Did Satoshi expect Bitcoin to last this long?

[Gameroid]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

[R2D221]

If he did this while drunk, then he must be the most brilliant mind of all times.

[Snail2]

I doubt that Satoshi was yet another drunk bloke on a university.

[NyeFe]

He probably did. I mean the guy used various decentralised services to hide his identify whilst working on the project. Even years after he's gone, we still can not figure out, or confirm his true identity.

[AverageGlabella]

He probably did. I mean the guy used various decentralised services to hide his identify whilst working on the project. Even years after he's gone, we still can not figure out, or confirm his true identity.

Maybe he was soooo drunk that even he forgot his name thus no one can find him


in all serious though he def was drunk whilst doing this this project took years to plan and execute and he def expected it to get to this and beyond.

[dasource]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

It gets better and better ... What next? He coded it whilst sitting on the toilet one night?

[maku]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

It gets better and better ... What next? He coded it whilst sitting on the toilet one night?

Well, this is getting more and more interesting. But honestly I am amused by people who are trying to retell others "The Genesis of Bitcoin". And do it in a funny way. I already heard stories that Satoshi is really Kim Jong Un, an Alien, NSA, FBI, CIA agent, genius hacker and many more. But I it is first time I hear this:)

[merve10495]

I think Satoshi had a passion and a dream and was in it to actually create something different and unique not to aim for money.

People that do business or invent for the sake of making money often fizz out, fail, or lose drive and move onto something else that can be another 'get rich quick scheme'

Bitcoin is so intricate and well formed that it seems that it is done by someone (or some group) that really had drive, innovation, and in the easiest form of explaining it 'vision' (Whatever that means these days).

He obviously was looking in the long run. Look how the rewards change over time

[pedrog]

Sure he did.

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes.  I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.

[Lorenzo]

According to this very early post made by Satoshi in the Cryptography Mailing List two weeks after Bitcoin was released, he believed that decentralized electronic currencies such as Bitcoin would be used for many different applications in the future:

I would be surprised if 10 years from now we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the trusted third party gets cold feet...

Another quote from February 14, 2010:

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large (bitcoin) transaction volume or no volume.

And another one from July 14, 2010:

I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less.  It will reach an equilibrium where it's not worth it for more nodes to join in.  The rest will be lightweight clients, which could be millions.

One of the last quotes made by Satoshi in late 2010:

No, don't "bring it on" (Wikileaks). The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.

Satoshi probably thought that Bitcoin had a fair chance of being successful in the long term but he probably did not expect it to become so successful in such a short period of time. The growth rate Bitcoin experienced in its first 3-4 years would probably have surprised him and I doubt he could have predicted that it would become so mainstream so quickly. Notice how Satoshi talks in terms of decades, not years. Would he have known that Bitcoin would reach $1,200 less than 4 years after its creation and be accepted by major retailers like Overstock and Microsoft in less than 5? I doubt it.

[tribefan89]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

It gets better and better ... What next? He coded it whilst sitting on the toilet one night?

That's a given, I assume the idea came to him in a dream. A ghost appeared and told him what to do and to call his creation "The better internet tender" but since he was still half drunk he scribbled BIT on the piece of paper on his nightstand. Bitcoin was born.

[Cruxer]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

He has knowledge about writing science articles so he wasn't drunk while writing it. It was probably some university professor, that didn't think it will explode like it did.

[tribefan89]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

He has knowledge about writing science articles so he wasn't drunk while writing it. It was probably some university professor, that didn't think it will explode like it did.

I agree he probably didn't know it would take off. I would venture to guess that most people who actually create something revolutionary really don't realize it at first. And I could see a professor with a background in computers AND economics!

[R2D221]

I agree he probably didn't know it would take off.

No, I'm pretty sure, regarding the style of his posts, that he realized what he was doing, and was confident it would be successful.

[SpanishSoldier]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

This post speaks volume about Satoshi's foresightedness...

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes.  I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.

Hal Finney once said, he felt he was communicating with a highly educated man of Japanese ancestry. Satoshi was no way a drunk kid from university.

