Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
87 lines (65 loc) · 6.98 KB

satoshi_nakamoto.md

File metadata and controls

87 lines (65 loc) · 6.98 KB
Raw

Satoshi Nakamoto

From wikipedia:

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown person(s) who designed bitcoin and created its original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, they also devised the first blockchain database. In the process they were the first to solve the double spending problem for digital currency. They were active in the development of bitcoin up until December 2010.

Nakamoto has claimed to be a man living in Japan, born on 5 April 1975. However, speculation about the true identity of Nakamoto has mostly focused on a number of cryptography and computer science experts of non-Japanese descent, living in the United States and Europe.

As of 24 May 2017, Nakamoto is believed to own up to roughly one million bitcoins, with a value estimated at approximately $4.2 billion USD as of August 2017.

Quote from P2P Foundation Announcement

I've developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin. It's completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. Give it a try, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper:

Download Bitcoin v0.1 at http://www.bitcoin.org

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.

A generation ago, multi-user time-sharing computer systems had a similar problem. Before strong encryption, users had to rely on password protection to secure their files, placing trust in the system administrator to keep their information private. Privacy could always be overridden by the admin based on his judgment call weighing the principle of privacy against other concerns, or at the behest of his superiors. Then strong encryption became available to the masses, and trust was no longer required. Data could be secured in a way that was physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what.

It's time we had the same thing for money. With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.

One of the fundamental building blocks for such a system is digital signatures. A digital coin contains the public key of its owner. To transfer it, the owner signs the coin together with the public key of the next owner. Anyone can check the signatures to verify the chain of ownership. It works well to secure ownership, but leaves one big problem unsolved: double-spending. Any owner could try to re-spend an already spent coin by signing it again to another owner. The usual solution is for a trusted company with a central database to check for double-spending, but that just gets back to the trust model. In its central position, the company can override the users, and the fees needed to support the company make micropayments impractical.

Bitcoin's solution is to use a peer-to-peer network to check for double-spending. In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin. It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle. For details on how it works, see the design paper at http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The result is a distributed system with no single point of failure. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double-spending.

Satoshi Nakamoto http://www.bitcoin.org

PGP Public Key

This is a public key which is known to have belonged to Satoshi ([email protected]):

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
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=3FTe
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Links