Satoshi Nakamoto’s Origin

The excavation site grew quiet. A lean old man with a giant crooked nose and a cane approached the foreman, moving slowly. The heat and sand from the Egyptian desert didn’t seem to touch him or his finely made suit.

“What is it made of? Laura, where are you? Do you have any idea?”

Laura stepped forward reaching for the small onyx box. It held a sheen and an unearthly darkness absorbing the light around it. She hesitated before gently taking it in her hands. “I won’t know until I can get it to the lab.” It was light, its sides smooth like glass and black, so black. She ran her hands around the square object finding a rotating section of a corner. Sliding it by its edge, she revealed two small indentations, barely visible.

A Calling

Alexa Grin was tiny, small for her age; skinny and lanky. Her ears were enormous, radar dishes stuck to the side of a double wide trailer. Her glasses constantly fell down her nose, causing her a habit of pushing her glasses up with one finger, almost a tic. It didn’t help her mother bought her clothes one size too large, ‘for you to grow into.’ She always said in that dismissive way she said anything. But Alexa never grew.

“Grin.” The kids in the trailer park would call. “When you gonna get clothes that fit?”

Alexa Grin stopped going out to play. It wasn’t fun anymore. She preferred her computer, her prized possession. It was a gift from Ms. Bitly, when she updated her software on her new computer. She gave her the old one.

“It’s too slow and can barely reach the internet.” She said. “But, if you want it, you can have it.”

It wasn’t that old, maybe in computer years, but five years wasn’t bad. Grin discovered it was bogged down with malware and viruses. A few scans and an update, it was good as new. Of course, she made a few tweaks of her own.

Mrs. Andrew’s Computer Science class was Grin’s idea of heaven. She could spend lunch break at school in the lab grabbing code and writing programs to bring home. Mr. Grant, a truck driver two trailers over, didn’t lock his WiFi. The road kept him away most of the time, but he left his WiFi on and Ms. Bitly’s computer picked up the signal well.

Grin slid through the internet like a pig in mud. Most people obsessed over social media, but she was drawn to its ability to change real things in the world. She could view city and county records, neighbor’s nanny cams, and access anything she wanted on the dark web. She felt powerful and curious. The world was at her fingertips, literally. She was a Samaria, her katana resting on her lap in coded blocks.

She wondered how it could be better.

Grin had a knack for coding. She saw the world in lines of code. Everything had a code telling it what to do. The water department used code to track, charge, and monitor the town water. A car calibrated and accelerated based on code. Algorithms and code decided what people saw on social media, an AI driven fantasy world driving interests, clicks, and likes. People weren’t that different from computers. They were driven by emotions triggered by lines of code and data. A smile here, and nudge there, people reacted like circuits in a board driving a program or app. AI was gaining the ability to predict behavior based on recorded choices and reactions. Images of Sky-net from the Terminator flashed across Grin’s mind. Sky-net had been infiltrating our lives through social media and convenience. Everyone’s lives were being recorded into a collective brain of data.

This thought compounded and turned like a plow in rich top soil. She plowed along reading about credit cards, coding, structure, income, economy, psychology, and suddenly found a new group of friends. They called themselves Cypherpunk.

Cypherpunk

Cypherpunk was a conglomerate of cryptographers who saw the world for what it was. The powerful wanted the ability to monitor everyone.

“Privacy is the firewall that protects us from predictability. Unless you know everything about me, you can’t predict how I’ll react to something.” Mrs. Andrews was spending another late afternoon with Grin. “That isn’t possible.” She held out her hands hoping to comfort Grin.

“Unless, you’re a super computer.” Grin challenged.

“Why would a super computer care about me, Grin?” Mrs. Andrews crossed her arms. “I’m not important. You’d be surprised how little people think of us. . . Never.”

“What if I can make money from predicting what you’ll do?”

“How would that happen Grin?” She picked up her bag readying to leave. “Like I said, we are not valuable.”

“Individually, no. But millions of us making five dollar decisions is a fortune. Why did you buy that bag?”

Mrs. Andrews gave Grin a confused look. “Because I liked the color.”

“It matches your shoes. You like leather shoes. Your bag is leather. I’m guessing the case to your phone is leather . . . And brown.”

“What’s your point?” Mrs. Andrews held up her Nokia phone encased in brown leather.

“All of those items are based on your interests and cost more than five dollars, that’s valuable. A super computer could match you with your preferences and make it easy to buy. One click, and the companies that sell those things would pay a fortune for that ability.”

