Satoshi Nakamoto “speaks” to us

A blogger asked Satoshi Nakamoto to “come back to life” for just one day. He implemented this through a neural network, and the result unexpectedly struck the crypto community. It looked like another internet experiment, but the published text turned out to be too precise to simply ignore.

The message, allegedly written by Satoshi, begins calmly and coldly. He says that he observed and remained silent, as he had promised (“I observed. I remained silent, as I promised”).

The code works, the network is stable, and that is the main thing. Bitcoin’s hashrate today is so high that attacking the network is more difficult than attacking the physical infrastructure of the planet. In this sense, the experiment succeeded: money without trust is possible. But then the tone changes. Humanity, according to him, did not surprise (“But everything else… Humanity did not surprise.”).

Bitcoin, conceived as a store of value and p2p electronic cash, has turned into a spectacle and a sport for speculators (“You turned a store of value into a sport. Bitcoin became a digital Moloch, devouring gigawatts for the sake of speculative charts and short-term profit”). The simple idea of direct settlements between people was drowned in “second-layer payment networks,” which the author calls not progress but an admission of defeat of the base protocol as money.

Next comes criticism of financialization. ETFs, managed funds, contracts for difference appeared. An anti-fragile system created as an alternative to traditional finance was embedded into an old, fragile and debt-overloaded financial pyramid. The irony is that Bitcoin became part of the system it was supposed to replace.

Mining is mentioned separately. “Miners have become an oligopoly. Voting through hashrate is not democracy, but a war of capital.” This outcome was expected, but the scale of power concentration is striking.

The most ironic moment, according to the author, is that people still search for Satoshi Nakamoto, as if Bitcoin should have a leader (“And the funniest thing is that you are still looking for me. As if Bitcoin should have a leader”). Bitcoin is not a company and not a movement, it is a protocol comparable to TCP/IP. No one asks TCP/IP what it thinks about cat memes, but for some reason people keep asking this of Bitcoin by searching for its creator.

The conclusion sounds detached and almost indifferent. The technology survived and turned out to be stronger than expected. But the philosophy was buried under layers of greed and short-term bets. Bitcoin is used like a truck for transporting air – derivative financial instruments and synthetic structures.

The author does not say that he is proud or disappointed. He simply states a fact. The system is alive and does not need Satoshi or anyone’s vision (“It does not need Satoshi. It does not even need your ‘vision’. It simply exists. It will exist as long as there is at least one node that remembers the rules of 2009”).

At the end, an almost everyday but telling remark is added: some users still do not make backups of their wallets. And this, according to him, is unbearable.