On this historic day, the story was finally revealed, on an obscure Fintech discussion forum.
Was that a good clickbait headline?
The Satoshi Nakomoto story starts in 2002, after the Dot Com crash, when Elon Musk created SpaceX. Believing that mankind was doomed unless we could populate Mars he took some of his winnings from PayPal to create the rockets to get us to Mars.
That part of the story is well known. What was revealed today is the part of the story that has so far remained secret. Musk also took an idea that was being hatched in the early days of PayPal, to create a digital currency that was Internet native, and brought it to life.
PayPal had discarded the idea, even though the founders were super excited by it, because the team had opted for the more pragmatic strategy of working within the existing bank payment rails.
This is where the story gets weird.
When Musk dusted off the early plans for a cryptocurrency and exposed them to some serious cryptographers, they found some showstopper issues.
Musk is not a man who gives up easily. He also knew two things. The first is you cannot rush great software. The second is that timing is everything.
So he did a deal with the cryptographers – who agreed on condition of anonymity forever. The deal was that they would get first class tickets to Mars in return for creating a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”. They could take as long as they needed and were instructed to release it when they could see an event back on earth that shook human’s faith in the existing financial system.
It took them 100 years. They finished it in 2102, in the MuskVille colony on Mars. Fortunately some colleagues on Mars had perfected digital time travel. So they programmed their AI machine to release the code just after the Lehman Brothers collapse. In the news release today, they also uploaded what looks like a documentary. It is the history of mankind on Earth after 2008 WITHOUT Bitcoin. It is tough to watch.
So now we know! Satoshi Nakomoto is an AI program from the future sent back to help mankind during dark times, created by a new breed of Humano-Martians.
For more in our science fiction series please see:
https://dailyfintech.com/2015/04/22/grexit-bitcoin-april-fool-crazy-as-a-fox-story-wont-go-away/
If you want a more serious look at the next ten years of the global financial system, please come to the event called Finance Disrupted 2018 (the next ten years) in New York, on 2nd October 2018. This conference is managed by the Economist and as I have been a subscriber to that publication for decades I am excited to attend. They have assembled speakers who really understand the intersection of tech and finance as it relates to major disruptions such as the Global Financial Crisis and what may happen in the next ten years. There is a 15% discount for Daily Fintech readers. Here is the link to learn more about the event. To get the 15% discount for Daily Fintech readers please quote: dailyfintech15
While there are still a few tickets to this conference, I am told that the first flight to Mars is fully sold out and non-millionaires need not apply.
Bernard Lunn is the CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy. He provides advisory services to companies involved with Fintech (reach out to julia at daily fintech dot com to discuss his services).