Celebrating the Birth of Bitcoin
A rendering of someone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Trey René Magritte.
From cash in a brown bag at Starbucks to Coinbase’s IPO, cryptocurrency has come a long way.
On the tail end of 2008, amidst a financial and housing market crash, which according to former Fed Chair Benjamin Bernackie, was worse than the great depression, with Americans losing their homes and mad at the big banks that caused it to happen, bitcoin was born. It really is the perfect backdrop to the first worldwide sound money system that has no prejudice except an internet connection.
Bitcoin’s genesis block.
The genesis block of bitcoin was mined on January 3rd, 2009, at 18:15:05 UTC (1:15 PM EST). Just think how far we’ve come from the first block. Now we have not just one successful chain, but a plethora of them, all endeavoring to accomplish different and similar tasks, improving the way we think of commerce, finance, music, art, and culture. So let us all tip our hats and shoot a reverent glance of respect towards whomever was/is or will be Satoshi Nakamoto, the person(s) who invented Bitcoin, composed its Whitepaper, and vanished into that good night.
It’s hard to imagine generating the first accessible non-central bank infused monetary system, which could not be exposed to inflationary tactics, or forgery, and then being like, “see ya later”. In some ways it’s the most fitting that the new money of this digital economy is CEO-less; it seems to go in stride with everything decentralization is striving for. No more Enron, no more Bernie Madoff-with-your-money, no more smoky cigars and deals at the wasp clubs over brandy, no more watered down stocks, propped up sub-prime mortgages and balance sheets, insider trading or bank runs. Bitcoin came on the scene and said here is my math. I require a proof-of-work. Those who endorse me will profit. Everyone else can keep playing with their fiat inflationary monopoly money.
Surrealist painting by René Magritte.
Which reminds me of a joke, one of the first I ever wrote, which is, “Why is the Monopoly Guy in the permanent winners position? (Arms raised, victorious, as if just hitting the jack-pot). It is because he does not play the game. He invented it.” In this case, the inventor(s) are not a Creature from Jeckyll Island, nor is it a third world communist dictator living fat off the IMF/WorldBank loan-hog; it is a man, his code, and nothing more. Nakamoto invented the game and gave it to the world (leaving the 1 Million bitcoins he mined, untouched) - Approximately 46 Billion dollars.
And that’s how it should be. So thank you Satoshi, for what you gave the world. An equal-opportunity instrument that can create a foundation for an economic floor that is neither inflationary, nor a form of pernicious lending, that is not governable, nor corruptible. That is in a word: trustless.
These Rene Magritte(esque) paintings populate the post because it feels like Satoshi Nakamoto is somehow that faceless business man, that mixture of finance, art, and non-linear thinking. In a sense, everyman.
Frank America is an active researcher, avid writer, and artist exploring the crypto-sphere.