I learned something interesting today.
“Satoshi” means “clever, witty, intelligent“.
“Naka” means “medium, inner, central”
“Moto” means “origin” or “foundation”.
Bitcoin origin is Central Intelligence.
6 thoughts on “Bitcoin bad, mkay”
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A theory that CIA might have created Bitcoin is a valid one, and I've given it a lot of thought over the years. It would make sense, because CIA has an unique need both for using such technologies, and for subverting them. It's not a secret that CIA was at one point running about half of Tor exit nodes, and that they had their hand in creating Signal. Michael Ellis, deputy director of CIA, basically admitted to Anthony Pompiliano in an interview that they use bitcoin as "both a tool and a target", likely to transfer money to operatives and assets.
Personally, I think the theory doesn't hold water. I've watched US, China and Russia over the years and all of them have gone through different phases where they expressed mild curiosity, viewed it as a threat, and eventually figured out they can't afford not to be involved with it in some capacity. If one of them created it, I would expect that "threat" phase to be absent, or at least shallow. Even if some compartmentalized cell in the intelligence created it, they would make sure that uninformed part of the government doesn't kill it. And US did try, and almost succeeded to kill Bitcoin, in three or four different occasions that I know of. It actually came closer to killing it than anyone else.
As for the meaning of Satoshi Nakamoto, this explanation pops up every now and then, similar to that numerology meme linking Bill Gates to the number of the beast. Real meaning of Satoshi pseudonym has no relation to "central intelligence": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449007
The meaning of Satoshi is "intelligent history", or more like "the wise one who lives in the middle", where "middle" refers to Ryūkyū islands, which connect Japan to the rest of Asia and where the Nakamoto surname originated: https://www.ancestry.com/first-name-meaning/satoshi
If it's a reference to anything, it's a reference to learning from the past, and the intention behind is it not really a secret as it's clearly embedded in the first Bitcoin block. The point of Bitcoin was to create a P2P digital currency, that derives its value from scarcity instead of debt, and that cannot be printed by the government in order to bail out banks and other institutions.
In the end, whoever created it is irrelevant, as it has since taken on a life of its own. Bitcoin is a technology that is ultimately shaped by the people who use it. These days a bigger issue, in my view, is the ever increasing intertwining between the crypto and the US dollar, which has the potential to end either spectacularly good, or spectacularly bad.
My probability assessment of CIA having created bitcoin is over 50%, meaning that they are more likely suspect than all others taken together. I would say that it started as a project within some small department, by Snowden-like geeks, an Satoshi Nakamoto alias looks exactly like something a weeb geek working on cryptography within some obscure CIA department would invent for himself, which is why any attempt of "debunking" etymology is flawed; it's not invented by someone who speaks good Japanese, but by someone who looked up stuff in a dictionary, found the basic terms and then looked up names that contained those.
Valid point. Though, I find it hard to believe they would use a name that identifies them as origin. All other CIA secret project names that we know of that were subtle hints were generic and VERY deniable, typically some sort of internal joke or a nod to history.
CIA origin, however, that I can believe, although it still seems more probable to me that he was just a single guy acting on his own, since nothing really points to multiple people. Also, somebody did an analysis of his writings and all of his messages match London time, and he used British English. Though that could, of course, be deliberate.
I heard that rumour like 8 years ago when I was going through some newsfeed related to cryptocurrencies and it was something like, if I remember well, that guy who happened to be Pablo Escobar’s brother and accountant told that other guy that once he met Satoshi and it happend that Satoshi was CIA agent and, furthermore, there wasn’t only one Satoshi but there were multiple of them. Go figure!
Well, anyone who could use that cryptographic key to sign transactions on the blockchain was Satoshi, for all intents and purposes, so yeah.
This is the full story: https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-escobars-believe-theyve-found-the-real-satoshi
That guy is hardly a credible witness, he changed his story several times, and most of it is probably made up in order to shill his shitcoin. I find it very hard to believe that real Satoshi would leak his identity to anyone in person, given that he went to such lengths to hide his tracks online.