Greetings Bitcoiners! Happy White Paper Day!

What's white paper day, you might ask? On Halloween 2008, 17 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper on a cryptography mailing list. He/she/they had made references about working on a novel peer to peer money and payments system in this very specific corner of the internet, and October 31st, 2008 is when it was actually released. I don't know about you all...cryptography mailing lists were not one of the places I was hanging out in 2008. Suffice it to say, Bitcoin was not on the radar of many at that time.

In it, Satoshi describes a new network of nodes that allows for peer to peer transactions, in contrast to transactions that necessitate trusting a third party, as is the case for banks, credit cards, and modern fiat payment apps. All of the parts that Satoshi put together were existing technologies. The novel idea was how Satoshi combined digital signatures, peer to peer networking, game theory, economics, and proof-of-work (PoW) to create Bitcoin.

There's a memorable scene in the movie Flash of Genius, which is a biographical drama about Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Ford more or less stole his invention, and Kearns sued them over it. In the courtroom scene, Ford's lawyers argued that the components of the intermittent wiper motor were all standard electronic components that anyone could freely purchase from RadioShack and assemble themselves, therefore Kearns' argument shouldn't hold water, since he only devised a certain way to string them together. Kearns (played by Greg Kinnear) pulled out a copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and read the first sentence..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". He argued, did Dickens invent the word "it"? No. Did he invent the word "was"? No, and so forth. Kearns argued, it's how Dickens strung them together that's meaningful in this circumstance, he argued, and this "flash of genius" moment is what distinguishes a novel idea.

Satoshi incorporated various existing technologies in such a way in the white paper. Each component was an existing technology, however, no one ever had the idea or gumption to string them all together in such a way as to make something so profound. A critical component is PoW, invented by Adam Back. Through PoW and digital signatures, Satoshi invented, some say discovered, digital scarcity. Until then, anything digital was infinitely copyable, which made digital cash impossible. Payments relied on trusted third parties to be the arbiters of truth. This is an incredible power that financial intermediaries alone possessed. Like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to man, Satoshi released a knowledge onto the world that could never be undone. If you're familiar with that portion of Greek mythology, and what the fate of Prometheus was for this action, it's unsurprising that Satoshi wanted to stay pseudonymous, eventually disappearing completely in late 2010.

The white paper is only 8 pages long, 9 pages including references. The first 2 pages are pretty easy to grok, and then it goes further under the hood. Page 3 brings up proof-of-work (PoW). Today happens to be the best day of the year to check it out if you never have before.

Don't miss an upcoming hiking and lunch event, at 9am on Sat, Nov 8th! Details below.

Happy White Paper Day everyone!

Proof of Hike, 9am, Sat Nov 8th

Peters Mountain Appalachian Trail

2300 Peters Mountain Rd

Halifax, PA 17032

40°24'43.1"N 76°55'48.6"W

What3words: enchanting.endearing.keys

Lunch afterwards:

Boro Bar & Grille

4425 N Front St

Harrisburg, PA 17110