Bitcoin Forum

"What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.": Satoshi's original Bitcoin whitepaper is 10 years old today!

Hardly anyone are making Bitcoin payments without going through some kind of centralized third party, like payment processors and exchanges or wallet providers.

Satoshi wanted us to use Bitcoin directly between two willing parties, without any intermediary services.

Do you think these services are crushing Satoshi's original dreams and goals for this technology or did we just evolve to satisfy the requirements of the governments that wants to control this technology.  ???

Do we need to go back to the original vision for this technology or do we continue on this new path?

I doubt if we actually did deviate from satoshi's original idea, even if literally we aren't going by his exact words or proposals/postulations..

It's evident why cryptocurrency users the world over shun trading directly with individuals,and you can't really blame them, because as the birth of this genius technology was announced,so also the scammers stepped up their game, in a bid to enrich themselves and impoverish their victims

The system was created to be pseudo--anonymous,with very little details of tracking anyone
I think it really hasn't been our fault,but I blame fraudulent individuals out there who make trust a word that doesn't exist in this system

Exchanges make it a bit safer for users to trade,with at least a reduced risk involved
Users most times also trade on decentralized exchanges,which is more or less direct business

I for one wouldn't overlook the risk involved in direct trade, in order to fulfil what's written in the whitepaper
Never trade directly with an individual without a third party Trusted escrow service..
That's the sad truth now

??!
how many users got affected by true private key hard bruteforcing.. dare i say it none
how many users got affected by exchange 'hacks' (mtgox, crtypsy, cryptorush, mintpal, bitcoinica, .. list goes on).. millions

bitcoin security is more secure than exchanges

but users decision and trust are the issue where the users throwing funds at people they do not investigate, do due diligence of or research who they are throwing funds at are the problem.
thats not a bitcoin fault/issue. thats a human fault of just giving strangers funds and strangers greed of taking funds.

again even the exchange/escrow can be the thief too

bitcoin rule one:
if funds are not on a private key you have full/sole control of, they aint your coins

We haven't really strayed too far from what Satoshi envisioned in his whitepaper. For all we know, majority of transactions happening within the whole network is in between two parties; the essence of trust-less payments still lives and decentralization is still very evident from what we can observe. Also, third-party payment processors are only options in case the merchant wants to convert to cash immediately, and there are no rules enforcing people to use concierges whatsoever in general transactions.

Fear not, we haven't disappointed Satoshi--at least not yet.  :D

Probably not in my opinion. Bitcoin has improved technically and has been adopted in a huge manner compared to last year alone. If anything, Satoshi might probably be surprised on how Bitcoin spread so fast to the masses in a decade alone.

About the bitcoin factions(BTC vs BCH), knowing that bitcoin is decentralized, Satoshi probably saw this coming. Without a CEO and the community deciding on the updates, different opinions and different views from people are to be expected.

This is the main barrier to universal use of crypto. It's not entirely decentralized and we have yet to benefit from an entirely decentralized method of exchange because we're still dependent on centralized exchanges.

There are ICO's that are proposing distributed exchange networks that will eliminate the need for exchanges, and i think Satoshi, whoever he is, would be happy to see that.

I seriously doubt that the majority of the tx's are done directly between parties, like you mentioned. Source please.  ???  If we give merchants the power to dictate how tx's must be done, then direct payments will be a thing of the past. The customers must dictate the methods that are being used by the merchants.

A while ago, I wanted to buy something expensive for my partner and the merchant only wanted to do the transaction via a reputable payment processor. I offered to buy a smaller item as a direct payment and they accepted and after that, they allowed me to pay the bitcoins directly into their Bitcoin address. <They just fear the unknown>  ::)

the fact that more people are using custodial services is just like what happened with gold in the 16th century.
people putting gold in kings control and then kings giving using tally sticks (mysql database balances)

next evolution is eltoo factories. which are like bank vaults and fort knox where gold gets locked up in a factory's multisig(fortknox requiring their permission to get out)

those factories then hand out 12decimal un-chained unaudited transactions (promissory notes(bank notes)) which people then use as proof of value inside channels(accounts) and they co-sign ownership of who deserves value of these 12 decimal values.
which to get out real 8 decimal bitcoin back to blockchain transacting needs sending the 12 decimal transactions out of a channel(closing) and then offchain sending it back to a factory and requesting the factory to withdraw a 8dcimal transaction

many people dont realise the issues of the plans LN has. and if bitcoin devs keep making bitcoin less bitcoin onchain friendly (stalling onchain scaling and removing fee reductions to cause people to beleive handling real bitcoin is bad, heavy,, expensive (yea they call block size 'weight' for a reason and they multiply the transaction size by 4 to be 4times the 'weight' for a reason. to make people follow the 19th century plan of throwing funds into a fortnox and playing with promissory notes and not want to handle real bitcoins.