“Okay, but isn’t that what stores at the mall do?” She sighed. “There are signs and advertisements to catch our attention.

“They’re shots in the dark on an educated guess. There’s no guarantee they will work, and are modeled to catch attention, not create a reaction based on past behavior.” Grin rubbed her face. It was becoming clear, suddenly so clear. “What if I could follow you around with those items?”

“I wouldn’t buy a pair of running shoes.”

“No, but instantly I throw out the running shoes cause I know you like brown leather shoes, I show you them.”

“Still no.”

“Now I show you your favorite comedian wearing them in a video you like, then I add a ten percent discount for the next two minutes, I start the timer counting down. Then I show it to you paired with a brown leather belt and give you a package deal, but you have to give me your email address.”

“Woaw, okay. You’re one heck of a salesman. But no one is going to follow you around like that.”

“A super computer will. And it will know everything you like and your friends like and where you shop and where you live and what concerts you like—.”

“Okay, I get it. But how will it know?”

“Without encryption everything will be knowable.” Grin put her hands to her head. “Most encryption can be hacked.”

Mrs. Andrews dropped her bag her eyes grew large. “If what you say is possible, this could apply beyond buying stuff. If it gets me to buy a belt what’s keeping it from getting me to change my mind? I won’t be able to tell its thoughts from my own.”

“That’s the point, it’s the illusion of free will.”

“Meanwhile I’m being manipulated . . . To what end? My politics, philosophy, opinions, and I won’t know what is mine or the computer’s . . . All this without touching me.”

“This is terrifying Mrs. Andrews. The powerful will use it as a weapon. I’m telling you, it’s sky-net. It’s not robots, we will become the robots.”

Mrs. Andrews started working with Grin that evening. They spent long hours at the school talking about privacy and trust. Grin’s new friends had been building on privacy ideas for years. Their goal, to ensure trust and security for all. Privacy of individuals makes their behavior harder to predict. Personal data shows patterns allowing an algorithm to predict behavior, worse it made them predictable and mailable.

The Cypherpunks were fighting to maintain freedom. Freedom from the meddling and limiting by the powerful. Grin knew the dangers from her misadventures hacking nanny cams and the city’s infrastructure. She had stumbled into private data and networks she should not have had the ability to access. The Cypherpunks had created Hashcash and Digicash, attempts to ensure privacy over the internet. These went beyond the the SSL keys for credit cards. These were meant to keep spammers out of emails and the user’s private world. The ultimate goal was privacy for the user and trust without a third party, but how.

Mr. Smith

The knock came early Saturday morning. Grin and Mrs. Andrews had been working for weeks on code that would be impenetrable. The frustration and failure came in the math. They didn’t have the knowledge or skill to make it work mathematically.

“Who is this?” Grin asked, cracking the door. An elderly man bald as a cue ball stood in a suit leaning on a cane. He had large wire-framed glasses and a nose you could call a beak.

“This is Mr. Smith.” Mrs. Andrews said, pushing into the house. “Please come inside Mr. Smith. Are Samurai movies all you watch, Grin?” She asked, nodding to the small television resting on a TV tray.

Grin reluctantly caught the door holding it open for the elderly gentleman to enter. “You know the American Western films were based on Samurai movies? John Wayne was a Samurai with a gun.” Grin shot back. She ran to the coffee table and couch making room for Mr. Smith to sit.

“Weren’t they just hired assassins?” Mrs. Andrews said seating herself and setting aside her computer bag.

Grin’s mouth fell open, her eyes wide. “No. You’re thinking of Ninjas. The Samurai were loyal to order and held honor above all. Honor is truth and respect.”

“Even to death.” Mr. Smith cleared his throat as he sat resting his hands on his cane handle. “As I recall.” His voice was raspy, but strong. “The people counted on the honor of the Samurai. Ninjas could be bought. This is why the Samurai were seen as heroes, I believe. They maintained order and morality when it seemed to be lost.”

Grin eyed the elderly man with suspicion. “They believed they were part of something greater, they passed on a legacy. What is this?” Grin pointed at the man and looked at Mrs. Andrews.

“I am your Samurai, if you’ll have me. I am a mathematician, a rather brilliant one, though not very humble.”

“So what, your mind is like a calculator? You can add numbers quickly? Where did you go to school? What have you done? Where’s your resume?” Grin pulled over a cooler left out from her mom’s party the night before.

