The Breakdown - Why Satoshi Chose Halloween to Release the Bitcoin White Paper

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

One of the most powerful aspects of bitcoin is its mythology.  In this episode, NLW explores the 12th anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper and the choices that went into its release date.  Whether it was something to do with the Reformation or an allusion to the longstanding pagan tradition of Samhain, the one thing that’s clear is the choice adds all the more mystique to bitcoin’s incredible origins.

Bitcoin is this thing that exists and maybe it won't have the utility and the convenience of those currencies at the same way. But what it has is something that is so inescapably different in the fact of its censorship resistance and the fact of its permissionless nature and the fact that it is not controllable by the state in the same way as any of these other alternatives might be. It's fun to ask why we might have chosen or Satoshi might have chosen Halloween. I think it's just as fun though to think about just how far things have come since that happened since he's shared the Bitcoin white paper with that list serve in 2008. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com, nexo.io, and elliptic, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, October 30th, and today we're doing something fun. So first, let's talk a little bit of history. Twelve years ago on Halloween 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto sent an email that introduced the world, or more specifically, the cypherpunk mailing list, to the Bitcoin white paper,

and we all know what's gone on since then. We know how transformational that moment was. A slightly less transformational moment, but one that shares an anniversary with that was that last year on Halloween, I did a show about why Satoshi might have chosen Halloween as a time to release that white paper. Now, of course, this is all wild speculation, but there were a lot of great conversations around it last year, some that related to the Reformation, some that related to, well, you'll see. But when I was doing that, I wasn't actually recording the breakdown that you know

and now are listening to. I was doing the show that came first, which was actually done as a live stream every day at 3 p.m., then push to YouTube, and then push to podcast as well. I was experimenting with different formats, but one of the things that I thought at that time is that I really wanted to do it live. As I did that show, it was actually right before I kind of shut this down to start the breakdown more fully, and so not a lot of people heard it. And I went back and listened to it again, and I actually think it kind of holds up. So it's a little more raw. The audio quality isn't as good. There's a whole lot more ums because I'm well doing it live. But overall, I think it's a fun show and I think it's a really fun exploration. So I decided to share it with you as I recorded it last year and I hope

you enjoy it. Welcome back to another Crypto Daily 3 at 3. What's going on, guys? Happy Halloween. It is Thursday, October 31st, and it is getting spooky up in here. So today we're just doing a quick one. I wanted to do a fun little exploration. So for those who don't know, I was a history major. I've always been obsessed with history. I think for me, it's obvious that the past has a huge amount to tell us about what's happening and why it's happening and what might happen next. And I loved how history, at least theoretically, kind of avoided too much. much theory and trying to map events onto some explanatory idea versus just presenting them and letting you figure it out. And so in the spirit of things that happened in us trying to figure it out, I wanted to look at this interesting question, I think, which is why did Satoshi choose Halloween 2008 to be what has become known as Joe Wisenthal here says, White Paper Day? So 11 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto sent off the Bitcoin P-to-Pee-Cash paper to basically an email thread of interested parties.

And that really kicked off this whole thing and why we're all here. So today you've had a lot of folks celebrating White Paper Day. You have Joe here, like I said. You have Jameson Lop, who had this great Halvine meme from Fnip, who's an awesome graphic kind of meme on crypto Twitter. You've got Binance celebrating it on October 31st, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a Bitcoin white paper, happy anniversary, BTC. You've got Jake Schervinsky taking it to a different level, saying I will joyously celebrate the Bitcoin white paper on its 11th birthday today, but I will not worship it. Have you seen the news lately? This is no time for sacred text or divine profits.

We have too much work to do. And so, again, for me, the interesting question here is why Halloween, right? Satoshi Nakamoto, whatever person or collection of persons that embodied that pseudonym was or were very intentional, right? They made decisions very intentionally, right? And we saw it again with Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout in the Genesis block, right? These were calculated decisions. They were meant to be symbolic rather than random.

And I have a hard time personally believing that it just happened to be that day. So the question is, what was it? Well, let's look at a couple possible interpretations. One interpretation is about historical symbolism. So Leo Weiss, who is a bitcoiner who lives in Hong Kong, you might even actually know him better for his recent coverage of the Hong Kong protests than anything else. He wrote this piece basically reminding us that that was not the first time that political symbolism had been associated with October 31st.

That was, in fact, the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses onto the church door in Wittenberg. So this is what kicked off the Protestant Reformation. These these theseses were basically a rallying cry about how the church needed to change. And it would go on to have dramatic impact, right? It would start the Reformation, which was a hugely influential moment in history on a political level, on a spiritual level, on an economic level, just given how entwined the church economy was with major European economies. So this is a connection that Leo plays out here. He says, where Satoshi took offense with bank, bailout, central banking, and possibly the debt nature of money, Luther took offense with a different

kind of debt. He was outraged at the concept of plenary indulgences, where sinners would be able to reduce their time in purgatory through payments or unpaid work. Under Pope Clement the 6th, these indulgences were considered Treasury of the Church, essentially financing, keeping the lavish life style of the Vatican afloat with the sins of the believers. Theis 32, they will be condemned eternally together with their teachers who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon. Luther directly attacks the authority of the Pope starting a process of reformation that would, 100 years later, lead to Europe's most bloody conflict ever the 30-year war. Both Satoshi and Luther chose October 31st to announce their ideas to their respective audiences,

