Bitcoin White Paper

January 21, 2021

So I am not a huge fan of Bitcoin. It is interesting and presents some useful ideas and the blockchain aspect is genuinely ground-breaking. As a currency it has mostly failed, and due to its finite number of coins available is unsuitable as a token that represents real-world value, as it is by design unable to expand as the realm of human created wealth and knowledge does.

Add to that the mechanism behind the validation of transactions known as “proof of work” is totally impractical at large scales, clearly wastes masses of real-world value and now allegedly has suffered the thing it was most proud of solving, a double-spend on it’s distributed network.

So why am I writing about it? Because someone by the name of Craig Wright who claims to be the author of the original White Paper and the inventor of Bitcoin is attempting to sue websites that host a copy of that document.

Apparently at least one high-profile Bitcoin related site has taken their copy down in reaction to threats made by Wright’s lawyers. But, that paper was released under an open-source MIT license and so in my opinion even if Wright was actually Satoshi Nakamoto there is nothing he can do about it now anyway. Of course the likelihood of Craig Wright being the inventor/author of Bitcoin is about the same chances I’d give him being D. B. Cooper, and so with that in mind I present to you for reference purposes, The Bitcoin White Paper.

Enjoy, or not. It’s up to you.