If Satoshi saw today’s Bitcoin, would he call it a failure?

[retreat]

-snip-

So the question is, do you think Satoshi would be happy with where Bitcoin is now? yes, it’s valuable, but the original goal doesn’t seem fully achieved.

Why isn't he proud of what Bitcoin has achieved? Is it just because more people are making transactions through centralized platforms that it makes him unhappy? Isn't that the inevitable result of mass adoption, where a technology like Bitcoin begins to be widely accepted? It is only natural that the approach to its use becomes more diverse. Moreover, Bitcoin is still decentralized, and there are still enough people who engage in P2P transactions, so the spirit of Satoshi remains relevant to this day. Unless the use of Bitcoin changes completely and the network becomes controlled by a single party, only then would it be reasonable for him to be disappointed with what Bitcoin has become.

[Ndabagi01]

Satoshi’s vision was peer-to-peer transactions, yet most of today’s activity goes through centralized platforms.

So the question is, do you think Satoshi would be happy with where Bitcoin is now? yes, it’s valuable, but the original goal doesn’t seem fully achieved.

Satoshi’s primary aim for Bitcoin may not have been achieved yet, but we have actually been able to see development in the bitcoin market and the whole of the cryptocurrency space. It is not easy to beat a centralized government with something decentralised and that is the only reason why bitcoin is yet to achieve its purpose today, even though it has shown rapid growth and development so far since its inception. I won’t say he wouldn’t be happy because the wide spread adoption is happening, the bitcoin blockchain itself is still very decentralised and transactions are traceable but irreversible after being approved by the blockchain.

The primary aim may still be lingering and not achievable now, but one of its feature has made it a dependable asset to invest into even if you’re not being a decentralised person, there is still room to benefit from venturing into bitcoin. I can’t say to how length the primary aim of bitcoin can be achieved for now, but he would be happy that there is still progress regardless of how far it has came.

[Alone055]

I think it depends from person to person, and the reason why most of the assets, especially Bitcoin, go through centralized channels even when they are being transacted from one person to another, the transcations will usually have traces of someone's identity, is that most people don't care about their privacy or care about anonymity, probably because they are in a habbit of providing every personal detail to every service provider they've used their whole lives because we have been living in a world where we wouldn't even be able to have an account without necessary paperwork and providing a bunch of data about ourselves.

However, the purpose for which Satoshi created Bitcoin is still alive, and it's there, available for everyone to use, but only if someone wants to use it in the proper way, by not mixing decentralization with centralization like most people do it these days, I do it as well, and I'm guilty for that, but the point is, that if Satoshi was to come and see the state right now, he wouldn't say that Bitcoin failed, because Bitcoin can still serve the same purpose, only if people use it that way.

[d5000]

Just for the records: If Hal Finney was Satoshi (and many think so) - Finney was predicting and appearantly not opposed to Bitcoin banks, i.e. platforms which would issue their own currency backed by BItcoin. He believed that this would be the final fate of BTC and the solution for the scaling problem.

Basically all centralized platforms we know today -- CEXes, centralized wallets, ETFs, payment processors -- are very similar to Finney's Bitcoin bank concept. While they don't issue a "currency" (that would be an altcoin), they issue IOUs which may or not be 100% backed by Bitcoin.

AFAIK the Satoshi account on Bitcointalk hasn't participated in the discussion after Hal Finney's post about that concept, this was in late 2010 and Satoshi had already become less active.

[YOSHIE]

If Satoshi saw today’s Bitcoin, would he call it a failure?

The history of Bitcoin I think is almost the same as the history of the AK 47 weapons creator, where Avtomat Kalashnikova created AK 47 for the war to defend his country of Russia over the Soviet, Because the weapons he created wrongly used to kill so that Avtomat Kalashnikova regretted, but not failure, but the upper regret was used.