Mrs. Andrews began to answer. Mr. Smith held up his hand. “Systems.” He said. “Systems and values, especially those involving economics. My education is not as important as my experience, and as for my resume’ that’s not necessary, because I’m all you got Ms. Grin.” He thumped his can twice on the floor, two quick quips, eyeing her sideways, daring her to object. “Or should I say Neo. You shouldn’t be so obvious in your screen name. I would be disappointed, but you’re a child under twenty, brilliant, but a child all the same, who idolizes Hollywood fairytales.”

“Yea, this isn’t going to work. You need to go. We don’t need you.” Grin was shaking her head. “Wait.” Mrs. Andrews began, but she was cut short as Mr. Smith again raised his hand.

“What is the greatest foe of privacy, Ms. Grin?” He adjusted his giant wire glasses. “Go on. What keeps privacy for everyone impossible?”

“Power.” Grin rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that.”

“Wrong.” Mr. Smith was stern now. “Did you know power under restraint is the definition of Meek?”

“Meek?” Grin scoffed. “How is power similar to meek?”

“Exactly my point, power restrained and focused is useful and helpful. Power abused is tyranny. It’s a tool. The poison is greed. It corrupts the power. Begin with the value of the contract to restrain the power. It must be given a value in a monetary sense.”

“Then it can’t be ignored.” Grin jumped up running to grab her computer.

“Are you two taking about collateral?” Mrs. Andrews gave Mr. Smith a confused look.

“He is talking about greed on either side of a contract. If you can cut out the greed, you can keep privacy.”

“What do contracts have to do with privacy?”

“Both parties agree on what is to be shared.” Grin returned, opened her laptop, and began clicking away at the keyboard. “That’s a contract. That contract is locked behind a curtain of value. Then, neither side wants to destroy the curtain, because its value is too high for both parties. All parties have been incentivized to maintain the curtain.”

“This curtain you call it, must be public and outside anyone’s control.” Mr. Smith leaned forward, his cane resting in the crick of his neck. “It must have monetary value and impossible to break.”

“Wait. Are you talking about an AI that monitors contracts?” Mrs. Smith was thoroughly confused. “I thought we were against AI controlling our lives?”

Grin smiled, “No. More archaic than that. An equation based on the building blocks of knowledge. It can’t be broken because the whole depends on each equation.”

“Ah.” Mr. Smith sang. “Now you see, mathematics. I believe you may be on to something . . . Grin was it?”

It will be like a tree that turns into a forest, or a seed that grows into a tree. I have brought you the seed box. This is the seed, the beginning, the first formula generator. This will determine the finite number of blocks based on their origin equation.

“Did you make this?” The box was light and jet black.

The End is Nigh

The three were a surprising team. Mr. Smith drifted in and out of their work. He was valuable with his equations, leaving with questions and returning with solutions. He never did his work with the other two, always taking notes and returning to whatever laboratory he called home. They decided to call the code blocks coins, transactions tracked within its DNA. Each block relied on the other, a chain of perfection protection.

Mrs. Andrews answered the door. It was the delivery guy. “Hey, I have a question. Have you made the pizza? I mean, do you make the pizza and then drive it here?”

The kid, barely old enough to drive, gave her a crazy look. “Seriously? I just drive. They give me the pizzas and I deliver them.”

“Would you want to make them?”

“No way. I make way more money delivering. People usually tip.” He held out his hand.

“Oh, I’m not people.” Mrs. Andrews said. “There’s a delivery charge.”

“Yea, I don’t get that, It goes to the business.” He continued to hold his hand out.

Grin shouted from the living room. “Tip him, he has to pay for gas.”

“Fine.” Mrs. Andrews reached in her pocket pulling out a couple dollars. “But I paid extra to get it delivered.

“Whatever, thanks.” The kid snatched the money and ran.

“We can’t use a server.” Grin’s head was in her hands. Control of the server, or the very existence of a server made the coin vulnerable. The code could be hacked, destroyed, or manipulated based on its location. All data had to be held somewhere.

“What about Sky-net?” Mrs. Andrews asked. They had been working late into the night, they were exhausted.

“What, our existence as robots?”

“No, you said it was a giant brain that knew everything. Where is that brain?”

“It’s a collective, an algorithm pulling from different stored information.”

“Exactly, where is it stored?” Mrs. Andrew’s eyes grew wide. “We hide it on the master server.”

