Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? (Vitalik Buterin)

00:00:00.000 | So before we talk about the fundamental ideas behind Ethereum and cryptocurrency, perhaps

00:00:07.840 | it'd be nice to talk about the origin story of Bitcoin and the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto.

00:00:16.200 | You gave a talk that started with sort of asking the question, what did Satoshi Nakamoto

00:00:21.760 | actually invent?

00:00:23.960 | Maybe you could say who is Satoshi Nakamoto and what did he invent?

00:00:27.760 | Sure. So Satoshi Nakamoto is the name by which we know the person who originally came up

00:00:36.440 | with Bitcoin. So the reason why I say the name by which we know is that this is an anonymous

00:00:42.640 | fellow who has shown himself to us only over the Internet, just by first publishing the

00:00:51.160 | white paper for Bitcoin, then releasing the original source code for Bitcoin, and then

00:00:56.480 | talking to the very early Bitcoin community on Bitcoin forums and interacting with them

00:01:03.680 | and helping the project along for a couple of years.

00:01:07.320 | And then at some point in late 2010 to early 2011, he disappeared. So Bitcoin is a fairly

00:01:16.960 | unique project in how it has this kind of mythical, kind of quasi-godlike founder who

00:01:24.080 | just kind of popped in, did the thing, and then disappeared and we've somehow just never

00:01:29.720 | heard from him again.

00:01:30.800 | So in 2008, so the white paper was the first, do you know if the white paper was the first

00:01:36.040 | time the name would actually appear, Satoshi Nakamoto?

00:01:39.720 | I believe so.

00:01:41.440 | So how is it possible that the creator of such an impactful project remains anonymous?

00:01:49.280 | That's a tough question.

00:01:52.000 | There's no similarity to it in history of technology as far as I'm aware.

00:01:56.960 | So one possibility is that it's Hal Finney, because Hal Finney was also active in the

00:02:04.160 | Bitcoin community as Hal Finney in those two beginning years.

00:02:11.320 | Who is Hal Finney?

00:02:13.280 | He is one of the people in the early Cypherpunk community. He was a...

00:02:19.320 | So he was a computer scientist, just one of the first...

00:02:21.320 | Yeah, computer scientists, cryptographers, people interested in technology, internet

00:02:30.440 | freedom, like those kinds of topics.

00:02:32.240 | Is it correct that I read that he seemed to have been involved in either the earliest

00:02:36.760 | or the first transaction of Bitcoin?

00:02:39.760 | Yes, the first transaction of Bitcoin was between Satoshi and Hal Finney.

00:02:44.120 | Do you think he knew who Satoshi was?

00:02:46.200 | If he wasn't Satoshi, probably no.

00:02:49.080 | How is it possible to work so closely with people and nevertheless not know anything

00:02:54.600 | about their fundamental identity?

00:02:57.560 | Is this like a natural sort of characteristic of the internet?

00:03:01.240 | If we were to think about it, because you and I just met now, there's a depth of knowledge

00:03:09.840 | that we now have about each other that's physical.

00:03:13.400 | My vision system is able to recognize you.

00:03:15.960 | I can also verify your identity of uniqueness.

00:03:21.240 | It's very hard to fake you being you.

00:03:23.640 | So the internet has a fundamentally different quality to it, which is just fascinating.

00:03:29.240 | Can you maybe talk to that?

00:03:30.240 | This is definitely interesting.

00:03:32.640 | I definitely just know a lot of people just by their internet handles.

00:03:39.480 | To me, when I think of them, I see their internet handles.

00:03:43.520 | One of them has a profile picture as this face that's not quite human with a bunch of

00:03:50.240 | psychedelic colors in it.

00:03:52.320 | When I visualize him, I just visualize that.

00:03:55.080 | That, not an actual face.

00:03:58.640 | You are the creator of the second, well, at least currently the second most popular cryptocurrency,

00:04:04.240 | Ethereum.

