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If you're interested in the crypto world, then you must have heard at least once about Satoshi Nakamoto. He is the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper and significant parts of the first Bitcoin node implementation. He's a bit of a legend in the crypto world, to say the least.

But, and I find this utterly interesting, he is also unknown. Nobody knows who the guy really is. Satoshi's identity is probably the second most discussed topic in the media, when it comes to Bitcoin, after the Bitcoin price, of course.

As the Bitcoin phenomenon started to grow, more and more people started to dig in, trying to find out who's the real Satoshi. Some prominent figures of the crypto world even self-proclaimed as being Satoshi, most of the time generating the opposite of what they wanted, meaning they got an almost complete dismissal from the community.

There is also this drama aura, this mystery air surrounding the whole project, which makes things even more interesting.

Does It Really Matters Who's Satoshi Nakamoto?

And here we come, to the fundamental question: "Why do we bother to find this person?". Does it really matter who's Satoshi?

And I truly believe that in the answer to this question lies the most important advantage of the whole cryptocurrency revolution (because it is already more than a social trend, it's a silent, social revolution).

In social engineering, there is this rule of "cui prodest" ("who benefits from this", in Latin) that makes untangling of complicated situations easier. Every time you see a vigorous social movement, no matter its direction, you just ask "cui prodest" in order to better understand who's the real author of that movement. It may seem like the movement is going in a certain direction, but most of the time the real beneficiaries are different.

Because every action has a motive. Every intention has a cause.

So, who's going to benefit from the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?

Is it us, the early adopters? Hmm... I don't think we need another cult person in our lives. Why do we need to know who the guy is, since we already have the tools he gave us? To praise him? I don't see how this will benefit the Bitcoin ecosystem at all. The code is already maintained by a collective persona, and that's very good (there are checks and balances in place, there's a failsafe mechanism, etc).

Or is it people who, for whatever reasons, are opposing the Bitcoin movement? Hmm... Let's pause for a second to think about it. If the entire Bitcoin ecosystem will depend on a single person, it will be incredibly vulnerable. The biggest advantage of a distributed ledger is decentralization, which means if a node goes down, the network will continue to work as expected.

If Bitcoin, as a philosophical event, will depend on a single, knowable (and probably fragile) person, that will blow away the most important advantage it has.

Discovering the real Satoshi, (or even inventing one) and painting him as a limited, fragile individual, will benefit only the opponents of the movement. I'm not discussing their reasons for opposing, because they have all the rights in the world to do that: maybe they're doing quite well in the actual financial system and they don't want to lose their privileges, maybe they need banks to still exist for whatever long term economical forecasts they made, whatever. During any Revolution there will be cronies opposing the disruption, for the simple reason they can.

But back to Satoshi...

I think there is a real person that wrote that wihtepaper and made the first implementation. I also think that person was willing to reveal his identity once the project would have taken off.

But, as the project grew, I think that person realized his real identity will actually kill it.

In this case, identity is acting against the good people.

It's like every time we see another exploit of the Anoymous group of hackers, we all identify with their actions. We're a bit part of their identity, right?

From this point of view, I think we're all Satoshi Nakamoto.

And that's absolutely ok.

Image source: Pixabay

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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