Newly released emails from Satoshi Nakamoto from as early as May 2009 show that the Bitcoin (BTC) creator has long been concerned about the debasement of fiat currencies by central banks.
The slew of emails was released by early Bitcoin contributor Martti Malmi who said that he wasn’t comfortable sharing his private correspondence with Satoshi but decided to do so after standing as a witness for a trial in the United Kingdom, possibly involving the self-proclaimed BTC creator Craig Wright.
In one email to Malmi, Satoshi highlights the biggest flaw of government-issued currencies like the US dollar.
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.”
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2021, the purchasing power of the US dollar decreased by about 20% since 2010 when accounting for inflation.
Satoshi also says that throughout history, people have always used assets that have a finite supply as money. He notes that people’s perceptions drive the value of a currency more than its use case.
“Historically, people have taken up scarce commodities as money, if necessary taking up whatever is at hand, such as shells or stones. Each has a kernel of usefulness that helped bootstrap the process, but the monetary value ends up being much more than the functional value alone.
Most of the value comes from the value that others place in it. Gold, for instance, is pretty, non-corrosive and easily malleable, but most of its value is clearly not from that. Brass is shiny and similar in color. The vast majority of gold sits unused in vaults, owned by governments that could care less about its prettiness.
Until now, no scarce commodity that can be traded over a communications channel without a trusted third party has been available. If there is a desire to take up a form of money that can be traded over the Internet without a TTP (trusted third party), then now that is possible.”
At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $51,636, up about 1,127,931% since the first Bitcoin to fiat transaction in 2009, which was done by Malmi himself.
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