Bitcoin Whitepaper says "We"

[ImThour]

By we, does he mention each and everyone of us or the group he was working on with to make Bitcoin?
I see he have mentioned "we" 20 times in the whitepaper. Just putting a screenshot of conclusion, page 8 of Bitcoin Whitepaper.


Source: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

 

[1714953691]

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[Dave1]

Perhaps Satoshi might be referring to the cyber punk communities, specially Wei Dai's "b-money", and Adam Back "Hash Cash". He had this two in his references and others as well.

Cyberphunks manifesto:

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.

[tbct_mt2]

The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is unknow. It can be a he, she, a group of people like Cyperpunk, a company, a governmental agency, whatever.

I think we don't have to find real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto because after 13 years and Bitcoin has grown good enough without the engagement of Satoshi since 2010. It will grow more very well without any engagement of Satoshi because it was designed to be decentralized from protocol design to network hashrate.

[Bttzed03]

By we, does he mention each and everyone of us or the group he was working on with to make Bitcoin?

It's probably the group he's working with.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I am not surprised that at this point we are thinking about this mysterious character Satoshi: if it was one person, if there were many...

The "we" proves nothing:

He can be simply using the Majestic Plural.

As far as I can see, in English it is not so common, but in other languages it is very common to use it, for example in academic articles, and we do not even know if Satoshi's native language was English.

[noorman0]

In our language style, in the country of Indonesia. The word "we" has almost become a standard word as a pronoun for "I" because it is used in writing official letters or proposals which is considered more polite, even though it does not mean representing a group or company. Maybe satoshi is from a country that is also used to using this pronoun or maybe he's actually from Indonesia. LOL

[teosanru]

By we, does he mention each and everyone of us or the group he was working on with to make Bitcoin?
I see he have mentioned "we" 20 times in the whitepaper. Just putting a screenshot of conclusion, page 8 of Bitcoin Whitepaper.


Source: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

 

We can have any meaning. We can refer to the community that he was expecting to get attached with Cryptocurrencies or we could be nothing but a sort of self but an adjective being used for self majesty. It's hard too guess the meaning of this we. Definitely one possibility could be that it's referring to set of people involved in the project. But to be honest I am in the set of group which think that it was definitely more than one person because this isn't really a task for one single person.

[Darker45]

If I wrote a paper myself, even if I made use of different resources, I would still have used the pronoun I. I would still have used I even if I consulted people every step of the way before reaching to my conclusion. Perhaps I would still use the singular first person subject pronoun even if there are others who share the same view with me, if only to emphasize that I don't represent them, that I'm not writing on their behalf, or that I'm not assuming that they're completely with me.

It's indeed interesting that Satoshi didn't use the pronoun I. Even in the introduction itself, Satoshi preferred to write, "In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using..." even if what followed is an idea coming from himself.

[coinsrider]

Perhaps Satoshi might be referring to the cyber punk communities, specially Wei Dai's "b-money", and Adam Back "Hash Cash". He had this two in his references and others as well.

Cyberphunks manifesto:

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.

Yes its possible, also given the fact that he also holds a lot of coins its unsure who all has it now from him, may be they are together called as satoshi nakomoto..?

[pooya87]

I think you are reading too much into this, "We" is the term that is commonly used in papers to refer to self. It doesn't necessarily have to be a group of people. Of course English is my second language but from hundreds of scientific papers that I've read, I don't remember ever seeing someone use "I".

[Wind_FURY]

Perhaps Satoshi might be referring to the cyber punk communities, specially Wei Dai's "b-money", and Adam Back "Hash Cash". He had this two in his references and others as well.

Cyberphunks manifesto:

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.

Satoshi made extra careful moves to hide his true identity. The use of "we" is a redirection to hide the fact that he might truly be just one person. I actually believe Satoshi was Hal Finney, who posted back and forth in the forum with himself using two accounts, Satoshi and Hal, just to hide that he was actually Hal Finney.

[Kemarit]

Probably just another way for him to hide his identify. Even in his post in this forum, he often misled his readers by the time he logs on this community, sometimes Satoshi will use American and then British English. So we shouldn't take this literally, even in some well written article throughout history, you can find similar pattern from the authors.

