raykroc,
we mostly agree w you. but for every idea has a fountainhead, it sure seems like that fountainhead would come from one of those 3: Dai, Finney, or Szabo. Szabo seems to be heaviest in history of money, so the biggest influence. "Who is Satoshi" really comes down to who controls the early minted coins, and maybe that's 1 2 or 3 of them. Finney seemed forthcoming in how much bitcoin he owned, so sure seems like it's narrowed down to Dai and Szabo. The "accreditation" of Wei Dai but without same for Szabo seems damning, if Szabo is Satoshi he'd not be worried about referencing his OWN work, bc he trusts himself to not sue/accuse himself for plagiarism. So that points to Szabo acting alone. That's why we focus on Szabo. If it was a group, there also should have been more than one entity pre-mining it. So if Dai or Finney isn't Satoshi, what did he/they get?
It's funny you say that, we're thinking Sillycon Valley seems to have been late in sanctioning all this. As Szabo indicates, it WAS very tough to find people who were all of 1) Libertarian 2) in cryptoworld and 3) believe gold wasn't the answer. So Silicon Valley seems to have only glommbed-on in the end, as bitcoin was considered tech-geekie enough to arouse their interest-- and as bitcoin survived and became more resilient. Johnny come-latelies?
Not convinced blockchain solves anything other than de-centralization. De-centralization is the opposite of what countries and accepted currencies want. So blockchain, and more accurately the Byzantine Quorum method of verification, seems destined to serve the "dark side" of the force, not the legal side.
Again, we wouldn't jump to conclusions on bitcoin as acceptable currency yet. And China is having a hard enough time convincing the world to accept the Yuan as the medium of payment for oil, much less ANOTHER switch to cryptocurrency. Crypto would need to survive the first attack by large governments first, and we suspect the odds of survival are quite low in the "white shoe" world (but better in the black markets-- of which oil is not)
Not sure exactly what you mean, but fiat is just dandy for government control. No real great reason to use crypto. The US Fed's system of money is quite honed by this point, as evidenced by all the money-printing during the latest crisis. The gov'ts of the world reallly don't need a better system. Crypto, again, seems destined for black markets.
Perhaps more interesting on this last point, is the fact that the Spanish dolares became the accepted coinage of the US colonies, hence the "dollar"'s name chosen officially in 1795. so maybe if we see another new Empire rise up in the next several hundred years, THEY will adopt crypto? Again, it's hard to say, as it really isn't that clear bitcoin and cryptocurrencies offer much as compared to the digitized currencies we already have. Bitcoin REALLY comes down to de-centralization. Will the next great Empire after the US believe in de-centralization? Extremely hard to say, as we're talking many many years into the future.
thanks so much for spurring the conversation!