Just recently (8.12.2015) Wired published an article stating they had evidence that suggested an Australian man, CraigWright, was Satoshi Nakamoto., the creator of bitcoin. For #TheBitcoinDoco we interviewed Craig at Melbourne's Bitcoin conference July last year. Since we started the documentary there has been a phenomenal amount of movement with Bitcoin:
*Ross Ulbricht was found guilty of being a drug kingpin for creating and running the Silk Road website. One of his moderators, an Australian was shipped to the states, then released 9months later. Ross was sentenced to double life in prison, his parents are currently fighting for a retrial and are as you can imagine are highly stressed, his mother had a heart attack 30October. They had no idea he was involved with drugs at any level and are doing what they can to release him from the sentence.
*MtGox collapsed, many people held their breath to see how it would affect Bitcoin, which turned out to be not really that much considering the amount of trade the CEO Mark Karpeles was pretending to manage. Bitcoin didn't die the death skeptics predicted, if anything it grew stronger, the price dropped and kind of flattened out for a long time while the focus switched to a newest biggest buzz word "blockchain."
*Banks started to love the idea of Bitcoin, they even sponsored Sydney's 'blockchain' event. It started to become obvious big names in the financial sector didn't want to associate their business with anything 'bitcoin'. Experts were hired to work out how they could use the blockchain to their advantage... something like a global database keeping cross payment functionality. Projects were dropped as the realisation hit that bitcoin and the blockchain are inseparable, one exists for the purpose of the other. Despite these discoveries, Bitcoin continues to grow and prove more of a threat to the existing monetary system.
*Governments around the world started to take Bitcoin seriously when the reality of how the technology works hits home, various licenses were created, laughed at, dropped, reconfigured and bitcoin businesses moved jurisdictions so they could continue to stay true to the bitcoin protocol. As censorship rears its ugly head more decentralised networks are being thought out and acted on, and laws are changing in an attempt to encompass our ever expanding digital world.
*Maidsafe is creating a network based on computers and a system for people to 'uber' the network, people will be rewarded based on reputation, participation, services... facilities for trading will also be available. It's been worked on so far for 9 years, people can experiment with it from the safenetwork forum as releases are made,
*Melbourne's bitcoin scene has spread into various areas via people following their unique passions, the bitcoin center has grown through some often dramatic ideologies to formulate into a unique space. Last year they had 4 RMIT (university) students participate for a semester to learn about cryptocurrencies, 2 of them worked on a safenetwork project and 2 on CryptoGoss, a fortnightly podcast. The experience was a success, both parties were so satisfied with the result that next year 14 students will be learning about cryptocurrencies from 4 different projects. The space is thriving into an education center.
*TheBitcoinGroup are STILL working hard to get listed on the Australian stock exchange. They'll be the first compnay in the world to follow all necessary procedures, tick all the boxes and continually bump heads with ASIC, Australia's regulators who are not quite sure what it is and are asking many questions.
These are just a few examples of what's happening in the dynamic, constantly morphing cryptocurrency space. Episodes 1 and 2 capture some of this growth in interviews with other key people around Australia.
Imagine our surprise when it was suggested that Craig was SatoshiNakamoto! Shortly after the release of the article his online presence started to disappear, video's and blogs gone, and a variety of stories started to crop up... apparently he paid $84.25 million with bitcoin for gold and software. The tax agency raided his home 2 hours after the article was published and experts started to crop up with #ProofOfNothingReally.
The main article said he could have leaked his own information, a hoax has been called... yet Wikileaks reconfirmed Craig wasn't the principal coder, does that suggest Craig was somehow involved? Another article shared about the expertise required for some major projects. It implied Bitcoin is a 20 year project in the making and Craig 'brought it home' so to speak.
Chris and Dale watched the video again, looked at each other with "could go either way." and came to the conclusion that regardless of who he is, the real life examples of how Bitcoin could possibly work, in a peer to peer work are pretty awesome.
What do you think - is he, isn't he... and does it even matter anymore?