00:04:05.240 | So on this topic, if we just stick on Satoshi Nakamoto for a little bit longer, you may

00:04:10.760 | be the most qualified person to speak to the psychology of this anonymity that we're talking

00:04:15.960 | about.

00:04:18.240 | Your identity is known.

00:04:19.240 | Yes.

00:04:20.240 | I've just verified it.

00:04:21.480 | But from your perspective, what are the benefits in creating a cryptocurrency and then remaining

00:04:28.280 | anonymous?

00:04:29.280 | If we can psychoanalyze Satoshi Nakamoto, is there something interesting there?

00:04:34.880 | Or is it just a peculiar quirk of him?

00:04:38.080 | It definitely helps create this image of this neutral thing that doesn't belong to anyone.

00:04:47.480 | You created a project and because you're anonymous and because you also disappear or as unfortunately

00:04:55.920 | happened to help any, if that is him, he ended up dying of Lou Gehrig's disease and he's

00:05:00.800 | in a cryogenic freezer now.

00:05:03.200 | But if you pop in and you created and you're gone and all that's remaining of that whole

00:05:13.520 | process is the thing itself, then no one can go and try to interpret any of your other

00:05:21.640 | behavior and try to understand like, oh, this person wrote this thing in some essay at age

00:05:30.920 | 16 where he expressed particular opinions about democracy.

00:05:34.560 | And so because of that, this project is a statement that's trying to do this specific

00:05:39.000 | thing.

00:05:40.000 | Instead, it creates this environment where the thing is what you make of it.

00:05:48.360 | It doesn't have the burden of your other ideas, political thought and so on.

00:05:53.720 | So now that we're sitting with you, do you feel the burden of being kind of the face

00:06:00.840 | of Ethereum?

00:06:01.840 | I mean, there's a very large community of developers, but nevertheless, is there like

00:06:07.560 | a burden associated with that?

00:06:09.920 | There definitely is.

00:06:11.200 | This is definitely a big reason why I've been trying to kind of push for the Ethereum ecosystem

00:06:17.960 | to become more decentralized in many ways.

00:06:21.280 | Just encouraging a lot of kind of core Ethereum work to happen outside of the Ethereum foundation

00:06:26.520 | and of expanding the number of people that are making different kinds of decisions, having

00:06:31.720 | multiple software limitations instead of one and all of these things.

00:06:36.360 | There's a lot of things that I've tried to do to remove myself as a single point of failure

00:06:43.160 | because that is something that a lot of people criticize me for.

00:06:49.560 | So if you look at the most fundamentally successful open source projects, it seems that it's

00:06:56.120 | like a sad reality when I think about it.

00:06:59.560 | It seems to be that one person is a crucial contributor often, if you look at Linus for

00:07:07.480 | Linux, for the kernel.

00:07:09.480 | That is possible.

00:07:10.480 | I'm definitely not planning to disappear.

00:07:14.360 | That's an interesting tension that projects like this kind of desire a single entity and

00:07:22.040 | yet they're fundamentally distributed.

00:07:26.440 | I don't know if there's something interesting to say about that kind of structure and thinking

00:07:30.600 | about the future of cryptocurrency.

00:07:32.720 | Does there need to be a leader?

00:07:35.280 | There's different kinds of leaders.

00:07:38.440 | There's dictators who control all the money.

00:07:40.560 | There's people who control organizations.

00:07:42.760 | There's high priests that just have themselves and their Twitter followers.

00:07:48.200 | What kind of leader are you, would you say?

00:07:51.360 | These days, I'm actually a bit more in the high priest direction than before.

00:08:00.360 | I definitely actually don't do all that much of going around and ordering Ethereum Foundation

00:08:06.080 | people to do things because I think those things are important.

00:08:10.360 | If there's something that I do think is important, I do just usually say it publicly or just

00:08:16.280 | say it to people.

00:08:19.080 | Quite often, projects just start doing it.

00:08:22.000 | That's it.

00:08:27.000 | Thank you.

00:08:32.000 | Thank you.

00:08:37.000 | Thank you.

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