and we know what happened in the 20th century where the gold standard changed and those promissory notes became less promising (look how tether turned out.. no longer 1:! as an example of how quick things change)

alot of people say dont worry its voluntary to use LN. but if you watch all the advertising PR overpromising and actual code changes done purely to make LN look better than just using the btc network. you can see how things are moving AWAY from satoshi's vision

but now expect the usual crew that love the idea of LN and want LN to rule. to come swooping in with insults and fun about how LN is great and how im just wrong because im wrong... (facepalm)
P.S LN is a separate network that is not a pur bitcoin feature. but a separate system for multiple coins that have become or may become LN compatible (LN was not designd to be bitcoin compatible... bitcoin was altered to be LN compatible, same with LTC and other altcoins too

...
nowwith all that said. if bitcoins protocol keeps getting changed to sway people that using bitcoin onchain is bad, useless, slow, expensive, heavy, not scalable etc... then yes bitcoin has lost its path that satoshi set

The reason why people using more exchanges than exchanging between two individual is bitcoin has been considered as investment among the peoplw even most of the old crypto investors were looking more money not to make the direct payments.But I don't say e are crushing the dream of satoshi,it keeps evolving among the people in this centralized war zone when people think they are controlled by third person as money they will start to use bitcoin.

I do not think that Satoshi Nakamoto would be proud of the current use of Bitcoin mainly as a speculative means of accumulating value. Satoshi wanted his bitcoin as an alternative payment system. As a payment system, Bitcoin is almost never used. But by this time, due to speculation in the market, the price of Bitcoin was increased to $ 20,000. Even now it costs over $ 6,000. Did Satoshi want his bitcoin to be practically unaffordable for ordinary people? I do not think.
It remains to hope that after the legalization of Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency and the creation of a proper infrastructure, Bitcoin will still be used more as a means of payment.

It is a bit disappointing, though not surprising. The fact is that most people don't particularly desire the kind of freedom that Bitcoin provides, and furthermore they can't handle it (eg. secure key management). But the most important thing is that anyone can use Bitcoin trustlessly if they want. Maybe some of the people who are getting exposed to Bitcoin through centralized services will eventually move toward trustlessness over time. (Though maybe only after getting repeatedly burned by the costs of trust...) The biggest key to decreasing trusted-service-use is IMO in making it far easier and cheaper to do so securely. For example, cheap, secure, and trustless hardware wallets and point-of-sale terminals would go a long way.

I think Satoshi had expected what is happening now. Satoshi created something innovative and very useful for payment. Given the benefits that bitcoin have, the high demand and price was normal.
I think the true statement is that " Satoshi is now proud of himself " He has created something that the value has increased more than 100,000 times.
I am sure, even if bitcoin won't be a global currency, a currency based on blockchain technology will be the greatest currency all over the world.

Yeah, at least I don't know anyone who doesn't use a wallet to send bitcoins. To be honest, I actually didn't know it was possible until this post.
If we are talking about third parties, let's also mention escrow services without which many are not feeling like doing any business... We surely messed up with the trustless transactions, but I think it's not that bad in comparison with other issues. The first one is that most of people are not really performing many transactions with bitcoin, but are holders. Money ain't good when it's not used. Those who do use it, though, are mainly traders that buy and sell only for some fiat profit, which is imo even worse.

That's key. We all need to be faced with the consequences of our actions to realize what we are doing is wrong.

If centralized services do everything the right way, offer people exactly that what they are asking for, why should people not (yet) caring about decentralization value trustlessness? In the same way, the regular system kept pushing the buttons of most hardcore Bitcoiners long enough till they started to develop an anti government sentiment, which is why Bitcoin is the alternative of choice for them.

The only reason Bitcoin is a thing is because of how rotten the current system is, and I'm glad to say that more people start to figure that out. The far majority of the crypto enthusiasts will always prefer gains over decentralization, but that's their choice. They will eventually find out why Bitcoin is something worth looking into. It just takes time. :)

It is ridiculous to say that free transactions that hold users through third parties are not possible in the trade. Transnational transactions keep the users too risky because one of them will go against the covenants.

How can you know? Does this come from some research or is this just your feeling? Because I'm not so sure that majority of Bitcoin users use online wallets and payment processors.
And exchanges are not entirely a bad thing, Bitcoin would be far worse if the only way to buy was in person for cash - people would get robbed and even killed quite often. People are using Bitcoin as a currency, they just don't talk about it, while those who are in for profits are talking about trading and price all the time.

