My Letter to Satoshi Nakamoto

5 June 2018

Satoshi Nakamoto

Genesis block n.0

Blockchain, Bitcoin (Btc)

Dear Satoshi Nakamoto, you changed my life.

It is strong as a sentence, I know, but I owe you so much, because you changed my way of thinking, using logic and deduction, no longer condescending with everything I come into contact with, but instead stimulating that curiosity and that scietticism towards the world that I had dormant.

Before Bitcoin I did not know how my bank account worked, and thinking back to me I was indignant of myself for treating with such superficiality something so important: I knew to pay my bank with my money, what I did not know was that I also paid for it with my time and my privacy.

Lehman Brothers has shown us that a bank, one of the largest in the world, can fail. You have shown us that there may be an alternative.

Let me be clear: I am convinced that we will always need a bank, but with Bitcoin you have expressed something much more important in just nine pages: an idea can really change things.

The community, open source, p2p, are powerful tools to allow an idea to find a solid foundation of collaboration, and if today I write these lines and I hope you can read them, it is thanks to your work, to show that you do not need an institution, millionaires capital, lawyers, accountants and well-dressed people, but only an idea so powerful as to conquer the conscience of other visionaries as, strong, powerful.

The White Paper is a cry of revenge, it is a manifesto of rebellion, it is not a critique of the system as an end in itself, it is a possible solution to the problem, concrete, black on white, technical, binary I dare say.

You have blown in a sprint of keyboard two of the computer problems never solved: the uniqueness of a digital object that can not be duplicated, the resolution of the problem of the Byzantine generals. You would deserve the Nobel.

But it does not matter, it does not matter if Bitcoin is the currency of the future or not, it does not matter if its network is really resilient, it does not matter if the protocol is immune to hacker attacks, it does not matter if it ends up in the ashes. His legacy is much more important: YOU CAN DO, paraphrasing Frankenstein Junior. A man can really change things, a single; it is a demonstration of possibilities, the same that every day we preclude ourselves from an obstacle that seems insurmountable to us.

This is my «satoshi» from the very strong symbolic value that I wanted to send you to thank you for what you have given me, I hope this letter can reach you, wherever you are.

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Danilo Giudice