollars, gold or PayPal.

One way for Satoshi to correctly predict is to buy it with Bitcoin Gift cards (which he calls “paysafecards”) are one of the most common uses for Bitcoin today.

Original Backers

Rizzo noted that the emails also provide insight into one of Bitcoin’s earliest financial backers , this backer is entirely bootstrapped by Satoshi Nakamoto and has never received venture capital. Based on correspondence over several months, Satoshi revealed that he had found an anonymous donor interested in donating between $2,000 and $3,600 To support the development of Bitcoin. While it took some time for the mysterious and still-unknown donor to send the cash (via mail) to Malmi, the money did go toward website hosting costs and other incidental expenses.

While it's not a huge windfall, securing funding to offset the cost of developer volunteer work shows - perhaps for the first time - that Ben Satoshi is aware of the challenges of supporting open source development.

"It may be a long time before we receive donations like this again, and we should save a lot," he wrote. Malmi was also told to use $1,000 of the donation toward an exchange he was developing, which could help support BTC against the U.S. dollar (which was worth just a few cents at the time).

If anything, this foreshadows the current state of Bitcoin development support, which remains provisional and arguably insufficient. While it's becoming increasingly common for companies like Block, MicroStrategy and others to sponsor Bitcoin developers, many contributors have given up on their expensive labor of love over the years.

Satoshi Nakamoto pointed out many times that he was often too busy at work to invest in Bitcoin as much as he should. of time and attention. He's grateful that developers like Malmi and Satoshi Nakamoto's handpicked successor, Gavin Andresen, were able to push the project forward.