Lehman Weekend: The Biggest Bankruptcy in American History

[Kemarit]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

[1Referee]

I don't think Bitcoin's existence is the result of the financial crisis that Lehman triggered back then, it possibly just gave Satoshi more incentive to rush it and use the anti bank sentiment to boost his project, and it seem to have definitely helped.

Banks and payment services have historically done bad to customers by refusing/blocking/censoring transactions, and I think that was Satoshi's main point to address based on the whitepaper. It's not for nothing named peer to peer electronic cash. Great thing about the early years was that Bitcoin was in its prime days when it comes to currency usage. SilkRoad was the perfect example of how easy and convenient it is to use Bitcoin as currency.

Interesting is that most users were not cashing out to fiat, which partly came from the lack of exchanging services as well, but people just spent their received Bitcoins, and that's how an economy should work. Bitcoin (as in money) needs to circulate and not be sold on exchanges because of whatever party can't take the risk.

BitPay going rogue once again points out that while we are not dealing with banks, it's just as bad to have a crypto related central party function as such.

[hatshepsut93]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

Satoshi started working on Bitcoin in 2007, he actually said that he wrote whitepaper after he developed the software. Also, Bitcoin had many predecessors from the previous years, so the movement for decentralized money was there long before the Lehman Brothers collapse and the 2008 crisis. The philosophy of decentralized money is not about simply distrusting the government and banks, it's about not trusting anyone with your money. It's probably just a coincidence that Bitcoin was launched during the crisis.

[dothebeats]

I wasn't personally affected by this given that I live overseas from America, but I do know that it impacted the global markets and caused some severe turn of events over the course of a few months, especially in America wherein many people are laid off by their employers even though they were assured that they'd keep their jobs amidst the crashes in the market. As for Satoshi working on his brainchild, I don't think the great recession has ignited his interest on creating bitcoin, and seeing on the whitepaper that he has already been doing some researches on it prior before the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, it seems that it took years before he completed it, and it just so happened that everything is spiralling out of control after he's done his opus.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I had a stable job at the time, but I remember the event clearly nonetheless.  There were a ton of banks around the US failing at the time or shortly thereafter IIRC.  Every day when I was browsing business news, I'd see a list of them.  I also recall in 2007 or so, a coworker of mine was getting into house-flipping.  I've never been into real estate myself, but it struck me as a weird thing to do at the time.  And wouldn't you know, that was right before the housing market collapsed into a big pile of nothing.

Funny you should mention bitcoin's creation being right around that time.  I've had the same feeling about Satoshi creating it in response to the banking crisis, and though I can't imagine my theory is original, I don't remember ever reading about anyone else thinking this.  For a while there, the fear was that the whole banking system would collapse and there would be an absolute need for something like bitcoin to exist.  I've always thought Satoshi was actually some branch of the US government, but who knows.

I also remember how bad the job market was in 2011-2012 when I was looking for another job.  It was brutal, and unemployment was at something like 10% per the government's data.  It was probably higher than that, too.  Glad that's over with.  The economy right now is pretty damn good.

[BitHodler]

Initially it was more a media circus for me as bystander, but the economical pressure was certainly noticeable around me around a year after the event. I'm glad to say that it didn't affect me personally.

I can even say that while the mainstream media was acting like the end of the world was near, local banks here were running just fine and there was next to no resistance against them, or at least not more than usual.

As time goes by it more and more becomes clear how empty and sensation driven mainstream media outlets are. I'm already at a point at which watching news has become entertainment rather than what it should be.

[Juggy777]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

Hey I was relatively young back when Lehman brothers news hit the markets, I remember vividly people around my family circle had committed suicides as they had played and burnt their hands in affendos. I remember our family too lost lot of money, but I guess if it did play a role in satoshi inventing bitcoins. I feel it's inevitable cause you see it's a decentralised coin, and aren't we glad he did it.

[LeGaulois]

Bitcoin has nothing to with the 2008 crisis, it is the result of a philosophical and political questioning that started in the 90s. You can guess Satoshi couldn't predict the crisis and couldn't develop Bitcoin in a week.
You can search the history of Cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist, Eric Hughes, Nick Szabo, etc

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/literature/

[Anarchist]

People were creating digital currencies for 20 years. Bitcoin is not the first crypto even if Bitgold was able to resolve the 51% attack, Bitcoin would be just a random altcoin today

[figmentofmyass]

Funny you should mention bitcoin's creation being right around that time.  I've had the same feeling about Satoshi creating it in response to the banking crisis, and though I can't imagine my theory is original, I don't remember ever reading about anyone else thinking this.  For a while there, the fear was that the whole banking system would collapse and there would be an absolute need for something like bitcoin to exist.  I've always thought Satoshi was actually some branch of the US government, but who knows.

i think the intentions behind bitcoin were more grand, but the way satoshi released the software was definitely in response to the banking crisis. the embedded message in the genesis block reads "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." and the block time for block 0 was the same day (2009-01-03) although block 1 wasn't found until 6 days later. that seems like a pretty obvious statement to me.

[davis196]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

I was a highschool student back then,so it didn't affect me(I had no job) .
The global financial crysis hit my country somewhere around the summer of 2009,when I graduated,so it was impossible for me to get a job.Now,bitcoin is an important part of my life.

[Baofeng]

...[snip]..

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

Yes, 3 months after securing a high paying job, suddenly I'm given the pink slip because of the financial woes in the US. I was shocked because I'm disappointed that they have to let us go and to be fair it was the whole team. For me this is likely the last straw for Satoshi to release bitcoin and as @figmentofmyass mentioned there are a lot of reference to the current financial crisis that time.

https://news.bitcoin.com/the-satoshi-revolution-chapter-2-satoshis-white-paper-breaks-your-economic-chains-part-5/

Satoshi watched the bailouts unfold, as the message on the Genesis block attests: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Solving the trusted third party problem must have assumed urgency to him.