I think overall Satoshi would be proud how big the Bitcoin community has grew, how good the codebase has become, how the network is stable and resilient.

Yes, you are right. People have to reveal their identity especially when they intend to cash out their profit or buy bitcoin with fiat. But that's not the problem of bitcoin. That's the problem of fiat money and strict rules made by governments.
I think Satoshi is satisfied now. Many people are using bitcoin and the number of people is increasing. Till now, everything has gone well.

Unfortunately that is not entirely true. Satoshi wanted us to run Bitcoin Core and some full nodes <at least some of us> to sustain the network and then to use that as our wallet, not a centralized wallet provider or an exchange.

You can have a Billion people using Coinbase and with one switch of a button, that Billion people will be without any bitcoins. You need to own the Private key to own the coins.  >:(

At this stage I still believe that bitcoin is still at it developmental stage and at that we still rely on a good number of third party involvement to carry out most of our transactions in bitcoin and this is not in any way deviating us from santoshi original design and plans but the fact still remains that it will take a good number of years for santoshi original design and plans to come to pass in 100%.

We wanted to see satoshi but he/she or them don't want to shop face(s).
It's another task what's written in whitepaper and another - what satoshi actually wanted and the reason why he invented this coin. I think he didn't consider this: What will happen when we mine all coins. Following is my opinion: He didn't invented bitcoin for masses, it had to be not so popular used to protect anonimity of it's users. This coin is designed to keep privacy but be the book at the same time of all transaction. He did amazing job and that's all, he did his best and everyone knows something that's abused will lose it's beauty.

Even without the use of centralized services some big amounts of BTC transactions are always handled by escrow and I don't think that it is BTC's fault personally but its the nature and culture where scammers and criminals are also attracted to BTC in a way they can abuse it makes BTC not good for transacting directly. Also other than that Satoshi's dream of using is as a payment system comes only second to taking profits out of it and still it is because of its volatility that makes it more attractive to traders rather than consumers.

What you call the "Satoshi dream" has never been about "taking profits". From the white paper, you will never read anything mentioning profits/investment/make money.
I don't think Satoshi excepted to see Bitcoin has big as it is today. As to say about to be proud of us, not sure, but he sure is happy to see this work used daily on a large scale.

And that's because we're having problems with adoption. Now, for someone to get Bitcoins, the person will need to probably convert dome Fiat. Doing so shall require you to use a medium to facilitate that. For someone to convert some crypto back into Fiat, the person will need similar services.

Anyways, Satoshi's dream has been partially fulfilled in that we've been preaching about this innovation for 10 years now, and there have been majy improvements with oldster companies even joining in.

fixd that for you. as core was not around in satoshis day. satoshi wanted diversity. he didnt want to be leader and be the central point he didnt want followers just asking him.
also having just core is also as bad as having exchanges. coz just one bad line of code and bam ..full network bug
diverse fullnodes of different languages and teams all part of a level playing field is what should secure the network.
anyway apart from that little edit the rest of your comment is correct

I think Satoshi would be happy and excited to see bitcoin moving forward if you look at the whitepaper satoshi never mention about bitcoin price so seeing bitcoin growing and more people are coming in will make him more proud.

NO matter what the happens between the two parties, they can't do away with intermediaries if each need to make value out of the digits sent to him through the bitcoin network. Exchanges and third parties exist to make bitcoins

Using wallet providers doesn't mean that the transaction is not between two parties only. For example if the person is using electrum, the transaction is not controlled by anyone just the person creating and sending the transaction. You just can't call wallet providers centralised because many of them are not if you control your private keys and they're not stored somewhere online. Ideal option is cold storages like trezors or ledgers of course. But all in all I don't see any problem with it.

we cannot change the peer to peer system, bitcoin will not only change the transaction system, fiat will be replaced by bitcoin, peer to peer transactions will also be applied for long distance and short distance transactions.

I think, Satoshi will be proud of us, because the bitcoin he created has reached its peak. many people who benefit from bitcoin, get rich and become a priority.

this is not a new path, but bitcoin is slowly creating a revolution to avoid any obstacles. but bitcoin always focuses on its core goals.

Satoshi really got a pure innovative way to help all of us to get a better payment transaction system, and to help us get a freedom in doing transaction, so far I see the intention of Satoshi is still on progress, so I think we should be proud of ourselves to be able to keep bitcoin alive until now, and we should keep the original idea of Satoshi for the next generation

I'm content with the current roadmap although I do feel that it is a bit too conservative, especially in terms of the current block space limit. I would have preferred to see it be bumped to allow more transactions to be processed.

