Kraken’s Business Development Director Dan Held has labelled Craig Wright’s Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV) token a “silly endeavour” in an attack on those who “cherry pick” from the Bitcoin whitepaper to insist that it was intended as a form of payment. Instead, Held goes to great pains to push his theory that Bitcoin was, first and foremost, intended as a store of value.
1/ Satoshi’s Vision™ is a silly endeavor, as it doesn’t matter what it was, we are where we are now. However, those pushing the “Bitcoin was first made for payments” narrative insist on cherry-picking sentences from the white paper and forum posts to champion their perspective.
— Dan Held (@danheld) February 4, 2020
Held Criticizes Bitcoin Cherry Pickers
Held published a “tweetstorm” in which he castigated those who combined select phrases from the whitepaper with historical conversations between Bitcoin’s founders to push the ‘Bitcoin was first made for payments’ narrative, claiming that it was “purpose-built to first be a Store of Value (SoV)”.
Held claims that looking at Nakamoto’s “ideology, description of functionality/architecture, timing, and audience” is key to understanding his intention behind Bitcoin. In a move that could be considered hypocritical, he then posts a number of quotes from Nakamoto’s forum posts to back up his argument that Bitcoin was intended as a store of value, including a number of references to precious metals:
7/ “In this sense, it’s more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases” – Satoshi
— Dan Held (@danheld) February 4, 2020
Bitcoin was “an Alternative to Banks”
In terms of timing, Held points to the Bitcoin’s famous launch date – the day that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was thought to be on the verge of announcing a second bailout for banks hit by the 2008 financial crisis. This, says, Held, shows that “The world didn’t need a new VISA, they needed an alternative to banks.”
Confusingly however, Held also cites a quote from Nakamoto that aligns Bitcoin more to the replacement currency argument:
The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
Held makes a strong argument, despite using the exact same methodology as those who he is campaigning against. The fact is that seeing as no one can interview Nakamoto we don’t have much choice but to use extant writings, so isn’t everyone guilty of cherry picking to some extent?
Held is Probably Right – Bitcoin is Better as a Store of Value
On balance it does seem that Bitcoin was intended more as a store of value than as a currency, given its limited supply, and the many references to gold and precious metals scattered across Nakamoto’s writings. It certainly acts better as a store of value these days, with superior currency alternatives abounding in the space.
Some of us may not like those who twist Nakamoto’s words for their own means, but one of the beauties of this space is that anyone can create anything based on any ideology, and we have the means to debate and form opinions without fear of censure.
But, yeah, Craig Wright is still a fraud.