[aencarnaci]

I was too young to be affected directly however my dad got laid off after 2 years in 2010.

He was "retired" by force but we still had insane amount of debt to pay because we were living at a standard he could afford while he was working but when he got laid off we had to cut back on everything and we were in big debts. Thankfully my dad made enough money to buy a house in an island for summers and we sold that and bought a house in the city.

We lived there for a while and than I got married and left, they still were fighting with economical problems because of those days so they sold that house and moved to country and now they are much better however it affected at least 10 years of our lives. Just one bad crisis, 10 years of my dads life was gone.

[Onyxia]

I don't think the financial crisis has disappeared. It is only controlled by man. It may break out at any time. I am pessimistic about the world economy. I think the current global economy has big problems. The extremes of wealth distribution will lead mankind to war.

[Proudmore]

Lehman Brothers is only a representative of the crisis, and I think there will be more such companies going bankrupt in the next financial crisis. Economics needs to be better perfected, otherwise the war will not stop.

[Hans_Pfall]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

Luckily I wasn't adversely impacted financially in any explicit way. The biggest impact was on my interest in macro-economics. Anyone with a curious nature surely had to ask how it was that the architects of the biggest economic meltdown of our generation would be bailed out and average tax-payer pick up the tab. Some huge lessons there, not just about banking but about power and behavioural psychology (rational economic theory has gone out the window).
 
I don't think those lessons haven't been learned though which is why I am bullish about cryptocurrency as it can provide the paradigm shift we so badly need.

If you want a suggestion on when the next crisis will come, read this today. Have to laugh that one of the contributors is called Gary Shilling. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-14/next-financial-collapse-according-4-who-called-last-one

[magneto]

It was like 10 years when Lehman Brothers collapsed followed by a global and economic disaster. But we have to thank that this event has happened otherwise Satoshi wouldn't created Bitcoin in the first place. It was the catalyst for him to invent a P2P currency without any intermediary (usually banks), and to operate without any government's intervention, thus decentralization.

Personally though, I was affected by this event, was laid out after September 2008 and was out of job for about a month. I was caught by surprised because there's some assurance that we wouldn't be affected, but damn we are totally wrong.

How about you guys, you directly affected by it? Do you think that if Lehman was saved by US government, Satoshi wouldn't push to create bitcoin? Or it is inevitable? The man himself will release it with or without the financial meltdown in 2008?

Fortunately, I didn't really get affected by the event, but couple of my friends did (which seems to be common judging by the replies here). And I can recall pretty much that the news about the crisis was all that certain TV news stations played at the time.

Satoshi could have definitely released bitcoin as a response to this, but we honestly will never know. I personally think that he would have still developed and released bitcoin regardless of whether the GFC came or not.

But it's a warning for sure. The fiat economy is fragile in so many different ways, whether in the debt fueled property bubble, hyperinflation, or a range of other things. Holding bitcoin could prove to be a pretty useful hedge against these collapses/events in the future, imo.

[Kemarit]

I had a stable job at the time, but I remember the event clearly nonetheless.  There were a ton of banks around the US failing at the time or shortly thereafter IIRC.  Every day when I was browsing business news, I'd see a list of them.  I also recall in 2007 or so, a coworker of mine was getting into house-flipping.  I've never been into real estate myself, but it struck me as a weird thing to do at the time.  And wouldn't you know, that was right before the housing market collapsed into a big pile of nothing.

I consider my job during that time stable, been with the company with more that 4 years, job was good. Goldman&Sach was another case but if my memory serves me right, US government saved it from collapse averting what could have been the worst banking crisis ever.

Funny you should mention bitcoin's creation being right around that time.  I've had the same feeling about Satoshi creating it in response to the banking crisis, and though I can't imagine my theory is original, I don't remember ever reading about anyone else thinking this.  For a while there, the fear was that the whole banking system would collapse and there would be an absolute need for something like bitcoin to exist.  I've always thought Satoshi was actually some branch of the US government, but who knows.

My theory is that the crisis really pushed Satoshi to released bitcoin.

I also remember how bad the job market was in 2011-2012 when I was looking for another job.  It was brutal, and unemployment was at something like 10% per the government's data.  It was probably higher than that, too.  Glad that's over with.  The economy right now is pretty damn good.

Guess what, the same company who hire me in 2008 had to let us go in 2012. Damn, it was really brutal, I was out of the job again going from one job interview to another. For those who are still young at that time, you are very lucky because you haven't went through with this kind of events in our life.

[darthmaul]

I guess, that wa completely different story and what happened with the Satoshi's invention was completely different too. I mean how can we relate both things? Imagine, if Satoshi have published the existence of the bitcoin and blockchain by 2009 then before that he might have done many trial and errors. He may never have though about the Lehman because he did it for himself, with his own clear visions about the decentralised system. I might have started the blockchain programming few years ago and before he could even publish it to the final protocol.

[1Referee]

Goldman&Sach was another case but if my memory serves me right, US government saved it from collapse averting what could have been the worst banking crisis ever.

It wasn't just the US government that saved Goldman Sachs from imploding, but also Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway with a $5 billion emergency loan.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press-releases/archived/2008/berkshire-hathaway-invest.html

Interesting is the fact that while it's usually the bank charging ridiculous amounts of interest, it was Warren Buffett that got the bank to cough it all up. Years later, the loan has been paid back in full with interest, Goldman Sachs is yet again the old Wall Street bully. I'm pretty certain that this whole situation will repeat itself somewhere in the forthcoming years.

If that isn't enough, Warren Buffett also made like $12 billion in profit on Bank of America. People can say about him all they want, but he's a damn genius in this field.