Adam Back is widely known in the bitcoin community as the individual who helped Hal Finney create bitcoin. Both of them are attributed for this invention. Various individuals contributed to the creation of bitcoin but the White Paper and the technology have been mostly created by Hal Finney and Adam Back.
He will probably take the criticism personally. Like many autistic geniuses, Adam Back seems to take criticism negatively and is wary and tired of people in the industry and journalists criticising his invention by regurgitating the same talking points. Personally, I do have some sympathies for him. He was unprepared and probably overwhelmed with the rapid growing popularity of his invention and and while being overtaken by events, in his pseudonymous anonymity, Adam Back has avoided historical accountability over his invention.
Not that his invention was ill-intentioned, malicious or even dangerous to society. Bitcoin came at a time when governments and financial institutions had failed us and it was intentioned to provide a simple yet effective alternative via decentralised, peer-to-paper cash transactions. The technology was meant to be autonomous from centralised parties that control and censor it. When it was released, it quickly served its purpose. Bitcoin was initially used for peer-to-peer cash transactions thanks to websites such as Silk Road, although most of these transactions were illegal and mainly intended to purchase illegal items such as drugs and weapons. Others quickly realised that bitcoin was an efficient tool for money-laundering due to its anonymous features.
In those early years, Bitcoinโs proponents argued that the invention was mostly being used for illegal purposes because it was still in its infancy, and that once the technology became more widely understood, it would be used more for its originally intended purpose and its positive benefits would become evident. That’s a very difficult argument to make by hindsight considering what bitcoin has become and that its becoming was shaped by Jeffrey Epstein’s intervention that helped secure Adam Back’s solution for bitcoin during the Block Wars.
During the Block Wars of 2015-2017, Adam Back saved his invention from potentially falling under the hands of scammers due to what could have been technical issues as the use of bitcoin grew, and he did this by securing funding from Jeffrey Epstein and allying with a host of big industry players that joined and supported him in his mission. In those days, Adam Back’s alliance through his company Blockstream with the big industry players seemed to come from a genuine need for funding to save what could have been a progressive technology. Yet, his alliance with big industry players grew into complacency, that didn’t just project him as if he was being carried away. It was also a genuine acceptance on his part of what bitcoin had become and was becoming. His old friends still say that he his loyal to his old ideals. He never told us that he had met and received funding from Jeffrey Epstein (revealed thanks to the Jeffrey Epstein files) – not just because he is unable to communicate the complexity of the situation he is in, but also because that underlying the history of it all, something has gone seriously wrong with his invention.
I don’t think that any inventor would take it kindly to have their invention scrutinised for its historical impacts and implications. Karl Marx is not hated not for Das Kapital, but for the Soviet Union and the barbarity of the communists who killed and oppressed in his name and his ideals. Adam Back has avoided these historical and philosophical discussion about his invention because ever since bitcoin was rolled-out, his circle of friends and acquaintances became increasingly composed of hucksters and criminals who saw in bitcoin just a means to make a lot of money. From peer-to-peer revolution for decentralisation, bitcoin has turned into a big casino with a digital-casino industry surrounding it. Price is all that matters. Back even went on to support Tether, and has recently entered into business with Howard Lutnick’s son.
Bitcoin is a great invention by many historical and historic measures, just as Karl Marxโs philosophical and historical writings provide interesting insights and theories. The inventors of Bitcoin never intended to create a new centralised casino industry parallel to the finance industry, which is now also championed by a corrupt US President who is using the industry to receive bribes and wash corrupt proceeds.
Adam Back did not object to the fact that, in order for his invention to grow in popularity and in value, he allied himself with the crypto cabal that has turned bitcoin and crypto into just another centralised and regulated industry that strengthens, rather than weakens, the old financial structures it was meant to disrupt. Bitcoinโs journey went from Occupy Wall Street to coddling with the elite on Epsteinโs island. We are genuinely not surprised nor shocked. The revolution of bitcoin still lingers in the peer-to-peer cash network, and this is literally useful, but the biggest bitcoin revolution remains in money-laundering and the crime. And the new price-goes-up market that has been created. I’m pretty sure that the other half of Satoshi would have some concerns and objections.
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