imagine that an anonymous developer brings together 40 years of technology and research, and on october 31, 2008, sends out a mailing list circulating the white paper of his idea of p2p digital money: he throws in proof of work, ecdsa, sha-256, merkle trees, and a consensus system and game theory that solves the byzantine generals problem, which had remained unsolved for 27 years.
pornographically speaking, he does other exciting things, including retargeting the difficulty every 2016 blocks despite variations in hashpower, a very elegant mechanism.
he then makes that slow and expensive stuff called blockchain useful, but above all, it sends a political message to institutions and governments right from the genesis block.
he separated money and state, gave resilience to censorship, gave rules above rulers, and gave sovereignty back to the user.
bitcoin is probably the most beautiful open-source experiment in history, initiating a pedagogy of verification, of ‘don't trust, verify’.
it is probably the greatest revolution since the wheel and the internet.
it is the most important convergence between mathematics, economics, philosophy, politics, and game theory.
it has introduced a new social order where governance is decentralized, there is no CEO, no coordinator.
it has transformed trust from a human weakness into individual autonomy.
after all this, its creator abandoned everything and “moved on to other things,” disappearing into thin air.
a fucking legend.
happy birthday bitcoin
ps: to the fiat money → "so long, and thanks for all the fish" 🫡