After being one of the biggest cheerleaders of bitcoin for the last five years what I am about to say may shock some people. In fact, as I began to connect the dots, I shocked myself.
I have been a defender of bitcoin as being a product of the free market since nearly day one. My main line of reasoning was this: Bitcoin was such an innovation that there was no way that soulless robotic drones, of the like who often work for “intelligence” agencies, like the CIA, could have come up with it on their own.
I still lean towards that line of reasoning but evidence is beginning to come out that leads me to believe there may have been some involvement from “intelligence” agencies… or, at the very least, there certainly is now.
This epiphany came to me just this week when Gavin Andresen set the media world on fire after he posted an online message explaining that Craig Steven Wright was actually the founder of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Craig Wright?” I thought. The Aussie who sort-of said he was Satoshi Nakamoto late last year? And then received a quick response: Within hours the Australian police were combing through his house looking for taxable evidence. In fact, I had been wondering whatever happened to him.
Andresen emphatically endorsing the claim of Wright to be Satoshi was big news because no one has done much more to promote bitcoin than Andresen. Additionally, according to Andresen himself, Satoshi designated him as his heir, the man who was supposed to support bitcoin’s progress.
Andresen has been intimately involved in bitcoin via the Bitcoin Foundation and has been a relentless promoter of the technology. Meanwhile, Nakamoto “retired” from the fray and basically vanished. Until now. Suddenly Nakamoto has made a return as Wright.
Also, please note, Satoshi’s immense bitcoin wealth is supposedly tied up in a trust. If Wright is Satoshi, it’s perfectly possible he can leverage liquidity from a position of being asset-rich and cash poor.
That’s a damn good reason to let people know you’re Nakamoto, whether you are or not. That’s what has been pointed out in the past about Wright, because rumors have circulated around him for a while. He is supposedly prone to exaggeration and his personal claims about his background have not always seemed to be true.
One thing does seem obvious… A peripatetic career has seemingly featured contacts with top level executives and technologists in the industry. It’s perfectly possible that Wright is familiar with intelligence types. In fact, so is Andresen who has admitted to meeting with the CIA in order to “give a talk.”
It’s been speculated that Satoshi removed himself from bitcoin after Andresen informed him of the meeting. But that’s only one interpretation.
Another is that bitcoin was assembled by the CIA and other intel groups. Plenty of people have speculated that Satoshi Nakamoto was a group of people. Those who have analyzed Nakamoto’s online activities reportedly found they seemed to drop to little or nothing at night. He was sleeping when people in the United States sleep, in other words. If he was Japanese, as he claimed, then either he worked at night or had decided to live in the US.
Some of his notes reportedly use word like “bloody” and this is congruent with intelligence agency cooperation. British intel often works closely with US intel. Keep in mind I wrote the foreword to The Book Of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto so I have some experience in analyzing his past writing.
And, yes, the entire story about Nakamoto sounds “Hollywood-ish.” Anonymous, brilliant Japanese technologist writes a white paper, dumps it online and others begin to utilize its information simply because of the compelling brilliance of the argument. I’m not saying it didn’t happen that way, but usually you’d find a group surrounding an individual… and this group would promote the work from the beginning along with the individual. The tale involving Nakamoto is certainly a dramatic one.
Meanwhile, the CIA permeates the top levels of US technology, especially. The CIA even set up a technology fund to invest in startups. There is plenty of reason to believe that the CIA was instrumental in the success of both Google and Facebook. Thus there is no reason to pooh-pooh the idea that the CIA is involved behind the scenes in bitcoin.
It is perfectly possible, or not impossible, that both Andresen and Wright have CIA contacts and are in a sense cooperative – or more. That would make sense given what’s occurring, as there is suddenly a huge push to create a digital technology that has a resemblance to bitcoin.
This is how the powers-that-be like to work. They set up expectations in society for certain technologies. Usually they do so via movies. In this case, they may have created or at least allowed an electronic currency to survive and thrive with the knowledge that other “controlled” technologies would be unveiled to accompany or supersede it (such as the Bank of England’s RSCoin).
Keep in mind too that Andresen’s post was only the second piece of noteworthy news about electronic currencies within a few days time. At around the same time, the alternative media was featuring the “unveiling” of a digital cash system at a secret bankers’ meeting in New York.
As reported by Bloomberg, over 100 top bankers and Wall Street executives attended to observe how dollars could be converted to purely digital currency. The technology was provided by a company called “Chain.”
If that’s the case, it makes sense that Andresen would insist that Wright is Nakamoto, just as he has been. He and Wright presumably would work to cooperate with whatever it is that the banks and Chain are creating. Andresen in the past has been emphatic about the need for bitcoin to reach out to regulatory authorities, so such cooperation would not be surprising.
And this would explain why Wright came out when he did. The timing of his claim to be Nakamoto is congruent with the “secret” announcement of the new digital dollar currency.
The above is all speculation but it could certainly explain why Andresen is emphatic about Wright’s claim to be Nakamoto. And it also explains why Wright decided to stake his claim now, just as a digital bank currency is emerging. We’ll know more as these trends unfold. But one thing is for certain: There are many currents below the surface when it comes to bitcoin, and many unnamed influences.
Personally, I find these currents fascinating and do my best to follow them, though I don’t always write about them. But now I have because it’s time.
But let me be clear, even if the guys with black suits and sunglasses are involved at some level, none of this invalidates bitcoin. It is a game-changing technology.
Bitcoin could be compared to the internet. The internet can credit part of its creation to the same intelligence agencies. DARPA helped create the internet for its own uses… but very quickly the free market got a hold of it and has turned it into one of the biggest threats to elite world domination.
The same could be said for bitcoin. IF, and that is still definitely an if, bitcoin was spawned from intel agencies, it has very quickly been taken up by the free market for its own devices and now encompasses the biggest threat to central banks and government worldwide.
What the CIA intends to happen and what DOES happen are often two entirely different things. They are not foolproof. They make mistakes all the time. 9/11 was a perfect example when they either made a mistake or forgot to give a believable reason why World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed at free-fall speed for no physically-possible reason.
I am on the fence as to bitcoin’s mysterious beginnings, but here is the current reality: Bitcoin is open source software sitting on thousands of computers worldwide and likely cannot be stopped without turning off the internet.
That is powerful. And now, countless cryptocurrencies have been spawned that also have a life of their own and are uncontrollable. If there was, or currently is, some level of intelligence agency involvement in bitcoin it doesn’t change much at this point. Bitcoin on the other hand is changing the world. The genie is out of the bottle, much like the internet. I still hold and buy more bitcoin. So I put my money where my mouth is.
Jeff Berwick