The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto

Here lies Satoshi Nakamoto, his legacy etched in ones and zeros on hard drives around the world. He was a man out of time. He was the man who, through his own actions and at the will of those he represented, saved planet earth. Or at least postponed its imminent destruction; you never can trust mankind.

This is his story. Passed on by word of mouth, beginning with the only person who met him, an uninspired computer hacker whose down and dirty studio Satoshi unceremoniously broke into one night, back in October 2008. Afterward he vanished, and may even still walk among us. Like the epic tales of Homer the basics of the story are all that are known, other parts are elaborated by those who tell it.

Satoshi traveled backward in time from the not to distant future. For obvious reasons no one can pin down the dates but it’s usually predicted to be from around 2042. He was a member of the People’s Liberation Army of China and came from future China, or what remained of it. The history of the future that tells of the origins of Satoshi Nakamoto is as thus.

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In the closer future than the not too distant, China will be one of the biggest players in the largest trade war the world has even seen. This will not be a war for spices or metals or new found world riches. It will be a war over the basic necessities for life on this planet. This war, was in fact the rapid accumulation of many wars, which were dubbed the First Food Wars by those who survive the rationing and starvation that followed. These wars were just the calm before the storm.

These wars for commodities escalated quickly into a war of blood. This was called The War. It was a world war on the grandest scale. It was also a relatively short war. No one won this war and the losers were everyone who survived the planet-wide nuclear holocaust.

Satoshi survived The War, as did many of the elite of his country, and a handful of other countries around the world. The greatest minds in science also survived this war. They were all safe, deep underground inside fortified nuclear bunkers that rocked and rumbled through the long night of The War as massive nuclear explosions sent titanic shock waves through the earth’s crust. Time down here was kept in sync with the daily cycle of the sun on the surface above, however when the residence of these bunkers eventually emerge there was nothing to call day any more, and they saw no sun. No moon or stars graced the sky. The sky was a permanent, dark, mottled, grey, with subtle navy tints. Parts of the distant horizon was dusted orange with flames and dense black lines separated this, the only colour left in existence, from the sky above. The earth was scorched clean and the world carried a heavy and eery primevalness.

Retreating back inside their hole of safety those who had survived sunk inside themselves for a long while. The destruction of not only your own species and your civilisation but of all that you have ever known to have lived is something which is rather hard to comprehend. The many people wrote. The many people drew. The many people cried. The many people fought. Some people killed others. Some people killed themselves. The many people separate and dispersed throughout the complex of tunnels and rooms in which they had imprisoned themselves. Eventually someone spoke.

“No more.” Came a voice over a crackling tannoy system. “No more shall we fight. No more shall we kill. For this is what first drove us into this pit of misery. We were once civilised men and women. Now we find ourselves no better than those creatures that lived in holes, fighting against natures laws for survival each and every day of their lives. Is it not better that we put our efforts into fixing this hopeless situation we have created for ourselves? Instead of wallowing in the unbearable heat of regret and self-loathing.”

“For the last decade I have stood in silence and watched a few men argue while countless men die. I, as have many of you, sat and stood around large tables for endless days and night, playing silent witness to the worst dramas the world has ever seen. I watched men knowingly, yet blindly, decide the fate of our planet. That baptism of fire that man had always intended to give her.

“All along we knew this was going to be the outcome. No one was ever going to give. Heads of state and army generals argued fruitlessly over the scarce commodities of food, water and fuel. The future of the planet was being decided by which country had the most farmable land and potable water. It was quantities of these scarce commodities coupled with who had the most money and the heaviest firepower that were used as leverage around these tables. Where, early into the mornings of last year, the earths fate slowly solidified itself in the arguments of old men in suits.

“Your water is yours and mine is mine. I shall never give you mine, even if your people are dying. For having more gives me strength and an advantage. No. No, my food is mine also. Even if your seasons and harvests have turned against you, and your soils are no longer fruitful. This food is mine. For the humans on my piece of the planet are more important than the humans on your piece of the planet.

