Bitcoin Is Not What It Seems

Bitcoin is a mysterious creation by whoever hides behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It was conceived in 2008, during a financial crisis, when governments demonstrated how they would use taxpayer money to bail out reckless banks that packaged junk loans with prime ones and called them safe. Digital currency wasn’t entirely new; there were earlier attempts like eCash, but Bitcoin was different because it was fully decentralized, removing control from a single entity like big banks and governments. It's clear that Bitcoin rose from the ashes of a financial crisis to give power back to the people.

Since Bitcoin, there have been many forks, new projects, and cheap rip-offs, but only one project has ever really caught my attention. Bytecoin, quickly renamed Monero after domain fraud, seemed like the only genuine advancement in peer-to-peer transaction systems. Monero introduced anonymous transactions using a fascinating cryptographic algorithm, ring signatures, solving a very important issue with using blockchain technology for day-to-day transactions: not everyone should see your account balance when you make a purchase. The whitepaper for ring signature as a cryptocurrency was published by another anonymous figure calling themselves Nicholas van Saberhagen. The white paper on ring signatures and Satoshi’s blockchain share technical interests and writing style. Many others, and I believe these papers came from the same group, a highly capable and organized group. If we accept Nicholas van Saberhagen and Statoshi as the same group, then Bitcoin was never meant to last beyond 2014. Furthermore, the statoshi wallets could have crashed the project in 2014, ending Bitcoin. Instead, the wallets remained dormant, demonstrating that Statoshi's intention for the project had pivoted from a transaction system for the people to something else.

Over the years, Bitcoin exploded in value, from being given away for free to now over a $1,000,000,000,000 market cap. A massive portion of the supply is concentrated in the hands of Satoshi himself, who is estimated to hold around 1.1 million BTC (5.5 % of the total supply). While a Satoshi sell-off may not send Bitcoin to zero instantly, it would cause massive panic and cascading liquidations. In fact, it's widely accepted that a massive crash in Bitcoin will move the entire stock market, and some financial experts even believe it could trigger a massive recession. Therefore, the Stoshi wallet has become the key to a metaphorical nuclear bomb in the digital world, capable of triggering a multi-trillion-dollar tech crash. Bitcoin is no longer a benevolent project for the people to protect their transactions from a tyrannical system, but a powerful cyber weapon.

So what might motivate someone to crash the market? If Bitcoin really did come from libertarian roots opposing the 2008 bailouts, maybe the new motivation to keep the project alive is to stop the next bailout, and that next potential bailout could be closer than people think: the AI bubble.

Nvidia has become the world's largest company, soaring from a few hundred billion to over five trillion in a few short years. AI stocks representing over 20% of the S&P 500 are completely driven by the profitless AI craze. Intense marketing and grand illusion of thought have swayed even seasoned investors that AI is the future, but the average professional knows the truth: large language models, while useful, remain extremely limited. Even "agentic AI" orchestrating the most advanced LLMS and sophisticated software suites cannot replace junior developers, let alone run businesses. It's clear this technology is speculative and overhyped, and the tech oligarchs are well aware of this fact, but they're profiting so much from this craze that they have no incentive to unveil the truth. Instead, they keep the propaganda machine turning and continue to lay people off under the guise of AI (In my opinion, the real reason for layoffs is overhiring and shrinking profits from less consumer spending in tech), which they can get away with while real innovation does not drive stock prices. This sounds very familiar: large banks decided that real credit scores no longer matter, so they removed real profits from the equation. As long as the line goes up and the stakeholders can profit. Big Tech is echoing the "too big to fail" dynamic from 2008.

Investors are starting to get skeptical about the AI industry. Michael Burry, the famous 2008 housing short investor, has staked millions shorting Nvidia multiple times in the last year. It's clear financial professionals believe there's real risk and overvaul in this industry, yet the stock keeps climbing, propped up by internal stock buybacks and circular GPU sales without real economic impact (the end users of graphics cards, Musk, Facebook, OpenAI, etc, aren't profiting). Overall, this feels like market manipulation more than real value.

Then enters the so-called “AI arms race.” The idea that China and the US are in a digital cold war, where LLM models are the thermonuclear counterpart. The idea that AI can win wars or replace engineers is laughable. Companies like Palantir can improve battlefield intelligence, sure, but only through thousands of human analysts and engineers, not by throwing a chatbot at the problem. Moreover, wars, such as Gaza and the Ukraine war, are clearly still fought by real humans on the ground and not chatbots. I believe the real reason politicians like Trump and Carney keep invoking fear of an AI arms race is to justify another massive bailout, this time for tech. Companies like Oracle and OpenAI could soon receive billions in taxpayer dollars to purchase more Nvidia GPUs to keep the market afloat. Just as banks once got bailed out for their toxic loans.

If big tech receives bailouts, history will repeat itself and wealth will concentrate in the hands of the wealthest 0.00001%, and the consequences will be felt by average, working-class people around the world. An event capable of resetting the system and redistributing power: Bitcoin collapsing and ultimately the market resetting. That black swan event would be a financial nuke, shocking the tech sector and bringing the whole industry to its knees. Instead of taxpayer money going to the elite, the major companies could topple, chruning the economy and giving power back to the people, where real innovation can foster and grow a stable and fair economy. The group behind Satoshi may not have anticipated this exact scenario; often, technology evolves and grows into something no one can predict, but it's clear they now weild increible power over the economy.

This is just a theory. I realize there are lots of great counterarguments against many of my conclusions (for example, would an economic reset actually have a positive outcome) that I didn't address, and I am also acknowledging that I am making lots of leaps in logic (could the Stoshi sell off actually pop the AI bubble? Would a tech recession prevent GPU bail out?) and assumptions (Are the Statoshi wallets still accessible by anyone?). I kept this short and to the point to communicate an abstract idea rather than rigorously argue its validity. I have not heard this exact idea before, so I thought I would share it because I believe the internet is a place to openly discuss new ideas and share your thoughts, and new ideas are what keep life interesting.

Note

"AI summary: A rapid Satoshi sell off could under current conditions trigger a tech downturn similar to 2001 and reduce political appetite for further AI related industrial support (bail outs), since much of the sector is sustained by profit driven narratives rather than validated economic output. Such a shock could reset the tech economy and potentially create better conditions for the average American (more and better job oppurtunities). In this scenario the motive is not financial gain but an attempt to create a systemic correction, which removes the usual game theory limits on selling behavior."