[mindrust]

Let the conspiracies flow.

Satoshi isn't a man. It is an idea. An organisation made of thousands of people. They can see you but you can't see them because satoshi is everywhere and also satoshi don't exist.

Satoshi serves your food, cleans your hotel room, drives you to the airport.

You just don't mess with these guys because you'll never know if there is a satoshi among them.

[NeuroticFish]

By we, does he mention each and everyone of us or the group he was working on with to make Bitcoin?

Possibly, but not necessarily.
"We" gives more power to a documentation. Sometimes I use it myself, even if maybe I worked all alone on that project.
Plus: it can be related to the fact he did ask around in the community for information and he wanted to give some credit to that.
Again, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Sorry to disappoint you.


LE: As Hero member I was expecting that you already know that this kind of research was done 1000s of times with no clear result, so you're simply wasting your time.

[abel1337]

"We" might be pertaining to something but we can't deny that using "We" could be describe a group, an organization or multiple number of persons on the bitcoin project.

It's been how many years now that we are trying to decipher who Satoshi Nakamoto are. Every clues we find are validated and discussed but we are very far from knowing who is Satoshi Nakamoto. I think it would be good if we just wait for a miracle that Satoshi Nakamoto open his account again. I'm sure it will be grand!

[franky1]

logic, common sense and alot of looking into by lots of people come to this conclusion:

satoshi was one person...
no one else used his pseudonym

but he did talk to and get idea's from other people and get different aspects of features from different sources.

he simply was the magician, and smart guy that pieced it all together. he made the decisions of which cryptography, what numbers, how many bytes, etc.. and pieced it into a form none of the other cypherpunks or economists or anyone previously in time could have thought of.

he was writing the white paper towards a community of cypherpunks. which he felt part of. so like most communities when talking with them he would write we

[Leviathan.007]

There are already many topics and articles about Satoshi's real identity, and we don't know which is correct. Even on bitcoin as you said they wrote 'we' which means maybe Satoshi is a group of because or an organization where they don't want to reveal their actual identity but that's just theory and we don't know if it's correct or not because we know bitcoin always getting developed buy some people and not only one person and when we talk about getting developed buy many people that's normal to say 'We' in the whitepaper even if Satoshi is only one person.

[dragonvslinux]

Perhaps Satoshi might be referring to the cyber punk communities, specially Wei Dai's "b-money", and Adam Back "Hash Cash". He had this two in his references and others as well.

Cyberphunks manifesto:

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

I agree with this theory. As well as the use of language so as to avoid taking all the credit for such a technological advance. It's similar to the use of the "royal we" in English to some respect. I wouldn't look into that much really. After all it would sound strange reading the whitepaper, based on a decentralised protocol, whereby someone describes it with "I", as it requires numerous participants to succeed.

[darkv0rt3x]

I may agree with Satoshi being one person, but who created Bitcoin and the whole system, I don't believe it was a single person. I believe it was a group of persons and one of them was Satoshi. My reasoning is that, I don't believe, even if you were one of the brightest persons on earth, that you could alone create the system he/they created knowing that you needed to be an expert and excel in quite a few areas of knowledge! And those areas are themselves quite extent in the sense that they cover too many aspects for someone alone to be able to excel at them all. I 'm referring for example to finance, economics, computer science, math, cryptography, computer programming and I'm sure those are only a few of them! So, this said, the "We" could very well be the group of persons Satoshi was working with to create Bitcoin!

[Lucius]

Perhaps Satoshi might be referring to the cyber punk communities, specially Wei Dai's "b-money", and Adam Back "Hash Cash". He had this two in his references and others as well.

I am of the opinion that maybe this is exactly the reason (in addition to the other mentioned things) that Satoshi used "we" in the whitepaper, because it is known that he drew his ideas precisely from the works of some other people who, in some way, long before him had ideas about to what he finally implemented.

In addition, considering that Satoshi was a man who was aware that he could not do it alone, I believe that in this way he wanted to repay those with whom he cooperated after Bitcoin came to life. Therefore, he never wanted that project to be something that would be associated exclusively with one name, he knew that Bitcoin would never succeed and be what it is today.