Satoshi Stupidity (plus new products!) - Unqualified Opinions
the stablecoin index, messari boards, battling a true crypto cancer
Your daily snapshot from our OnChainFX markets dashboard.
Satoshi Stupidity
I’ve been on record saying that there’s a non-zero chance Craig Wright could be (part of) Satoshi. I’ve even written about it in my annual predictions posts as one of my favorite contrarian conspiracy theories.
The theory goes as follows: if you were Satoshi, there’s a good chance you’d be somewhat narcissistic and anti-social. So the fact Craig is about as cuddly as a cactus is not necessarily disqualifying. He also fooled some pretty smart people along the way, both vocal believers (e.g. Gavin Andresen, although he later walked that back) and more sober executives (all off-record of course). We also know objectively that Craig was very early into BTC. Regardless of whether he actually is Satoshi, based on the early bitcoin population alone, he’s in the first 1,000 real users almost for sure.
To be honest, I’ve not really cared whether CSW (or any other individual) is actually Satoshi, because bitcoin has been bigger than any one person for a while now.
We’re not sure which side of the big-block, small-block schism the real Satoshi would join, anyway, if he/she/they did emerge from the shadows.
It’s been a parlor game to opine on Satoshi’s identity because wrong answers are not falsifiable. I’ve also written about Jim McCoy being Satoshi, and thought about the usual suspects like Hal Finney, Adam Back, Nick Szabo, etc.
But “CSW is Satoshi” was a particularly fun pet conspiracy for me, and a complement to my other more thoughtful pieces, because a) it riled the right people up, b) I believe there’s a small probability I’m right, and c) most importantly, it wasn’t an endorsement of Craig Wright as a human being.
On the contrary, time and again, CSW has proven himself to be a complete piece of shit, and I (along with most everyone else it seems) am rooting for him and his ilk to be marginalized and ultimately forgotten in this industry.
What used to be a benign tumor and punch line, though, is a malignant beast that’s metastasized to threaten actual contributors to the community, perhaps most notably podcaster Peter McCormack, who deserves a Nobel prize in at least one category for this work of “GFY” art:
It’s one thing to be a sideshow, and (at least maybe) the mad scientist who invented bitcoin, but who later revealed himself to be a complete anti-hero.
It’s quite another thing to scare people offline, dox them, and abuse the legal system to silence critics, which is what it appears Craig and his chums started to do last week.
IMO, they should lose swiftly in court, pay damages for harassment, and his attorneys should be disbarred (or whatever the UK equivalent is) for enabling this type of farcical abuse of the legal system.
Because each lawsuit is absurd on its face.
If CSW is Satoshi, he’s sitting on ~$5 billion in assets. Good luck proving “financial harm.” If he’s not, the case would be thrown out, but only after great expense and great headache to his targets.
It’s a joke, and I treated it as such last week merely because I didn’t realize how permissive UK libel laws were to let a case like this potentially move forward. (For that, I apologize, and I quickly deleted the offending snarky Friday night tweets.)
The ultimate loser here, though, is undoubtedly Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (aka Bitcoin SV) and its base of supporters. The BSV daily chart can best be described as “uh oh” following the news Binance and ShapeShift will delist BSV on the grounds “Craig Wright is a fraud”, and the asset is a scam. (It’s down 12% and plummeting as I write.)
We’ve created a board that will help you track all of the delistings in real-time. Kraken is likely next.
The bad news is that we won’t know whether CSW is definitively not Satoshi, unless and until the real Satoshi does someday stand up.
Until then, we’ve got Stupid Satoshi finally getting his comeuppance for being a jerk.
Good.
Now…on to lighter more productive news!
Stablecoin Index
We are excited to announce that Stablecoin Index is now part of the Messari family. Originally created through the hard work of Myles Snider and Mike McDonald Stablecoin Index is a tool that provides price, volume, research, and resources for stablecoin projects.
We will continue to grow the site and add new features that help bring transparency to the emerging stablecoin space.
Messari Labs
Last week we gave our paying subscribers a sneak peek of our new Boards product on Messari Labs. We didn’t expect the word to get out so quickly, but it turns out that people loved building and sharing boards. Within less than 24 hours, we saw boards used (unprompted) in a conference presentation.
You can play around with the prototype, too.
Boards are the product of a couple months worth of tinkering (in the “Messari Labs” sandbox, so set your expectations accordingly!), and it’s a kernel we think could ultimately turn into the backbone for a new, modular, and fully customizable Messari as we roll out our account-based products in the coming quarters.
Create as many as you want and share them. Some examples:
What is bitcoin? What is Ethereum 2.0? Is Maker’s valuation nuts? Have we hit bottom? What’s up with IEOs?
Build and share away, and hit us up with feedback!
-TBI
P.S. Share. Subscribe. Spread the (rational) crypto love. Tweet at me or Messari for requests, feedback, comments, or questions.
Best of the Boards
This week we are switching things up and highlighting some of the best user generated boards from the past week. Build your own, tweet it, and tag us us for a chance to be featured next week!
!= your fathers internet - Yorke E. Rhodes III
This board was created for the Cornell Blockchain Conference (very cool presentation idea!) and it features milestones on the journey to the blockchain tipping point.
Long Reads Sunday Watchlist - @nlw
One of the first boards created was from Nathaniel Whittemore, publisher of Long Reads Sunday, as a way to keep track of potential additions to his summaries. Want an inside look into his process? Look no further.
Enterprise Blockchains - Biser Dimitrov
Finally we have an enterprise blockchain focused board with important twitter accounts and medium posts to help you follow the space.
Did I miss something?
Send me the link, your twitter handle and your best imitation compression algorithm write up. If I like it, I’ll include your bit next issue (with attribution).
Should your colleagues read daily? We now offer discounts for corporate access. Email us, and we’ll onboard your whole team.