Freedom. One single word that reverberates every time I hear bitcoin and block chain just like the millions of you. At last, I felt, we have a piece of technology that will truly unshackle individuals from any form for centralized control and liberate our financial lives to pursue our own self interests without paying cuts to intermediaries and monopolies. However, Seldom does truth manifest itself as black and white. The more I think about Satoshi Nakamoto, his brainchild bitcoin and it's profound success the more layers of grey emerges. And the more I travel down this path trying to establish any correlation at all between all things bitcoin and anonymity of Satoshi the layers unfortunately turn from grey to stark black.
The reason is because of the timeless adage - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And nobody has ever known what anonymous absolute power can do. This unknown is what urged me to write this appeal to Mr.Satoshi and by the way my first ever public write up.
Assuming satoshi owns 1 million bitcoins, his networth today is 2.5 billion USD roughly. If I am optimistic like every other investor his networth will be 10 Billion in another few years and probably 1 trillion if our optimism turns out to work for another couple of decades. What is Satoshi's vision with that amount of money. Will he buy countries, will he donate to charity, will he donate to melinda-gates foundation to further research on pressing epidemics in third world. Or who will inherit this wealth after him and what will they do with this kind of money.
On the other end of the spectrum, will he unload all this wealth into rogue nations, will he fund conflicts. Even if we know who satoshi is and where he lives and what his philosophy is now, we have no tools that can drill into the depths of human mind to really understand what this much amount of financial power can do to a person's psyche.
Or is this all some kind of lengthy, extended, prolonged social experiment unleashed on poor common hard working honest unthinking masses who have invested their hard earned money out of real economy into this philosophy based on decentralization, trust and anonymity.
Perhaps its none of my/our business. Make no mistake folks - one teeny tiny subatomic scale wrong decision that you make when you possess that much wealth will send out waves of unprecedented human suffering - especially in lower strata of social chain.
I am not questioning the fundamentals on which bitcoin technology was found upon. It's just when it ultimately comes to philosophy, vision and real people we all should choose real people with flesh and blood rather than the philosophy and vision which were originally conceived to benefit the real people to begin with. Anonymity might be one of the corner stones in the entire vision of bitcoin. However, is it right to stretch this vision endlessly. Shouldn't the level Anonymity be inversely proportional to the quantum of power a person accumulates over a period of time - in this specific case monetary power.
Unraveling Satoshi's true intent behind anonymity is just one side of the coin and is not an something that has to be imminent. Anybody who is an investor and/or bitcoin enthusiast would recognize and acknowledge that there is a clearly a discernible lack of leadership in the bitcoin community. It is plagued with factionalism and sectarianism driven by their own vested interests. It is more than a moral obligation to come forward and provide a clear leadership and direction to the community which would directly and quickly quell any speculations of demise of bitcoin ecosystem but would also instill sense a credibility to bitcoin not only within the community but universally for the long run.
In the absence of this it would not be a overstatement to claim bitcoin will become a self-fulfilling prophecy imploding under the weight of its own dynamics. Lets hope "Mr.Satoshi" will do the right thing for the bitcoin and Block chain.
Vikram Selvakumar
Beliver in freedom, decentralization, blockchain, technology, computer science and all things good for mankind.