Likewise with Satoshi he created Bitcoin for the peer-to-peer payment system because of the monetary crisis, the aim is to make it easier for people to transact with the device so that the community plays its own role decentralized without a third party, but because Bitcoin has been used as trade, investment, mining and so on, no longer as Satoshi's will, But if Satoshi sees it is not a failure, but regret because the wrong use is no longer the goal of peer-to-peer, But used to adopt large amounts, so Bitcoin will be difficult to use again by ordinary users the destination of peer-to-peer is due to expensive prices.

[MainIbem]

The history of Bitcoin I think is almost the same as the history of the AK 47 weapons creator, where Avtomat Kalashnikova created AK 47 for the war to defend his country of Russia over the Soviet, Because the weapons he created wrongly used to kill so that Avtomat Kalashnikova regretted, but not failure, but the upper regret was used.

Likewise with Satoshi he created Bitcoin for the peer-to-peer payment system because of the monetary crisis, the aim is to make it easier for people to transact with the device so that the community plays its own role decentralized without a third party, but because Bitcoin has been used as trade, investment, mining and so on, no longer as Satoshi's will, But if Satoshi sees it is not a failure, but regret because the wrong use is no longer the goal of peer-to-peer, But used to adopt large amounts, so Bitcoin will be difficult to use again by ordinary users the destination of peer-to-peer is due to expensive prices.

Very true, although some aim wasn't achieved or haven't been achieved yet but we can't shy away from the fact that Bitcoin is still decentralized even though there are some centralized exchanges and other platforms that operates with it, Bitcoin can't be controlled by any entity and it's blockchain still remains the safest out there, I've never heard that it's been hacked or anything of such like that of other inferior coins. I don't really think that Satoshi would regret, it might not achieve some aims such it's gained value over the years and can still be used as a mode of transaction even though it's not a legal tender across the globe, atleast even ordinary users can still use it as a store of value.

[Agbamoni]

In this life, whatever you create or develop, you can’t eradicate bad actors. I doubt if Satoshi would not even think about this way, because money embezzlement did not start in the era of Bitcoin, neither do scams. So, no one is going to be happy that what they created for another purpose is being used for evil, but the good thing is it’s serving the purpose to which it was developed.

This is exactly what I was saying. In every system there will always be good and bad users. AI was meant to help man in so many ways but just imagine the evil people use it for. Does that mean, we should eradicate good technologies? Never!

Honestly, we do not know how Satoshi will feel at this moment, but one thing for sure is, he feels accomplished. What Bitcoin is doing over the years no digital asset has ever done that.

[Ivystar5]

The problem is not that bitcoin isn't serving its purpose, Satoshi would even understand that the invention has really gone far and still has it's core purpose but the system challenges the freedom that it was supposed to have which is a good reason why love those in this forum who still prioritise privacy and other form of freedom.

However, I just noticed that a good percentage of people in the US only invested in tick because there was introductipn of ETFs, and I see it to be a problem of management, no body wants to be in charge of their money or assets, they always want to lay off the blame on themselves to someone else in ase something happens. You can also see that they want where they can be compensated for lossing their freedom and what they people want is what they get.

They system has been design a long time ago that says people won't get away from centralisation but only a few would challenge the idea and those who would challenge it are those of use who embraced the core tents of bitcoin.

[Samlucky O]

So the question is, do you think Satoshi would be happy with where Bitcoin is now? yes, it’s valuable, but the original goal doesn’t seem fully achieved.

Although Satoshi may not be happy because his goal was not fully achieved which is the use of centralized exchange Instead of pear to pear. But however the both are still in use and it's also important. Every part of the system works together for good or for the success of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin was only transacted using pear to pear from decentralized or non custodial wallet to non custodial wallet, it wouldn't have been good because it may not have been popular as it is now. For Bitcoin to be wildly accepted it need a little touch of centralized nature to be trusted, otherwise it will pose a very high risk . The CEX has helped or made it possible for people to exchange their coins to fiat with one click and not becoming difficult to trade. Emagine on p2p exchange people try to scam their fellow, even knowing that they did kyc and their information can be used to locate them and they still keep doing, how would it be when we completely rely on pear to pear transaction, of course scam will increase expecialy when some have received their coin they may not pay in fiat and there may be no intermediary to confirm is such thing happen or not. So cex is important for the ecosystem to go smoothly. Trading is one thing that keeps making the market volatile and if there where no such thing as CEX then it will surely be hard .

