Proposed Revisions to Satoshi's White Paper Stir Community Uproar

It seems the owner of Bitcoin.org, who goes by the name of “Cobra,” wants to make some changes to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper that is located on the website. Again, news like this has caused an uproar within the cryptocurrency community in the midst of a very turbulent debate.

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Would Satoshi Approve of Changes Made to His White Paper?

Cobra is the co-owner of Bitcoin.org and runs the popular web portal with Theymos. There have been times prior to this suggestion where Cobra made a decision that got people upset. Most notably the banishment of Coinbase from the page, even though later the exchange was reinstated.

There isn’t much information on Cobra — minus the trivial statements and actions he displays from time to time.

The thread posted on GitHub called, “Amendments to the Bitcoin paper” has made people wonder once again: who is this Cobra character, and why does he believe he can make updates to such a legendary, scientific paper?

Here’s what Cobra had to say, giving his opinion via GitHub:

“I believe the paper was always designed to be a high-level overview of the current reference implementation, and that we should update it now that the paper is outdated, and the reference implementation has changed significantly from 2009.— If Satoshi did not want the whitepaper updated at some point in the future, he wouldn’t have given it to us under the MIT license. Secondly, it’s pretty obvious that the current white paper uses incorrect terminology and has many things wrong with it. The paper was clearly always meant to be a learning resource regarding the Bitcoin software, but currently, it doesn’t do a very good job at that. Thousands of people are reading the paper each month, and they’re getting misinformed.”

As soon as the Bitcoin community caught wind of this suggestion, many were up in arms. One user writes on GitHub, “Many dictatorships rewrite history to suit their political goals.” On the subreddit r/bitcoin, another Bitcoin supporter says, “This is beyond ridiculous. Making changes to a document you have no say in. Geesh. People have a lot of nerve.”

The attempt to rewrite the historic document has offended quite a few people, and they feel Cobra’s opinion is unjustified. People believe the paper should be left alone.

However, some people in the GitHub conversation conceded with the proposal, and Bitcoin.org co-owner Theymos also agreed with Cobra, along with a small minority of others across social media forums.

Theymos writes, “Interesting suggestion. The paper is definitely outdated, and I do often see people saying ‘just read the whitepaper!’ as if the paper is still a good way to learn about Bitcoin.”

These few people believe the original white paper could possibly misinform people, or “do more harm than good.” Yet, perusing through the threads on r/bitcoin and GitHub reveals that a vast majority of Bitcoin supporters are against Cobra’s proposed revisions.

This news comes after a fire has been ignited by the rumored Terminator Plan, which calls for mutiny over the Core developers and current client. Some have said this discussion of updating Satoshi’s white paper is very poor timing.

Also, people believe that this is too much power wielded by the Bitcoin.org co-owner, because if one is to google the words “Bitcoin White Paper,” the first link to show up is their website.

Nothing may happen concerning the suggested White Paper revisions, and the tactic could have been used to stir the pot of drama.

As Theymos and Cobra have stated in the past, they can do whatever they want with Bitcoin.org, r/bitcoin, and Bitcointalk.org. Whether or not people continue to patronize these portals is the choice of the market.

Bitcoin.com will keep our readers informed if plans to update the paper via Bitcoin.org comes to fruition. We also keep an archived version of the original Satoshi Nakamoto white paper here. Enjoy.

What do you think about Bitcoin.org making changes to Satoshi’s original white paper? Let us know in the comments below!

Images via Pixabay, and Wikimedia Commons.