I've spent most of my career as a ghostwriter. It's a fair bargain.
When you're starting out, you're probably not any good and you need to have your bad habits beaten out of you. Ghostwriting gives you time and opportunity to improve while preventing you from starving along the way. I like to eat.
The model is clear. You deliver the goods and the other person gets the credit and the opportunity to capitalize on it. Handing your work off to someone else over and over forces humility upon you. As time goes on, you develop a healthy detachment with your work and learn not to identify with it too much. Being a ghostwriter is a cure for narcissism.
But that is not the prevailing model is this day and age. Everyone and their mother wants to be an influencer today. There are more people wandering around trying to be thought leaders than there are thoughts. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Follow me for more insights.
Nothing provides a stronger contrast to this perpetual self-absorption than bitcoin, beginning with its pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Giving credit where credit isn't due
Today, we don't definitively know much about Satoshi. Whoever they were, they bootstrapped a protocol until it was a minimal viable product, set it free, debugged a little, and bounced.
Occasionally, there's hullabaloo about their real identity. A HBO documentary just came out that pointed fingers at a bitcoin developer based on forum posts. How folks go down the bitcoin rabbit hole far enough to make a guess at Satoshi and don't bother to produce cryptographic proof is beyond me.
Anyway, enough time has passed that if we somehow pinpointed Satoshi, I don't even think it would stick. Some bitcoiners would consider a conspiracy. Such is life in the post-truth era.
I don't care who Satoshi was. I'm more interested in what Satoshi represented: an antidote to today's norm of clout chasing. The way society continues trying to unmask them goes to show just how foreign this approach is to us. We just can't comprehend that someone would build something so important out of just the kindness of their heart.
What it means to give something to the world
Contrast this approach with an industry figure: Sam Bankman-Fried. Before SBF was the convicted fraudster we know him as today, he was something else: an effective altruist. For everything he did as FTX CEO, he put himself out there as a stand-up guy. And don't you know, he was going to do so much good as soon as he got his bag. Won't we all?
There's a cynical reality that belies this philosophy. It's nearly impossible for altruism to remain self-sustaining. Even open-source software typically ends up supported by some underlying business model or conflated with some kinda sorta open-source license that is free as in beer as long as the creator likes you. Few if any want to turn their baby loose.
Today, altruism at scale is just this side of myth. The rare glimpses when it exists should be cherished rather than used as what they are today: a stepping stone to cashing in. Right now, as I write this, there are people posing for photo ops in Appalachia so other people will know they did something for Hurricane Helene relief.
So far as we know, Satoshi didn't ask what was in it for them. They didn't wait to figure out the business model first or for the camera crew to show up. There were no strings attached and they didn't expect anything in return. Their bitcoin addresses remain where they left them, they're sitting on as much as 1 million BTC, and they could have earned even more from mining if they cared.
No thanks needed
A compelling aspect of the Satoshi legend is its juxtaposition against the internet's progression. The introduction of bitcoin ran concurrent with the adoption of social media.
Running bitcoin
— halfin (@halfin) January 11, 2009
Many wonder whether Satoshi could remain anonymous if they started today. I wonder if they would have kept their silence or if the temptation for recognition would have proven too strong. It is very hard to breathe life into something without spending your real-life social capital. Even harder to turn down the returns.
A while back, I had this idea. I wanted to build a digital temple as a tribute to Satoshi. The goal wasn't to make them into a religious figure but rather to honor their example and what it means to sacrifice oneself amidst a culture so consumed with itself. I can't code for shit so I haven't followed through, and something a little like it exists today: the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, an essential bitcoin historical archive. Ultimately, I held off because I don't think Satoshi would want a shrine.
For now though, I run a bitcoin node and hold strong as a keeper of the flame. I have my little box and every now and then, I put my hand on it just to feel the warmth. As long as it's there, bitcoin is alive.
Obscurity awaits
Beyond the protocol rules, not much of Satoshi's code survives today. Bitcoin Core has many contributors, and the code is essentially a ship of Theseus with lines changed through the years and soft forks. What we have left of Satoshi is what will be left for the rest of us: a name, some words, and maybe some photos. The stuff we left behind.
And that's how it should be. In the end, it's not about you. All that remains is the work.
There's a ghost in the machine. I hope it stays that way.