1) Why the Bitcoin Whitepaper is called white? – and why it matters!
Bitcoins whitepaper is a >>white<<-paper. White means that it is free from any ideology and politics, otherwise it would be a grey-paper. Yes, maybe this was just a smart move from Nakamoto to keep his ideology out of it, but maybe there was no ideology at all. The only indirect reference to the Cypherpunk ideology is the later added (on suggestion of Adam Back) reference to Wei Dais B-Money.
Was Nakamoto really anti-bank?
The paper was not anti-bank, Nakamoto wrote that the existing banking system works for most transactions, but that there is a set of situations where Bitcoin is superior.
2) Was there a hint in the Genesis Block?
The Whitepaper was released right at the bottom of the financial crisis in November 2008. With the release Nakamoto nearly called the low or “bottom” of the S&P-500! In 2009, the genesis-block was mined. In this block, there was a time-stamp to the head-line of the TIMES from January 3rd.
“Chancellor on Brink for second bailout for Banks”
This could be a hint but is no proof. It is much more likely that Nakamoto could not have foreseen the financial crisis (like most, even very smart people), and that he just took the headline of the day. On the other hand, Nakamoto was not normal regarding his interest in money… maybe it was even obvious to him but this is not the same as foresight about when it will happen.
thanks to the time stamping there are not so many possibilities
The release of the software was two month after the white paper. Why should he have used another article? The financial crisis was THE topic at that time. Was he also able to foresee what the TIMES will print on the front paper? Did he mined that block beforehand? The timestamp of the next block is a full six days after the genesis block.
This leaves space for some possibilities:
- reuse of a pre-MainNet block,
- 6 day period due to very low hashrate,
- or he used a three days old headline to match it to his “secret” ideology.
Anyways, the importance to have a time stamp, something like a headline, is to show that he did not mined in advance. So it is not about political-statements in the first place. Therefore, it was important to get a verifiable headline.
More to think about:
- Did you know that the oldest blockchain runs since 1992?
- Why there are exactly 21 million Bitcoin
- Why the Bitcoin supply is fixed