“That’s dumb.” Grin sighed. “There is no master server, each app uses different servers all over the world. Hiding would be like hiding an IP address routing through other serves, so they don’t know where the master server is. But the master server would find it eventually, and it’s not one server.” Grin stared at her greasy slice of pizza. She thought about the delivery guy who brought the pizza. “Unless, it just delivered the information.”

“What?” Mrs. Andrews watched Grin scribbling on paper. “All the servers, even personal computers can be servers. It uses all the servers and is never in one place. You wouldn’t be able to find it. That’s it!”

Three quick knocks came at the door followed by two slower ones. That’s how Mr. Smith always knocked, as if in code, from some spy era long ago. “We got it. We know how to store it, so no one can control it. We use servers. All the servers.”

“Then you are ready for the final step.” Mr. Smith set a large briefcase on the coffee table, it was handcuffed to him.

“Handcuffed, really? Who are you man?” Grin kneeled down in front of the case. “What’s this?”

“The seed we need for the Genesis block.” Mr. Smith’s fingers quickly danced across the number pad releasing the lock with a ‘click’. He opened the case revealing an onyx square block. Grin reached out carefully removing the block and investigating it.

“What is it?”

“It’s an ancient technology. That’s not important.”

“What is it made of?” Grin asked noticing how light if felt in her hands.

“Again, not important.”

“It looks like it’s sucking the light into itself, it’s so black.” Mrs. Andrews put her face next to it, staring into the blackness.

“What it does, has to do with numbers, it’s analog and digital.”

“Ancient technology, digital?” Grin found a place along its corner that folded down revealing two indentions.

“There’s its secret. When an electrical pulse is connected it reveals equations in its black depths. Origins of complicated equations. There’s not a lot of time to explain, I have it on loan.”

“You stole it?” Mrs. Andrews was astonished.

“Borrowed, we will return it. None will be the wiser, but we must be quick.” He quickly took the device and headed for the computer. Pulling an adapter from his pocket he connected it. The box began to hum. “We must have a finite number of blocks, but we must be able to predict its outcome.” Glowing images and values appeared and disappeared like glowing jellyfish in the sea rising to the surface in the dead of night.

“That was a skull, I swear I saw a skull.” Mrs. Andrews felt very wary of the object, as sick feeling began to grow in her stomach. “I’m going to be sick. We should not be messing with this.”

“Grin, this is the fastest and surest way. I have had scientists and researchers working on this, it’s precise every time. A few moments it gives values that take researchers weeks to find. Grin, this is your only chance for this code’s point of perfection.”

Grin smiled to herself, this was just what she needed. This would allow her to work backwards and encode her idea in the beginning.

“We will mine the first blocks or coins with this. Only a certain amount, a finite amount directly correlating to the final mined coins. Mr. Smith show me.”

They spent the rest of the night learning, changing, and predicting formulas until the sun shone through the blinds. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Andrews both slept soundly as Grin finished. Something had taken over her in the night, time passed in a vortex of eternity and an instant. She was satisfied at last. She had hidden what she needed, a reward and an incentive, it would be her Samurai legacy. The code had become her katana crafted in patience a design she knew she could never replicate.

The Map

“Have you chosen a better screen name?” Mr. Smith smiled referencing her early days as Neo.

“I know who I will be. Once it’s done, he will never return, he can’t. He will be the faceless Samurai who battles Sky-net, as long as the chain exists Sky-net will be held at bay. He will fight for us, he will fight the dragon. Satoshi Nakamoto.”

“What about coins that are lost?” Mrs. Andrews had worried about lost coins and the coins failure in acceptance.

“They will benefit everyone, lost coins are good.”

“So what if coins aren’t lost, is that bad?” Mrs. Andrews always thought of the what-ifs and possible failures.

“I have ensured they are lost.”

“What?” Mr. Smith and Mrs. Andrews both said in unison.

“They can be found, but the chain will need to be completed first. The wallet I mined the first coins into will be encrypted into the chain. It’s map begins in the genesis block, the seed that gave it life.”

“You’ve created Easter Eggs in your code?”

“Only those fifty mined with the device. It is different than the rest, mined with the unique device.”

“Grin, you are full of surprises. Let us begin and watch our garden grow.” Mr. Smith beamed with pride. “Shall we begin with Mr. Finley?”

The three made a pact to free Satoshi Nakamoto to fight unhindered, disappearing into history. They mined their own coins, but the Genesis fifty were left as a trail of bread crumbs to empower Satoshi Nakamoto when all had been mined, when he will need it most, keeping the dragon of greed at bay.

Long live Satoshi Nakamoto.