SegWit is good and all, but it is nothing more than a buy-time solution in the run-up to the lightning network. Even with the lightning network running in full glory, we still need larger blocks, more so than what SegWit provides.

SegWit is close to it's maximum support with how the big block camp isn't willing to cooperate with the other part of the ecosystem. They have an incentive to keep blocking it, and I don't see them give up on that any time soon.

For me when I saw the white paper from Bitcoin made by Satoshi nakmoto on October 31, 2008 it was very touching and I was very happy to read it, because I saw the struggle of a Satoshi nakamoto in making digital financial innovations that succeeded in making Bitcoin holders become rich people. Maybe if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive today, surely he will be proud because now the price of bitcoin has been calculated by the World.

haha its mean that satoshi want to makes bitcoin as the currency right? but right now we can see that bitcoin is be the trading media and investing media in the public, so i hope in the future bitcoin for currency can be realized

I think the Satoshi  will be  proud of himself , he has created something that its value has increased a lot over time, even if it does not become the world currency, but it is also a great money unit

Bitcoin can still do that, and people certainly use it as such. I'm sure he'd at least think that some of the services are unnecessary (especially stuff like Bitpay), but for as long as Bitcoin has that capability, he'd probably be satisfied.


I don't think it's as much the governments' requirements as it is actual users'. These services exist because there is demand for them; people don't use them because governments tell them to. People can give up a lot for convenience.

Yeah I just mentioned that it only comes second to taking profits. It is never about earning money from its volatility but it is more about using BTC as a means of direct payment which it never also achieved as like what you said we are using third party services in part of our transaction.

To be honest he might not expected that BTC will be this successful but  overexpecting is bad also, we have seen ICO developers giving high hopes to their investors with their whitepaper, only to see them fail as they can't even give what they say.

I do not think so. I think we went a little out of the original text. Particularly due to ICOs, the concept of decentralized is a bit confused. We have a very powerful Bitcoin still.

While BTC is not known for being used in direct payments without the us of 3rd party services I think that Satoshi will be more than happy on what BTC has achieved. Even if it failed to become a popular payment method used by a lot of people I think that Satoshi is more than happy to see that it created a new industry (cryptocurrency market) and also to see that the conccept of Blockchain is now being used to other ways inside businesses it clearly has helped a lot of people and entities to grow more.

I think satoshi would be proud of what bitcoin has achieved. Though exchanges might sound much like a third party, many still hold the basic trustless ideology wherein one is not forced to go through regulations such as a KYC (but with a lesser transsction cap) making it nearly an exchange of payment between two willing parties alone. Yet, with regulations enforced and the prevalence of exchanges, satoshi might just be as proud with the progress and acceptance bitcoin gained in a global scale.

I suppose that in any case we need development and new path.

To arrive at Satoshi's destination, it might take a long process. Because, there are so many fraudsters out there. I myself do not understand, what kind of process will be passed later. Should there be, involvement from certain authorities? I have no idea

The problem is this new industry is built on centralized control and he did not want that. Satoshi wanted us to be free from currency price manipulation and also exploitation from centralized services that always misuse their power.

We already see how some of the bigger exchanges are misusing their power and how people's accounts are locked when they break the ToS agreements. <Simple stuff like using their accounts for online gambling.>  ::)

The Lightning Network is working quite well despite being still in an early-state. Broadcasting on-chain transactions is need for opening and closing channels but we can lower the cost of doing so and improve privacy by introducing Channel factories and Schnorr signatures. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of time to implement each of these solutions.

Unfortunately Bitcoin don't have any kinds of safeguards in order to avoid the things you have mentioned. Also without any regulation taking place mass adoption seems to be impossible as from what I am seeing the cryptocurrency industry needs the government more than the government needs them. All the scams and frauds and other criminal activities taking place in this industry is hurting their economy that is why they need to step in. It seems to me that BTC cannot purely act independently with the original two willing parties agreeing to the transaction.

I think he would. Look how far Bitcoin has reached many users by gaining their trust to use the applications and helps and enable users to hold on to their wealth instead of having Banks as the third parties.

Governments are not the only people who can "protect" you from these scammers. A lot of platforms have some kind of self regulatory frameworks and systems to deal with these scammers. A lot of Whitehat hackers are doing this as a free service to the public.


We can get people with enough knowledge to trace these criminals and then handing them over to the authorities. We can also create our own "Review" sites to sort the good from the bad. You do not need government regulations to prevent these scams, this community can police themselves.  ;)

In what way is it unaffordable? Right now anyone can buy one dollar's worth and fees are manageable, for now at least.