[bbc.reporter]

We’ve always said, especially us early adopters, that Bitcoin is decentralized money meant to cut out third parties, to give us a way to move funds freely without the government watching or banks handling every transaction. But looking at the situation now, yeah, Bitcoin has grown fast and become really valuable…

I don’t have exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure most Bitcoin is sitting in centralized exchanges or ETFs, basically the new Wall Street. And the one thing we all hated before, KYC it’s everywhere now, not just in exchanges but even on gambling sites.

Satoshi’s vision was peer-to-peer transactions, yet most of today’s activity goes through centralized platforms.

So the question is, do you think Satoshi would be happy with where Bitcoin is now? yes, it’s valuable, but the original goal doesn’t seem fully achieved.

I reckon if Satoshi saw bitcoin today, he would call it as a failure as a peer to peer cash electronic cash system and he would blame himself because this is caused by the monetary policy that he designed and created for bitcoin.

Bitcoin's monetary policy encourages hoarding and this will create an ecosystem where the people who are early will have influence on the bitcoin economy. In any case, everyone should read Grin's monetary policy and how it was created to correct bitcoin's monetary policy. I am also not suggesting that everyone should invest in Grin. I am only sharing information that the failure of bitcoin as peer to peer electronic is also caused by the monetary policy.



Source https://docs.grin.mw/wiki/extra-documents/monetary-policy/

[OgNasty]

I think Satoshi would be very impressed by some things and very disappointed by others. The sheer size of the mining network would probably be a shock for him to see. The adoption and price would likely be pretty impressive to him as well. I think he would be disappointed by the lack of peer to peer usage, lack of a better alternative to the blocksize limit, and failure to use merged mining to secure new use case on other blockchains (NFT chain, DNS chain, privacy chain, corporate chains, reward chains, etc).

[CryptoBuds]

We are not him, so there is no way of knowing how he feels about what bitcoin has achieved today. However, based on the white paper and its original purpose, he created Bitcoin to be used as a peer-to-peer currency, helping us reduce our dependence on or escape from the centralized monetary system. Obviously that purpose has almost completely failed because not only is bitcoin not used as a currency, and the majority of bitcoins are held by centralized platforms. If he still sticks to his original stance on bitcoin, how can he be happy with what is happening?

Don't be surprised that most people think that Satoshi is very happy and satisfied with what bitcoin has achieved. Because they are just giving their opinion based on their own feelings as an investor, not as a bitcoin developer with the aim of making it a currency.

[dezoel]

Absolutely not. He would be going mad happy if he saw that everyone around the world has access to his creation and hundreds of millions (maybe more than a billion by now?) people uses it or used it at one time. I bet you that when he first created it, he had no idea that it would become this big, I am sure that we would have seen him change some stuff, it would be different. Why would he not expect his project to be this big?

Because when he created it, he just made it like a thesis, like some academic research, him and many others were trying to figure out bitcoin basically, and he kept on improving it for a while too. The reality is, reaching trillions of dollars market cap was something he couldn't even dream.

[CryptoYar]

Satoshi Nakamoto original idea was decentralized money system without banks or governments but today most Bitcoin is held on big exchanges and in ETFs and KYC are everywhere. This shift away from peer to peer use happened because Bitcoin needed to work with traditional financial system to become valuable and widely accepted.

So Bitcoin huge success and value might make Satoshi proud move towards centralization and away from its original goal is big debate which conflict between Bitcoin originality and what it has become.