“In the beginning, there were round table talks of creating a global government, and integrating every human into one, global, socialistic system for our scarce life necessities to be shared. So that everyone was provided their basic human rights.

“But the rich and powerful countries didn’t like this and alliances were created within continents, as this was the best and safest place to get and transport your commodities. Other countries with bigger militaries simply invaded their neighbours to procure what they wanted. Ravaging the people in the process. Some bigger countries bullied smaller countries who had weaker hands into taking their side. We did this. We bullied and duped the poorer countries onto our-side, in fear of their own livelihoods and wellbeing.”

For a moment there was silence. Then the speaker breathed slowly into the microphone.

“Eventually, war was raged by land, sea and air. By man and by machine. Millions of lives were lost. Probably Billions. And then. Boop.

“Someone hit a switch. And our civilisation went into automised self destruction.

“Those who could hid; like us. Around the world now there are multiple bunkers like this one, filed with people who, not a few months ago, would’ve proudly called themselves the most important people on the planet. That statement is more true now than ever before, even though such fame was destroyed by their own stupidity.

“We are the most important people on planet earth ladies and gentlemen because we are some of the only people on planet earth.

“We have a chance. We have one, single chance to save the world we knew and bequeath it to those who have already died. We request that all of you come down to basement level six. Now. This is the one chance we might have to do something right. You’ll find the door open in the eighth room of basement level five.”

The people walked, shuffled and moved awkwardly out into concrete corridors and down concrete stairwells. The only sound the small mass of people made was the padding of shoes and bare feet on cold concrete. In their time underground they had grown accustom to keeping silence. Shoulders had hunched and the small rations of food and lack of exercise had left them gaunt. These people were just shadows of the humans they had had the potential to become.

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The bunker holding the people was not the only one of its kind around the world, but the number of surviving locations could be counted on the fingers of two hands. From the hindsight of past wars, and during times of peace and cooperation, the owners of these bunkers had agreed to establish permanent connections as potential lifelines for mankind should the situation ever come close to what it had come to now.

Over the past few months, as the people in the bunker wallowed in the despair and bleakness of their own situation, Satoshi and others had been feverishly working away, in connection with the other surviving pockets humanity, to create a solution to the problem they had created. They knew that they had no hope for their future however they hoped that the technologies they had been attempting to master in their secret bunkers might hold the key to mans continued existence.
These technologies required fully understanding the universe and the fabric of spacetime, neither of which the divided groups of people had come to remotely comprehend. However, each country had made individual discoveries that, when combined as a whole, allowed them to attain some rudimentarily success. Time was running out for the people left under the earth and they only had one shot with the technologies they had knocked together. These technologies were time travel and teleportation. Together the people worked feverishly and believed these technologies held the key to the prevention of mankind’s suicide. The only debate left was how to affect the past to change the future.

Many options were put forth. Some suggested returning to halt the Manhattan Project, other pointed out that nuclear weapons would come about either way. Sending back a world leader to interrupt negotiations and tell world leaders of what happened, they all agreed that no matter who or what they could send back they would never believe them, even if it were themselves talking to themselves they still wouldn’t concede. Countless other options were discussed, all whilst they tried in vain to improve the technology they were going to use.

Eventually a war weathered Chinese general brought them a solution that they all found agreeable. Give the power back to the people. Not by toppling governments for them, those ideas had already been mulled and tossed out, but by handing them economic control of their own futures. Greed and money, he argued, were what fuelled war and conflict. They were the reasons no man was happy on his side of the hill and always wanted, not only to see the other side, but also to own it. With no large economic entities controlling and manipulating the worlds money supply there would be no “men in suits” to argue over to whom the worlds resources should be shared between. The people, Satoshi argued would decide. This was fairest he said. And he was confident they would decide correctly. Otherwise, he stated, men would always be sent to war to die for what the elite of the country desired most, whether it be gold, spices, oil, water or food. If a small majority continued to control the worlds wealth and laws then the vast majority would always serve them. Servitude, he argued, in a capitalist society, was always for the benefit those who owned all the money.

