This is an opinion editorial by Archie Chaudhury, a blockchain enthusiast and previous winner of top prize at the 2021 MIT Bitcoin Expo.
When Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin white paper in October of 2008, the world was reeling from a financial crisis caused by the irresponsibility and negligence of the institutions that controlled our financial system. Hedge funds, central banks and other powerful agents had been all too happy to place over-leveraged bets on the economy, and to profit from the economic losses incurred by the working class when these bets collapsed.
Governments, in a desperate attempt to keep these institutions alive, spent hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts and other monetary injections instead of ensuring the well-being of the average citizen. Bitcoin was Satoshi Nakamoto’s answer to state-backed money; it was a vision for a decentralized digital currency that could provide the efficiency of online banking, the relative pseudonymity of physical cash, and the scarcity of gold.
Unlike previous attempts at creating digital cash, Bitcoin was…
