Bitcoin didn’t succeed because of code. It succeeded because of design. Satoshi wasn’t a great programmer. His C++ was clunky and criticized, but that never mattered. The genius was in the incentive structures that keep the system in balance: miners securing for rewards, users verifying for self-interest, developers constrained by social consensus. The game theory is what makes Bitcoin work, not the elegance of the code. What’s overlooked is that most changes today are argued by people who can write code, but Bitcoin’s real oversight has always come from outside of that circle. Economists, philosophers, and everyday users. Satoshi himself belonged more to this other group. He was a systems thinker who used code as a tool, not as the essence of Bitcoin. At its core, Bitcoin is not software. It’s a social contract expressed through rules. The code simply enforces the design.

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Hell yes amen

Satoshi was not the best coder, but he was an amazing "Bitcoin architect," applying knowledge from other disciplines. I think in the future, Bitcoin development needs a formal process to get input from non-coders who understand economics, law, etc.

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Satoshi was not the best coder, but he was an amazing "Bitcoin architect," applying knowledge from other disciplines. I think in the future, Bitcoin development needs a formal process to get input from non-coders who understand economics, law, etc.

“The genius was in the incentive structures that keep the system in balance.” 🤝