The anonymous founder of Bitcoin (BTC), Satoshi Nakamoto, shares his thoughts on Bitcoin and its securities in 2009. The recently released emails offer an interesting and unique insight into the way the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto is shaping the future of Bitcoin predicted.
Bitcoin vs Visa
The identity of the Bitcoin founder was never revealed. When emails from him suddenly appear, it is very interesting to see what the founder thought about his revolutionary technology at the time.
In the 120-page emails, the founder of Bitcoin writes to one of the first Bitcoin developers, Martti Malmi. The emails came to light after they were submitted as evidence in a lawsuit between the Crypto Open Patent Alliance and Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Nakamoto compares Bitcoin to the giant Visa. This credit card network recorded 15 million transactions per day in May 2009. Nakamoto believed that Bitcoin could do the same, but at a lower price.
He says: “Bitcoin can scale much larger than (Visa) using existing hardware at a fraction of the price. There are no borders.”
This perhaps absurd idea arises from Moore’s Law. This law predicts that hardware speed will increase tenfold every five years. Computer speed will increase so quickly that it should be able to handle the ever-growing Bitcoin market.
With the Internet, Visa has now grown significantly and there are 700 million transactions per day, compared to 400,000 Bitcoin transactions per day.
Ecological impact, privacy and security
Satoshi Nakamoto also comments on the environmental impact that Bitcoin could have. He already foresaw that a dilemma would arise between economic freedom and environmental aspects.
Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy because a lot of computer power has to be used to mine and therefore add a block to the blockchain. However, according to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s energy costs would fade into the background compared to traditional banks, which have to pay for much more physical infrastructure.
Nakamoto’s foresight is once again evident when he talks about privacy and Bitcoin’s shortcomings. He says that using Bitcoin addresses instead of IP addresses not only guarantees anonymity. He therefore suggests placing less emphasis on Bitcoin’s potential anonymity.
A key part of Bitcoin is that it becomes more secure as the network and underlying value grows. As long as the network is small, there will still be weaknesses.
Despite all these revelations, it remains unclear who exactly Satoshi Nakamoto is. That’s precisely why everything released now is so special: it’s a unique opportunity to see what the founder thought about Bitcoin before it became so big.