[Hewlet]

So the question is, do you think Satoshi would be happy with where Bitcoin is now? yes, it’s valuable, but the original goal doesn’t seem fully achieved.

life is never static so one thing that every great inventor must certain come to terms with is the realization that overtime, things is going to change that will affect his invention a certain way and cause it to change in some aspect positively and some aspect might equally change negatively. questions like, did satoshi see bitcoin getting above $110k within this span of time? did he see bitcoin touching all the part of the world and major world leaders considering it so soon? he might think that bitcoin will go far but not to this extent. the summery is that bitcoin has grown and with the extent of it adoption, the regulation we are seeing is to an extent something that will certainly happen. even with the use of centralized exchange instead of direct p2p, bitcoin is far from failure.

[henry_of_skalitz]

Satoshi Nakamoto original idea was decentralized money system without banks or governments but today most Bitcoin is held on big exchanges and in ETFs and KYC are everywhere. This shift away from peer to peer use happened because Bitcoin needed to work with traditional financial system to become valuable and widely accepted.

So Bitcoin huge success and value might make Satoshi proud move towards centralization and away from its original goal is big debate which conflict between Bitcoin originality and what it has become.

I wouldn't say it - needed - to comply to become big as it is now.

More so that it happened on the get-go due to BTC's own nature, and everybody can get into it, centralized or not

[₿itcoin]

What would you call a success? Thousands of independent nodes? Tens of thousands of users? Many on this forum alone, who, hopefully (I don't want to be cynical here) still use it peer to peer? I know I'm still sending and receiving to my peers. I know I still trade P2P with the same circle of people I've known for years, and the ocassional new one also introduced by a vague but certain network of trust.

BTC road has changed from Satoshi's P2P view. Now less than 15% of all the Bitcoin is put on exchanges this indicates that almost all bitcoin is in independent custody or a corporate custody that clients rely on , not in traditional systems.

This tells us two things first that the peak volatility has decreased when clients possess their own keys, and HODL continues off-exchange.

Although KYC has expanded, the increasing of the Lightning ecosystem, personal nodes , and peer to peer layer-2 tools such as Lightning are the cause that the decentralized structure still flourishes on the quiet ,even if trading is done on a high level Stock exchange platform.

[mindrust]

I don’t think he would call it a failure. Btc probably hasn’t become something he originally planned but he wouldn’t see it a failure. He would call it evolution. If it was possible to use btc the same way we use credit cards, we would be doing it already but the current limitations don’t allow us. Yes the devs could remove those limitations and added more block space to allow more transactions but then btc wouldn’t stay decentralized which is the core feature of bitcoin. If btc loses its decentralized aspect then it doesn’t matter whether it does 1000 tx per second or 1 trillion tps. That’s why we are at where we are now. Satoshi would understand the logic behind the decision that kept the block size small better than anyone. We don’t know for sure as we can only speculate on this but maybe he would even come up with a completely new and different project.

[Natalim]

I’m quite confident to say that with what we are seeing bitcoin today, Satoshi is still very happy about it. Bitcoin has already been embraced by the people, and some are already using it as their own bank, so with that achievement, Satoshi must also be proud of what bitcoin has become.

And even though centralized exchanges are also making a trend, that don’t lose the fact that bitcoin is still decentralized in nature. Yes, bitcoin is flexible enough, that’s why no matter how many attacks it had to go through, and with all those centralized exchanges trying to rule over decentralized ones, bitcoin hasn’t fallen into the trap, and remains decentralized no matter what.

[snipie]

Yes, Satoshi will be very happy because bitcoin still maintain being decentralized, just that people are the ones that like to use the centralized platforms for it.

He will be happy certainly because Bitcoin is a success story. Otherwise he would definitely apply few some updates to fix some issues.
Well these issues are debatable, mining is one of them since it is centralised as hell. Basically few companies if we can call them, are dominating the sector and doing whatever they want there.
The other issue that the OP mentioned is hard to fix honestly. It is in our genes..