I've (finally) read the Bitcoin Whitepaper

Forehead smack

I read the Steem white - and later, the blue - papers a few years ago. It was a lot to digest, and I won't lie: I didn't get through all of it, nor did I spend enough time to truly understand them. I allowed too little time to think about anything outside of my work life, a bad habit I've maintained for decades, a habit very strong, but one that's coming to an end (a story for another day).

Though I wanted to understand Bitcoin at a more fundamental level, it had amazingly never occurred to me to find and read the white paper. I simply can't explain why, except to speculate that my attempts at reading other white papers, including the aforementioned Steem papers, combined with one frustration after another with cryptocurrency exchanges, applications, wallets, and so forth over the years had built an unconscious wall of "why bother?"

A tweet from @lukestokes brought me up short last night. I have Bitcoin, I have a rudimentary understanding of blockchain technology, but that I'd put money into something I consider an asset without understanding sufficiently why I consider it an asset really disturbed me. Hence, the headsmack moment. (In my defense, I did understand from books I read as a teen and young adult about the effects of fixed money supply and inflation.)

Gah! It was that easy?!

I read it this morning. Much to my surprise, it's only nine pages long, and considering the wide margins in the PDF, it's actually shorter than that. Also to my surprise, it's the most easy to understand cryptocurrency white paper I've read to date. It was well laid out, with a clear abstract whose first sentence summarizes both the fundamental problem Bitcoin addresses and the solution it offers to that problem.

The paper makes its case, points out its assumptions, describes its technical and economic underpinnings at a basic level, addresses a few risks identifiable at the time and how they're mitigated. There are a few mathematical bits that likely require further reading for most people, but it's material covered in introductory probability and statistics texts, material one can find online today without difficulty.

Hindsight is 20/20 (actually, it isn't, but I won't go into that, now), so Satoshi did not fully understand at the time some problems associated with Bitcoin and various unintended consequences, but don't we all need to be forgiven for our own unintended consequences and blind spots? This person, and the people who followed, did something, and whatever happens in the end, their "place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."*

Now what?

Read. A lot. Act on what I already know, on what I learn. Give the best hours of each day to me and my family, while fulfilling my responsibilities to my employer and customers (it could be argued I've rather over-fulfilled on the employer front). Engage and share. Learn from the mistakes and insights of others, and help others not repeat my mistakes. Build upon our successes, and help in my own small way to make all of this "crypto stuff" easier to use for everyone.

My Dad used to say "What you get at the end of the road is what you put in front of you." I am, four decades later, reaping both the good and the bad from my actions (and inaction) in the intervening years. While I may not be in the final stretch, odds are I have more years behind me than ahead, so I'd better make use of the time I have, as best I can see fit to use it.

Reference

*Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, 23 April 1910