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Since you were around in the early days, how did you get involved with Bitcoin and how did Satoshi get people interested in it since he was anonymous and did no

Since you were around in the early days, how did you get involved with Bitcoin and how did Satoshi get people interested in it since he was anonymous and did not have any social media following or email list? It's incredible that he has managed to stay anonymous for so long, how on earth did he manage to do that? Any thoughts on the scaling debate?

mike_hearn 9y ago
I had a long term interest in internet money, from before Bitcoin existed. The path to Bitcoin was kind of convoluted. About 20 years ago I was interested in environmentalism. I was persuaded by arguments that humanity was damaging the environment because of the system of money it used, in which sustainably managing a forest might be profitable at, say, interest rates of 2%, but if interest rates went up to 5% then the rational thing to do was clear cut the forest and invest the returns. This led me to a book called The Future of Money by Bernard Leitaer. This book talked about "community currencies". The idea you could design currencies to achieve particular social goals was very interesting to me. The book referenced a publication called the International Journal of Community Currency Research. This organisation turned out to have a Yahoo Group, which I joined. I felt that if there were other people discussing this idea, they would surely be found on the internet. One day the Yahoo Group received a mail talking about a project called Ripple. This was an initiative by Ryan Fugger to create a system that could locate and manage debt in a decentralised way. It proposed an economic system without cash, in which all payments were in the form of debt in whatever units people found convenient (dollars, hours of work, loaves of bread baked etc). So I joined the Ripple mailing list too, and engaged in much fruitful discussion with Ryan about the nature of money. The Ripple mailing list eventually received a mail that pointed to the bitcoin website and suggested we check it out. This was a few months after the project was launched. I did so, and started emailing Satoshi. I don't know how Satoshi remained anonymous for so long. I suspect that if his identity is ever revealed, people will think: it was so obvious? Why didn't anyone see that? When the operator of the Silk Road was revealed, it turned out he'd made basic and obvious errors very early on and anyone could have figured out the Dread Pirate's identity through basic web searches. But only the FBI actually bothered to do it. I suspect Satoshi hasn't been looked for as thoroughly as people tend to imagine. I discussed Bitcoin's scaling extensively two years ago. You can find those discussions on my blog if you like. Nothing has changed and I have nothing further to say on the matter.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
  Do you think you might write about Bitcoin's development ecosystem in the future? Since XT, Unlimited, and Classic, there has now been 2X and Bitcoin Cash. It's probably too early yet to see if things have/will change substantively, but I would enjoy reading your thoughts if the time comes where you feel like writing.
- feelix 9y ago
  I'm just reading your blog now. The first article has this statement in it: >The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins. That was written back in January 2016. I think you were wrong about that.
  - mike_hearn 9y ago
    No, I think that everything in my blog post was correct. The statement about the price was deliberately vague ("long term", "should probably") because the Bitcoin price hasn't reflected the fundamentals for a very long time. You can't go straight from "this project is broken" to "thus the price will fall" because it's not an informed market, because of the large quantity of shady exchanges and so on. Take a look at what's been going on with Bitfinex to get a flavour. If you assume that eventually, one day, reality re-asserts itself, then the price should come to reflect the systems actual utility, which is very low. But you know the old saying about how markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent? I wouldn't try shorting BTC regardless of how much you know about it.
- iso-8859-1 9y ago
  Are you tempted into joining vastly superior solutions like MimbleWimble, with a blockchain that doesn't always grow?
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/1/ http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/1/ He used the cryptography mailing list. Then the P2P forums. I highly recommend reading through the archives. There are several good observations to make there, like how scaling was basically the first issue he addressed (or failed to address, depending on your view). Another interesting thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15121#msg15121 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15121#msg151...

mike_hearn 9y ago

I had a long term interest in internet money, from before Bitcoin existed. The path to Bitcoin was kind of convoluted. About 20 years ago I was interested in environmentalism. I was persuaded by arguments that humanity was damaging the environment because of the system of money it used, in which sustainably managing a forest might be profitable at, say, interest rates of 2%, but if interest rates went up to 5% then the rational thing to do was clear cut the forest and invest the returns. This led me to a book called The Future of Money by Bernard Leitaer. This book talked about "community currencies". The idea you could design currencies to achieve particular social goals was very interesting to me. The book referenced a publication called the International Journal of Community Currency Research. This organisation turned out to have a Yahoo Group, which I joined. I felt that if there were other people discussing this idea, they would surely be found on the internet. One day the Yahoo Group received a mail talking about a project called Ripple. This was an initiative by Ryan Fugger to create a system that could locate and manage debt in a decentralised way. It proposed an economic system without cash, in which all payments were in the form of debt in whatever units people found convenient (dollars, hours of work, loaves of bread baked etc). So I joined the Ripple mailing list too, and engaged in much fruitful discussion with Ryan about the nature of money. The Ripple mailing list eventually received a mail that pointed to the bitcoin website and suggested we check it out. This was a few months after the project was launched. I did so, and started emailing Satoshi. I don't know how Satoshi remained anonymous for so long. I suspect that if his identity is ever revealed, people will think: it was so obvious? Why didn't anyone see that? When the operator of the Silk Road was revealed, it turned out he'd made basic and obvious errors very early on and anyone could have figured out the Dread Pirate's identity through basic web searches. But only the FBI actually bothered to do it. I suspect Satoshi hasn't been looked for as thoroughly as people tend to imagine. I discussed Bitcoin's scaling extensively two years ago. You can find those discussions on my blog if you like. Nothing has changed and I have nothing further to say on the matter.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
Do you think you might write about Bitcoin's development ecosystem in the future? Since XT, Unlimited, and Classic, there has now been 2X and Bitcoin Cash. It's probably too early yet to see if things have/will change substantively, but I would enjoy reading your thoughts if the time comes where you feel like writing.
feelix 9y ago
I'm just reading your blog now. The first article has this statement in it: >The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins. That was written back in January 2016. I think you were wrong about that.
- mike_hearn 9y ago
  No, I think that everything in my blog post was correct. The statement about the price was deliberately vague ("long term", "should probably") because the Bitcoin price hasn't reflected the fundamentals for a very long time. You can't go straight from "this project is broken" to "thus the price will fall" because it's not an informed market, because of the large quantity of shady exchanges and so on. Take a look at what's been going on with Bitfinex to get a flavour. If you assume that eventually, one day, reality re-asserts itself, then the price should come to reflect the systems actual utility, which is very low. But you know the old saying about how markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent? I wouldn't try shorting BTC regardless of how much you know about it.
iso-8859-1 9y ago
Are you tempted into joining vastly superior solutions like MimbleWimble, with a blockchain that doesn't always grow?

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago

http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/1/ http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/1/ He used the cryptography mailing list. Then the P2P forums. I highly recommend reading through the archives. There are several good observations to make there, like how scaling was basically the first issue he addressed (or failed to address, depending on your view). Another interesting thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15121#msg15121 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15121#msg151...