In the 9 years since its inception in 2009, Bitcoin has taken the digital world by storm. A decentralized digital currency, the creation of this peer to peer version of electronic cash has been credited to a certain Satoshi Nakamoto. It was released as an open source software in 2009. Till date it has been a mystery regarding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows if this is a single person, or a group of team of people who came together to introduce this new technology.
The domain “bitcoin.org” was registered on 18th August, 2008. A link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, dubbed as the founder of Bitcoin, titled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ was posted to a cryptography mailing list later that same year in November.
No person or organisation has yet came forward to earn the credit for introducing this brilliant new innovation to the world. What many people wish to know is why would anyone go to such an extent to introduce to the world, a detailed decentralized and distributed system of peer to peer electronic cash transfer system, only to never come out in the open and receive any credit or appreciation for it? It is not just a matter of just gaining praises, accolades and rewards but there is no person as such who can even defend this technology for the people who have always been openly critical of this system and tagged it as just a fraud.
Satoshi Nakamoto: A libertarian
Considering the decentralized and distributed nature of the Bitcoin platform, where there is no single point of central control and no government authority or centralized bank can meddle with its management and operations, people who have looked at the Bitcoin whitepaper hold the strong belief that whichever person or entity is behind the name of Satoshi Nakamoto hates the corrupt rich people and politicians and the highly corrupt banking systems. The incredible focus on making it a completely tamper free and fraud free platform has prompted people to come up with this conclusion.
It aims to make online payments directly between two willing parties without having to go via any financial institution. This is facilitated by the incorporation of digital signatures. Another major issue that this network aims to get rid of is the problem of double spending. This is tackled via the peer to peer network nature of the Bitcoin platform.
Anonymity for good reason
Humans have an inherent nature of always finding faults with even the things that benefit them. Such a new and different form of peer to peer electronic cash transfer system of course becomes the eye sore for some since they do not understand the technology that goes behind making it a decentralized platform. This is why maintaining anonymity over the owner or founder of such a revolutionary new technology that handles people’s cash was probably a very intelligent decision to take. Staying anonymous has helped Satoshi Nakamoto to avoid all sorts of severe legal consequences. This anonymity has kind of helped in making this currency and platform such a major hit.
Moreover, the original idea behind hosting this platform was to make no particular person or institution answerable for it. The idea was to not provide the government any central point of contact to communicate with or shut down the network. It only stands justified that the creator or founder of this open source platform stay anonymous. There have been several rumors time and again about many significant personalities in the information technology sector who could be the potential creators of this platform. However, all such claims have been shot down by each and every one of these personalities.
Bitcoin
Electronic cash or digital assets transactions over the Bitcoin network does not simply rely on trust. It incorporates intricate cryptographic methods to build secure medium for people to rely on when sending cash or making purchases online via this platform. The unstructured simplicity of the network brings about the robustness of the entire Bitcoin platform. The original white paper discusses the technicalities involved with the entire Bitcoin platform including details about ‘Transactions’, ‘Timestamp Server’, ‘Proof of work’, ‘Network’, ‘Incentive’, ‘Reclaiming Disk Space’, ‘Simplified Payment Verification’, ‘Combining and Splitting Value’, ‘Privacy’, and ‘Calculations’. Anyone wishing to go through the Bitcoin Whitepaper and visit the website bitcoin.org or access it directly here.