Satsoshi would have to have been stupid not to have expected a speculative phase. Everything has to go through one before the world decides what its true use and value is. I don't think it'll ever be used as a currency, but if it does that's the final use case, not the first.

If I were Satoshi I'd be sad about the overwhelming centralisation of mining, but I think he anticipated that becoming a reality too. Perhaps not as fast as it did.

Bitcoin has shown tremendous growth in the number of supporters, capitalization and distribution throughout the world in ten years. Satoshi should be pleased with these results.

Probably, but would he be just as sad about how we're working with one single implementation? Because that's the reality of the day. Bitcoin Core accounts for +98% of what Bitcoin currently represents.

That's a form of centralization too, and I'm not really sure if he would consider that to be bad factor. People, regardless of who they are, will accept things more easily if it benefits them directly.

In other words, my toy being centralized around me is good, my toy being centralized around you is bad. We have to compromise on decentralization somewhere, and in this case it keeps the various sides well balanced.

I got what I want and you got what you want. Fair deal.

Being the genius that Satoshi is/was, I wouldn't be surprised if he had actually foreseen Bitcoin becoming what it is today. What is it if you may ask, well that's another topic. The original white paper was clear and specific with its goal/vision. But for whatever it's worth, good or bad, things happen and all we can really do is accept them as they come especially when the government enters the scene.

a segwit transaction. byte for byte is no better than legacy
segwit was only conceived.. purely to be LN compatible
.....
LN is not a bitcoin network. its an independent network that allows multiple coins to use (LN asks for which chainhash channels are to monitor) its why litecoin, vert coins and bitcoin all have new address formats bc1q ltc1q

LN is not sole 100% control(multisig requires channel partner signature). and even funnier factories make it so its even less sole control as it needs not only the multisig channel partner signature, but also the factory signature

research eltoo factories (when close session sent back to factory (before broadcast) the factory has to 'sign all' as the final signature)

It is working as it was supposed to work, because the decision to use the current implementation is based on consensus and if 98% of the people agree that it is the best implementation, then so be it.

If someone genuinely come up with something much better, then people will consider this and they will shift their decision to support the new implementation. Most people are satisfied that Bitcoin Core is solid and safe, so what more do they need?

I think society is looking for a middle ground. What would the government adopted bitcoin. Without regulation, Bitcoin will not enter the masses of the world.

I'm not saying that we need anything more. I was just pointing at how it's not just the mining aspect that's centralized if you look at it like that, and why it doesn't necessarily translates into something negative.

There is always an aspect of Bitcoin and basically any other decentralized currency that you can point at as being centralized, or an aspect that the original creator would have liked to be different if he/she was still in charge.

If you look at Bitcoin as a whole, it's decentralized enough to protect that what we value the most, and that's the only thing that matters.

You're right that there's nothing inherently wrong with them, but they go directly against what Bitcoin wants to provide -- peer-to-peer digital cash transactions without relying on third party trust. Bitcoin was literally created so that people can transfer money without needing services like Visa in the middle, but people opted to use middlemen like Bitpay anyway.

Exchanges don't really go directly against this unless you use them as your primary wallet.

i guess you forgot that the core devs themselves actually told the community that even if any% didnt upgrade to a new feature that the new feature gets adopted anyway
old nodes couldnt oppose a certain feature last year. as old nodes would blindly accept blocks even if they cant signature validate the new featured transactions. this is because the new feature supplies old nodes with a stripped/translated block that appears normal but not fully validate. thus old nodes couldnt reject those blocks due to the 'inflight upgrade'(consensus bypass).

so if the network was 98% not upgraded. those 98% end up as downstream filtered and stripped nodes. and only 2% are treated as full relay full validation full archival nodes.

so go check your history. things have changed

I think he would not be proud much because some people are using Bitcoin to wrong things and manipulations, but for some thing that we have done using it he will surely be proud of his work.

I agree that it is a form of centralization, but not one that's harming anyone here.

The only advantage of more implementations is that when a certain implementation for whatever reason crashes (could be due to a bug), the others will keep the network up and running.

The downside is that we are dealing with different parties all thinking to be the better cut of the pie, which is very damaging because as we have seen with plenty of different coins, it results in internal warefare where unhappy parties fork off at some point. Bitcoin in its current form has never been this pure now we no longer have to deal with BCash ideology.

Speaking of BCash, they are going through internal warfare as we speak which as many here expect, will very likely result in the bitter party to fork off.