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confidence. The busiest compliance teams rely on Elliptic's rigorous blockchain monitoring solutions to scale up and save money. Protect your customers. Manage your risk. Scale your business. Visit elliptic.com slash coin desk to talk to a cryptocompliance expert today. That's elliptic.com slash coin desk. Okay, so one option. We have the possibility that Satoshi chose this for his historical analogy, right? There's a historical analogy to this seminal moment in the history of kind of European history, religious history, economic history, and the form of the Protestant Reformation. But then there's, what is the symbolism underneath? So Dan held explores why the 31st would be an important day in general, right? This is obviously Martin Luther in 1517 is not

celebrating Halloween with the Scream movies and Michael Myers and all that. It's obviously something difference. So Dan held here, he says, I believe that Satoshi published the Bitcoin white paper on 1031 as a hat tip to the ancient Gaelic festival of Sam Hain. The event marks the end of harvest season in the beginning of winter. Bitcoin marks the end of fiat and the beginning of a new monetary standard. So Sam Hain is actually super interesting. In Christianity, it's referred to as All Saints Day. All Saints Day was moved to co-opt and kind of embody that pagan holiday in the same way that Christmas was moved towards the winter or solstice. But this day, the thing that's so interesting about Sam Hain to me, and this is something I've

spent a lot of time with recently because my daughter actually was born at 2.14 on Sam Hain, on November 1st. So she started coming on Halloween and came in on Samhain or on All Saints Day, depending on what it is, across so many cultures throughout history, this is the day where the veil between this world and whatever other world there is, is the thinnest, right? So obviously we have Dia de los Mertos is another one that's on that same time. And if you look through kind of history of religious belief, this day of transition, of renewal, of beginnings and ends, and of this tiny, tiny, the thinnest fiber between worlds that's consistent. And so maybe that's part of it as well, right? So Leo kind of connected the dots in terms of death and rebirth. Dan

connects the dots in terms of the end of harvest, the beginning of winter. Maybe that's part of it, right? So it's not just Halloween as we know it, but the underpinning. So we have this idea on the one hand of historical analogy. We have this idea on the other hand of kind of the symbolism underneath that historical analogy. Then you have a comment which I thought is also pretty interesting on the same thread from Bitcoin music television that says Satoshi chose October 31st since it's the last day prior to voting on any U.S. major election. If Tuesday falls on the 1st of November, that is election day. Having paired with election years as well, elections affect the economy more than any other tradition. So maybe there's a motivation that has to do with the U.S. political

cycle. Ultimately, we don't know. And part of, I think, the reminder and what makes this such a fun thing to debate is that Satoshi, by being pseudo-anonymous, by removing him or herself from the proceedings of Bitcoin in the way that it's evolved for, you know, the last seven or eight years, has allowed mythology to take root in the system. And mythology is the way that things become cultural and enshrined and bigger than just a set of events, right? Part of what makes Bitcoin so fascinating is that founding mythology that is so, it's like an immaculate conception, right, as compared to everything that's come since. Now, we can debate a huge amount about that, but what I think is undebatable is that it is the most unique launch of an important project,

company, network, whatever you want to call it, in modern history. There is nothing like it. before, there's nothing like it since. It's hard to imagine how something like it could ever come again without just referencing the launch of Bitcoin. And so I think that that's kind of what makes it fun to go back and actually ask the question about why this person or persons might have chosen this specific day. But of course, at the same time, we can also, even if we don't know and we'll never know exactly, just celebrate how far it's come. So Crypto Scam Hub here says 11 years after the Bitcoin white paper, over 55,000 nodes, 96 countries. With a graphic, actually, that's from this report.

Coinbase did a great report. 11 years ago today, the Bitcoin White Paper was published forever-changing technology finance and our relationship with money. Here are 11 quantitative indicators around Bitcoin's continuous momentum and growing global utility read more. And it has great stuff. I highly recommend it. It's an awesome piece.

I think for me, you know, when we write the story of 2019, I believe that it'll be the year that we shifted from magic internet. money to the central, one of the central economic battles and political battles of our time, which is the battle for the future of digital currency and the battle to extend influence through currency. And you have emerging now in the wake of the Libra announcement, the U.S. and whatever it's going to do on the one hand, China on the other hand, and kind of is this weird third-party candidate that is uncontrollable, that is not affiliated with any of them, it's Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin is this thing that exists and maybe it won't have the utility and the convenience of

those currencies at the same way, but what it has is something that is so inescapably different in the fact of its censorship resistance and the fact of its permissionless nature, and the fact that it is not controllable by the state in the same way as any of these other alternatives might be. So I think 11 years in, it's fun to ask why we might have chosen or Satoshi might have chosen Halloween. I think it's just as fun, though, to think about just how far things have come since that happened, since he's shared the Bitcoin White Paper with that. that list serve in 2008. So there it is. What do you think? Convincing? Are you compelled? Do you think there was a greater purpose to why Satoji's shows Halloween? Or is it just fun fodder for a podcast?

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the show and I appreciate you listening. And until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.