Did the US Government make Bitcoin?
Before throwing the possibility out of the window and before I provide you with a wall of text to support my opinionated assertions, let’s review some bullet points:
- Satoshi Nakamoto Transliterates into “Central Intelligence” from Japanese.
- Bitcoin has no ‘claimed’ national sovereignty per se(IMHO there IS de facto sovereignty through from the citizens of the internet; all of us) , under such a guise it may be allowed to subvert value beyond existing currency laws — that could change in the future.
- It has an open, participatory nature to allow everyone collectively to contribute to it. Without transparency, usage would have been more limited and likely more hostile as users would attempt to learn or mimic it (had it been closed source). What better of a lure than to get us to feel like we can commit effort such that we download and participate.
- Gavin Andresen Met with the CIA in public before the ‘token handoff’ of the alert key and commit keys for Bitcoin. Then…gone…no verified proof of Satoshi Nakamoto again.
- 8360 different .gov pages citing Bitcoin, not everything else, just .gov pages.
- According to this page, Darpa has, in the past, awarded money to a project to help simulate the tor and bitcoin networks.
- To underscore #6 we find this article written back in 2013 also questioning if BTC was a creation of DARPA and asserts this person to be Satoshi Nakamoto — as a representative ‘person’ to have created it, though it was more likely than possible a joint event, based also in part on the evidence of this paper, thank you Kayrice of Bitcointalk.
Now that the list is out the way, let’s do the “why”
Why on earth would the Government bother to make a competing currency to overtake the Dollar, especially one that could not be controlled?
The answer is Sleight of Hand, and insurance.
As thing stand, there is an undervalued system worth about 3 Billion USD currently and with an invested stake approaching an additional Billion (861 Million as of August 2015). There are at this point, several 10s and quite possible several hundreds of thousands of people who have some sort of
vested interest or stake in the bitcoin ecosystem which at its core essence embraces cryptocurrency. If Bitcoin Succeeds, and the US actively holds portions or seizes BTC to be used as a tool for converting back to Dollars, they stake to gain with BTC acceptance and growth on an aggregate scale.
7013 Physical Bitcoin Stores [src][1]
22,272,390 Businesses in US alone [src][2]
Ballpark estimate <99.968% of businesses do not accept Bitcoin
Though investment capital doesn’t explain sleight of hand. See, the NSA uses our technology to watch our movements. According to their website, everything is fair game, and there are splitter junctions intercepting and collecting all data. How much data? We’re talking massive amounts of data, probably in the Several hundred Zettabytes, approaching the almighty Yottabyte. (You’re likely sitting on a couple Terabytes combined for your household, unless you are a computer enthusiast — maybe you’re sitting on a few dozen.), throw on a magnitude of 1 million, and then we’re talking, places like Amazon, Google, and Facebook need those sort of storage requirements for indexing, but even their footprint likely reaches small in comparison to the governement which I’m guessing keeps and entire image of the internet as best as they can based on using it for enforcement of law.
Most of this data is already likely blobbed together, Bitcoin data, in essence is just additional payment metadata, that can now be applied and have attributes set on a machine learning basis — as users adopt/opt in towards its usage. Taking a note from total recall, it almost makes sense to have Bitcoin incentivise itself for us to indirectly promote it whether or not we’re aware, because ultimately our information, on a cash level basis can be tied, tracked and associated.
Somewhere lost on the internet to me at this moment, I read that in the movie 1984, there wasn’t in fact a power grab for control over people so much as it was a power of control over their thoughts and thought processes, but after reading through the synopsys I can stand by those sentiments as well (and am a strong believer of life imitating art and vice versa). Having a system where anyone can see your past transactions based on looking them up from a few commands is an advantage, when you have already generated a footprint. Orwell's fears of a minority musing manipulation and myopia along with confusion to control the masses was a very real fear in his eyes, one he expresses through drafting this novel — one which we have had the year already come and gone, but yet many of the themes are still present here today.
Despite the notions that perhaps BTC is a tool of the US government, there is nothing wrong with Bitcoin so long as it remains open source. Keep in mind, that it could also be a backup plan for the Dollar should turmoil eventually unfold — that can also work in reverse and the Government may change its mind and work to actively shut down Bitcoin through a coordinated means — breaking us up and hiding what this is at its core, a consensus system, powered by the hard work and efforts of the community.
The government has no desire nor intention to destroy or regulate it because it can be used as a subversive weapon to persuade other individuals of under the rule of different nations to hold onto it (BTC) as an alternative form of currency. If you liked this article and would like to learn more about bitcoin then check out my occasional rants and rambles on honeybadgermoney. Do you think the government has nothing to do with bitcoin and does not care of it? Share in the comments, we can discuss!
