TL;DR: “The claim ‘Bitcoin was purpose-built to first be a Store of Value’ is false,” Sam Patt, co-founder of OpenBazaar announced. “In this article I’ve [posted] every single instance I could find across everything Satoshi ever wrote related to store of value or payments. It wasn’t even close. Payments win.”

Satoshi Wanted Payments, Not Exclusive Store of Value

Most who have been involved in cryptocurrency for a while understand a basic truth: the digital gold, store of value, hodl narrative taken-on by BTC maximalists is revisionism. Good, bad, or indifferent, initially nearly everyone viewed bitcoin as a revolutionary form of digital cash, a payment mechanism and medium of exchange. It’s fair to believe it should not be that today, for whatever reason, but to deny bitcoin’s payment/medium of exchange roots is … odd.

As a result, today the enigmatic, pseudo-anonymous creator of Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency, is often credited with seemingly cross purposes: is it a store of value, meant to be merely held and speculated upon, a novel banking settlement layer; or is it a method of payment, of exchange, meant to be used and spent?

Wags can often answer, both and more. That aside, how would anyone be able to divine Satoshi Nakamoto’s true intentions? For Patt, the potential answer was simple: he “went straight to the source. Thanks to the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute’s archives I was able to read every single thing Satoshi ever posted publicly. Comments from 260 forum threads, 63 emails, and his original source code.”

His conclusion? “After reviewing all of Satoshi’s writings, I can confidently state that Bitcoin was not purpose-built to first be a store of value. It was built for payments,” Patt posted to his blog. Patt’s 6 June 2019 entry is titled, Breakdown of all Satoshi’s Writings Proves Bitcoin not Built Primarily as Store of Value, and it’s compelling reading for a variety of reasons.

No Gimmicks

First, he doesn’t offer any gimmicks. Patt does his homework, slogging through primary source material. Second, he encourages readers to do the same: “This isn’t based on word frequency analysis or other crude techniques. This is based on having read all his statements and the context surrounding them.”

Patt provides an exhaustive resource, including a snappy Table of Contents for easier navigation. He’s careful to surround quotes with their proper context, and doesn’t mine or cherry pick content. Where Satoshi argues for a store of value scenario, it’s documented. Where payments are put forward, documented. “You don’t need to take my word for that,” he insists. “This post is so long because I’m going to go walk you through all of Satoshi’s statements that relate to store of value or payments – in their original context – and let you see the evidence yourself.”

He was triggered initially by a Twitter thread from Dan Held, who insisted exasperatingly, “The following tweetstorm is a categorical repudiation of this tired narrative. Bitcoin was purpose-built to first be a Store of Value (SoV).” Patt found Held’s assertions to be largely out of context, baseless, and so he set out to find the ultimate truth of the matter.

Patt offers up caveats: he’s pained not to involve himself, in this context, within the current debate about what Bitcoin should be used for; instead his research is “narrowly about Satoshi’s original intent based on his own words.” And, perhaps surprisingly, he doesn’t believe “Satoshi’s opinion matters that much today. Bitcoin can be whatever we want it to be. But that doesn’t mean that people should be given a free pass to rewrite history and make false claims about Satoshi’s intentions. That’s intellectually dishonest and needs to be called out,” Patt stressed. He also notes Satoshi never wrote the phrase “store of value” anywhere. Wherever readers make of Patt’s findings, one thing they won’t be able to do is easily dismiss the notion of Bitcoin’s original design as a method of payment.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.

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