One of the most enduring mysteries of bitcoin is the identity of its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. Little is known about him. His last communication was in April 2011, two years after the network came into existence. Now, Vitalik Buterin claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto again and Bitcoin is a failed experiment.
Before Vitalik Buterin co-created Ethereum, he first learned about bitcoin in 2011, when he was 17 years old.
Initially he dismissed it, but Buterin eventually connected with the idea of bitcoin after a second look, he told Wired in 2016. Like many bitcoin evangelists, Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer, was curious about the decentralized payment system.
Back then, “I had a much more cartoon mentality,” he told Wired.
“I saw everything to do with either government regulation or corporate control as just being plain evil. And I assumed that people in those institutions were kind of like Mr. Burns”, sitting behind their desks saying, ‘Excellent. How can I screw a thousand people over this time.’”
“I think a large part of the consequence is necessarily going to be disempowering some of these centralized players to some extent,” he said in 2016.
“Because ultimately power is a zero sum game. And if you talk about empowering the little guy, as much as you want to couch it in flowery terminology that makes it sound fluffy and good, you are necessarily disempowering the big guy. And personally, I say screw the big guy. They have enough money already.”
It’s a mindset held by many who were drawn to the crypto space early on — and is especially relevant now.
Meme stocks and cryptocurrencies have become prevalent this year, with many in the space citing the same opinion Buterin talked about. Starting in January, retail investors on Reddit planned to help drive the price of GameStop stock after it was bet against by Wall Street hedge funds, calling their campaign as a “great wealth redistribution.” Since, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have reached record-highs with supporters rallying behind the decentralized system.
“I thought bitcoin was something really interesting,” Buterin told Business Insider in 2019. “I started getting into the community more and more.”
In May 2013, Buterin attended a bitcoin conference that convinced him to pursue development of the cryptocurrency full-time, and by the end of the semester, he had dropped out of school to do so.
For six months in 2013, Buterin traveled around the world to meet with bitcoin developers. He realized that he could iterate on the bitcoin blockchain to create a new, potentially better, one.
Bitcoin had “too limited functionality,” he told.
Vitalik Buterin claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto again and Bitcoin is a failed experiment. This information may come as a shock to many individuals, but it is merely a hypothesis. What do you think about this?
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