October Updates

Happy White Paper Day; What's new at SNI?

Happy White Paper Day!

Today, we celebrate White Paper Day. Sixteen years ago, on October 31, 2008, the pseudonymous programmer Satoshi Nakamoto appeared on the Cryptography Mailing List to share his vision for “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

Standing on the shoulders of giants, Satoshi became a giant himself, forever changing how we think about money and giving one of the most powerful technologies for protecting property and liberty in human history. For that, we cannot thank him enough.

We encourage you to spend the time to read or re-read “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” and his original announcement, as well as explore the world of ideas from which bitcoin sprung, all available on the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute.

We also invite you to enjoy a video celebrating Satoshi’s brilliant achievement and his forerunners, made by our president, Michael Goldstein a.k.a. bitstein.

What’s New?

Over the past month, efforts at SNI have been focused on continuing to add to our collection of timeless articles and essays on bitcoin, cryptography, economics, and liberty.

Library

“Hermeneutics: An Introduction the Interpretation of Tradition” (1996) by Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo introduces the field of hermeneutics, the interpretation of tradition and texts, and proposes an evolutionary framework for analyzing how cultural traditions develop and propagate over time using algorithmic information theory.

“Objective Versus Intersubjective Truth” (1998) by Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo explores the relationship between objective and intersubjective truth, arguing that evolved traditions contain deep wisdom that can't be easily derived from first principles.

“Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets” (1996) by Nick Szabo

In an early smart contracts essay, Szabo explores how cryptography and software embedded into the world can help enforce and execute contracts, the cryptographic primitives that make this work, and the possibilities these open up for building digital markets.

“Security Without Identification: Card Computers to Make Big Brother Obsolete” (1985) by David Chaum

David Chaum introduces a groundbreaking privacy architecture using digital pseudonyms, blind signatures, and credential systems that enables organizations to verify and process transactions without being able to track or surveil individuals, establishing the cryptographic foundation for privacy-preserving digital commerce.

“Patterns of Integrity: Separation of Duties” (2004) by Nick Szabo

Szabo explores the pattern of “separation of duties” as a fundamental security principle, showing how dividing critical functions between multiple parties — as seen in corporate finance, government branches, and other institutions — prevents abuse of power by requiring multiple entities to collude in order to compromise the system.

“Quorum Systems” (1998) by Nick Szabo

Szabo examines quorum systems for designing multiparty protocols, showing how intersecting sets of participants can achieve Byzantine fault tolerance and secure computation beyond simple majority thresholds, providing a mathematical foundation for distributed trust.

“Interpreting Power: The Principle of Least Authority” (2005) by Nick Szabo

Szabo examines how power and authority are delegated in organizations and governments, arguing that the “principle of least authority” — giving officials no more power than absolutely necessary for their role — is essential for preventing abuse while preserving individual rights and liberties.

“The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments” (1996) by Nick Szabo

Szabo scrutinizes how mental accounting costs, the cognitive burden of evaluating small transactions, create a fundamental barrier to micropayments, arguing that the problem isn’t technical but psychological, as humans struggle to rationally assess the value proposition of frequent tiny payments.

Mempool

“Bitcoin is Time” (2021) by Gigi

Gigi examines bitcoin’s fundamental relationships with time, and how bitcoin brilliantly uses proof-of-work and its difficulty adjustments to act as a decentralized timestamp server, using the physical to sync the digital and solve the double spending problem in an independently verifiable way.

“Bitcoin is Digital Property” (2022) by Gigi

In another classic article, Gigi explores the world of virtual currency, especially in video games, and how bitcoin’s unique approach using proof-of-work gives us the first money that has true scarcity, both in the digital and the physical world.

Translations

“Steganography No Solution” in Brazilian Portuguese

“Bitcoin Miners Beware: Invalid Blocks Need Not Apply” in Brazilian Portuguese

“Speculative Attack” in Italian

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