ON THE BLOCK
precisely because it is out of the realm of government reach. Bitcoin lacks a central banking authority, which means it’s very much a pure play “peer to peer” kind of product. This gives it a mysterious, intangible kind of appeal. It’s like cash on the Internet... on steroids. But for how long can bitcoin’s ascent continue, given the regulatory environment in which we live? Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are, after all, a government’s worst nightmare because this is money that cannot be traced. Bitcoin lacks a central banking authority, which means it’s very much a pureplay “peer to peer” kind of product. This gives it a mysterious, intangible kind of appeal. It’s like cash on the Internet... on steroids.
done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military.” Newsweek was then contacted by the man’s lawyer who said he denied having any role in bitcoin. Then, in 2016, CNBC broke with the news story “Australian entrepreneur says he invented bitcoin.” Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright claimed he was the true Nakamoto... Although, no one really believed him either. There has been plenty of speculation that focuses on dozens of candidates but the identity of the creator is still unknown. That said, it doesn’t really matter who Nakamoto is... It’s what he, or she, or they have done that’s so important. They accomplished a mathematical feat through the creation of a new form of money. Bitcoin was officially born in 2009 and it utilizes the original blockchain database. Whoever the inventor, he succeeded in solving the “double-spending” problem for digital currency by using a peer-to- peer network. Double-spending is like counterfeiting... It’s a problem in which the same single digital token can be spent more than once. A cryptocurrency is a digital file that theoretically can be duplicated or falsified... unless one can rule out the double- spend issue. And this is exactly what was achieved with bitcoin. Or so we hope . Bitcoin recently plunged as word circulated of this potential “double-spend” issue. The day
MYSTERY DOESN’T EQUAL INVESTING CONFIDENCE
Bitcoin has a very mysterious backstory... It’s said to have been created anonymously by “Satoshi Nakamoto,” but no such person exists. In 2014, Newsweek magazine thought that it had found Satoshi, printing an article called, “The Face Behind Bitcoin.” I remember interviewing author Leah McGrath on my Bloomberg TV program at the time... She was convinced she had discovered the man behind bitcoin. He was a 64-year-old Japanese-American “who had
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February 2021
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