[ticoti]

Maybe not at the beginning,while he was creating it or the first days, but when the forum was created and people started to get interested in the project I am sure he realised this was a really big project

[gentlemand]

It's clearly a project that was thought through with incredible thoroughness and designed to sustain itself for a long, long time. Answers were already waiting for questions that didn't exist yet and things were considered that'll happen decades in advance.

[sneakycoin]

Isn't Satoshi cashing out today? April 15th?

[lucullus]

According to this very early post made by Satoshi in the Cryptography Mailing List two weeks after Bitcoin was released, he believed that decentralized electronic currencies such as Bitcoin would be used for many different applications in the future:

I would be surprised if 10 years from now we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the trusted third party gets cold feet...

Another quote from February 14, 2010:

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large (bitcoin) transaction volume or no volume.

And another one from July 14, 2010:

I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less.  It will reach an equilibrium where it's not worth it for more nodes to join in.  The rest will be lightweight clients, which could be millions.

One of the last quotes made by Satoshi in late 2010:

No, don't "bring it on" (Wikileaks). The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.

Satoshi probably thought that Bitcoin had a fair chance of being successful in the long term but he probably did not expect it to become so successful in such a short period of time. The growth rate Bitcoin experienced in its first 3-4 years would probably have surprised him and I doubt he could have predicted that it would become so mainstream so quickly. Notice how Satoshi talks in terms of decades, not years. Would he have known that Bitcoin would reach $1,200 less than 4 years after its creation and be accepted by major retailers like Overstock and Microsoft in less than 5? I doubt it.

Thanks for this

[Lorenzo]

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

He has knowledge about writing science articles so he wasn't drunk while writing it. It was probably some university professor, that didn't think it will explode like it did.

We don't know if he had previously written scientific articles before. The name "Satoshi Nakamoto" appeared out of nowhere in 2008 and is absent in cryptography discussions before Bitcoin was announced. The whitepaper is quite well written and conforms with well-established practices for the most part which points towards some sort of scientific/academic background. However, there is also the possibility that he is more than one person and the Satoshi Nakamoto that devised the idea might not be the same Satoshi Nakamoto that wrote the actual paper.

It's also interesting to note that the paper was written in OpenOffice.org instead of the much more common LaTeX which some people have perceived as a sign that he might not come from a formal programmer/mathematician/physicist background (although this could also have been done on purpose to throw people off his trail):

I spoke to Matthew Green, an assistant research professor at Johns Hopkins who works in the field of cryptology. Green said that the original Bitcoin paper bore the marks of a non-academic who, for whatever reason, decided to write his ideas down in an academic format. Green pointed out the fact that the paper had been written in Open Office as opposed to LaTeX, the word processing system used by academics in the CS field, and said that there were certain quirks in the original Bitcoin code that pointed to a “hobbyist.” He noted that this did not necesarrily rule out the possiblity that an academic might have used a different format, but said that the evidence mostly pointed towards a non-academic. (This assessment has been corroborated by other CS academics.)

Source: https://medium.com/@jaycaspiankang/dorian-satoshi-nakamoto-what-do-we-really-know-ec57f44b6a01

Just wondering what you guys think was this just a project that he made whilst being drunk in univeristy and decided to release it and it caught on fast or did he know that it was going to get this big?

He has knowledge about writing science articles so he wasn't drunk while writing it. It was probably some university professor, that didn't think it will explode like it did.

I agree he probably didn't know it would take off. I would venture to guess that most people who actually create something revolutionary really don't realize it at first. And I could see a professor with a background in computers AND economics!

I agree he probably didn't know it would take off.

No, I'm pretty sure, regarding the style of his posts, that he realized what he was doing, and was confident it would be successful.

Satoshi was around and active for a good 2 years before he began fading away from the forums. 2009 was a pretty lackluster year for Bitcoin adoption but by 2010, things really started to take off. Satoshi probably became more confident in his creation as time went on, especially as interest continued to grow and no major flaws were discovered.