Satoshi was asked how, and he showcased the idea of a money outside of government and central bank control. A digital coin recorded on an immutable, distributed ledger, with a finite supply. Of the people, by the people, for the people. This idea was extrapolated by the computer engineers in the bunkers around the world. Bitcoin and the blockchain were born. Satoshi’s name was chosen to be put on top of the final whitepaper with a last name alias of Nakamoto, because its many translations fit with the project at hand. The workers worked bitcoin further but it was decided that the rudimentary form is what should be given to the people and the success would then be their’s to own.

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Back in basement level six, some seven miles below the surface of the scorched and battle scarred earth the Chinese faction of the Bitcoin Alliance explained their technological developments and ideas to the glum crowd before them.
The concept of salvation brought light to their eyes, even it wasn’t directly their own salvation. It was the only talk they’d heard of such things in months. Satoshi and the other workers explained the technology they’d been working on and who they’d be working in collaboration with. This news shocked many of the people however, in their dire circumstances, the people readily accepted this along with the concept of salvation. The concept of a digital cash of the people, by the people, for the people was explained. They explained that the aim was to introduce it after the financial crash of 2008. Then, when internet business really began booming, was when it could make the biggest inroads. After they’d finished explaining they opened the floor for questions before a vote.

Questions were few and far between and most were from scientists who had not been working on the project who were interested in the technology. A few people proposed other options and it was explain why said option had not been chosen. The people liked what they were hearing, partially because they hadn’t felt hope for the longest time and partially because, in their months of wallowing in self loathing, they’d come to the conclusion that, as the elite, it was all their fault and agreed that the time to give the people a chance to rule themselves was long overdue.

The final point of unknowing was explained to the people. Small trips in teleportation had been taken and short periods of time travel had been achieved, but it was unknown what the implications would be from traveling that far back in time and trying to alter the future and their past so drastically. So small was their understanding of this corner of physics. The people were warned that this attempt could wipe them out entirely. The people needed to know this before they voted.

The people in the bunker response to this news was largely unnoticeable, many blinked, a few shrugged, most did nothing. A rudimentary balloting booth was drawn out with two boxes. One for Yes another for No. It was explained that every bunker was undertaking this process and that only if 80% of the people agreed with the concept would it go ahead.

As the votes were collected the shuffling of feet was all that was heard. The minds of the people were floating away on fresh winds produced by the news of hope that they had just been receiving. Even if it wasn’t hope for themselves. Once the voting was done the votes were taken away to be counted and recounted by those who had been working on the project. Then the results were to be communicated with the other bunkers around the world.

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The result of the vote was Yes, and by no slim margin. Every single person in all the bunkers had voted the same way. No counting had been necessary. The revival of the human race was a beacon of hope amidst the depression and desperation they had been living in in their fluorescent, underground existence.

Being furthest along with the physical form of the technology the machine had been built in the Chinese bunker and those who had worked on the project decided that it would be fitting that Satoshi would be the one to return to the past to pass on his own idea. His small stature, reputable intelligence and fighting prowess along with his knowledge of languages would help him evade their own authorities and introduce the peer-to-peer digital cash concept to the world.

The remains of databases were combed for information detailing what was available for anonymity back in the year 2008 and a plan was put together. Satoshi was armed with his whitepaper on multiple, 2008 compatible, USB sticks, the tools required to anonymously introduce their idea to the world, and the details to allow him to circumnavigate the system and set up a life for himself in the past if he chose to. They were ready.

Lucky charms were kissed, fingers and toes were crossed, and prayers were said by those that still believed. Final calculations were made, things were double and triple check, and Satoshi disappeared into the past.