Genesis
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Hi, I'm PJ Vogt. This is the second of our Crypto Island favorites that we're sharing with you. In this episode, which takes place in April 2022, we were fascinated by the idea of Bitcoin's white paper, the notion that a currency would have a founding document laying out how it should work, written by a pseudonymous author. We wanted to start in that document and trace it to where it had led, to see how something that is so open to interpretation could be interpreted in some very strange ways. We wanted to meet the pilgrims who had followed in Satoshi Nakamoto's wake. I hope you enjoy it. This one is special to me. We'll play it after some brief ads. Surge Engine is brought to you by AutoTrader.
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Or whether you just want something practical with no surprise costs, if you see a car you like, find it on AutoTrader. See it, find it, AutoTrader. A lot of people already know the origin story of Bitcoin, but I'm just going to recite it one more time. It is fall of 2008. Good evening. George W. Bush is president. We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Lehman Brothers has just collapsed. Number one movie in the country, Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Number one song in the country, T.I. 's Whatever You Like. This is where I would play a clip for you, but the podcast budget does not really allow a fair use lawyer. You'll just have to imagine it. On Halloween of that year, 2008, a person claiming to be a Japanese man named Satoshi Nakamoto appears on a cryptography mailing list to announce his new invention, Bitcoin. He describes this invention in a white paper. It's called Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. This white paper, it's an elegant document. Text runs just eight pages long, minus footnotes.
In precise academic language, he describes the problem he set out to solve. Quote, Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic... Quote, Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic... Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
Obviously, we don't know who Satoshi really is, but this is as close as I could get to the voice I hear in my head when I read this. And when I read it, I don't really try to follow the technical description. I just listen for this voice. Calm, academic to the point of being pretty dry. Nothing about this white paper, to me, screams impending revolution.
Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double spending. We propose a solution to the double spending problem using a peer to peer network.
What Satoshi is saying is that there will now be electronic cash, money native to the Internet. And when that money is spent, the ledger of who has it and who sold it will be kept by the users, not by a centralized bank, not by a third party company. Satoshi's white paper does not explicitly describe an ideology, but a worldview thrums through it. You can find it if you know where to look. For instance, the Genesis block. The very first recorded transaction on Satoshi's ledger, which he himself mines just a few months after publishing the white paper. Satoshi embeds in that Genesis block an actual headline from a newspaper. The London Times, 3rd of January 2009. Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. This text embedded into the blockchain.
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Speakers
22 identified
PJ Vogt 42 min
Marnita 4 min
Ryan Broderick 4 min
Person expressing belief in Bitcoin 2 min
CryptoPimp.eth 2 min
Abram Horner 2 min
Lanu 2 min
Peter Thiel 2 min
Panelist at Bitcoin Miami 2 min
Person arguing with Abram Horner 1 min
Ad Narrator
Francis, founder of Bull Bitcoin
Serena Williams
Narrator reading the Bitcoin white paper
Moderator at Pay Me in Bitcoin panel
Aaron Rodgers
Street preacher
Person at food truck
Panelist discussing Bitcoin's environmental impacts
German guy with a t-shirt
Person in car with CryptoPimp
Person in crowd