system
running.
An
Argentinian security expert,
Sergio Lerner, had done a
thorough study tracing the
patterns of Satoshi’s mining
during
that
time
and
concluded
that
he
had
captured well over a million
Bitcoins, worth nearly $1
billion now. More impressive
than that, though, was the
security expert’s conclusion,
from a careful analysis of the
blockchain, that Satoshi had
never spent a single one of
the Bitcoins he had created.
His work in creating the
system really did seem to be a
selfless act.
In addition to what the
day
had
revealed
about
Satoshi
Nakamoto,
the
incident suggested that the
identity of Satoshi Nakamoto
really didn’t matter much. For
a few hours on the morning
of March 6, the world had
believed that the creator of
Bitcoin
was
an
aging
libertarian and model-train
enthusiast living with his
mother. The price of Bitcoin
didn’t move much in either
direction.
The
Bitcoin
protocol was now maintained
by Gavin Andresen and a
team of developers and the
code spoke for itself. Even if
Satoshi
had
returned,
it
seemed he wouldn’t have
much to do.
FOR THE FUTURE of Satoshi’s
creation, the more important
event on March 6 was one
that few people knew took
place. Just hours after the
Newsweek headline started
making its way around the
Internet, four men took the
stage at an auditorium in the
New York headquarters of
the
Wall
Street
giant
Goldman Sachs.
This
was
a
private
conference for some of the
bank’s most powerful hedge
fund clients. In addition to
appearances
from
former
New
York
City
mayor
Michael
Bloomberg,
the
former head of the Bank of
England, and the former
president of the World Bank,
Goldman had put together a
four-person panel to educate
its
clients
on
virtual
currencies. The panel was led
by the cohead of technology
at Goldman, a tall, bald
physics PhD named Paul
Walker.
He
opened
the
fireside chat by describing the
two things about Bitcoin that
everyone seemed to be able to
agree on: “It’s something on
the internet that seems to be
worth money, and it seems to
have been invented by a
mysterious
person.”
But,
Walker said, in a joking
reference to the morning’s
story from Newsweek, “the
last part may no longer be
true.”
Sitting next to Walker
were Barry Silbert and Chris
Larsen. Larsen was the man
Jed McCaleb had brought on
to run his new cryptocurrency
startup, Ripple. Most men in
the room were wearing ties,
but in true Silicon Valley
style, Larsen and Silbert were
not. The fourth member of
the panel was the former head
of the Financial Crimes
Enforcement
Network,
or
FinCen, James Freis.
Barry asked how many
people in the room were
skeptical
about
virtual
currencies,
and
a
good
majority of them put their
hands up. Barry noted how
different this gathering was
from the elite circles on the
West Coast, where at recent
events
he’d
attended
a
minority of the participants
had expressed skepticism.
Barry said it reminded him of
the early days of the Internet
when everyone in the tech
industry was leaving good
jobs to try to cash in on the
new idea.
“It’s either going to
change
everything,
or
nothing,” Silbert said.
To appeal to all the
financial minds in the room,
Larsen said that all the early
problems surrounding Bitcoin
had obscured the fact that the
technology
underlying
it
made something possible that
had never been possible
before.
“The world now knows
how to confirm financial
transactions without a central
operator,” he said.
It was, though, Walker,
the high-ranking Goldman
executive, who provided the
most encouraging comments
about the technology. He said
the
conceptual
advances
made by Bitcoin weren’t just
clever; they were useful in
ways that could influence the
future financial system. He
had obviously been spending
a lot of time studying this and
was clearly impressed by
what he saw. He suggested
that
Goldman
was
not
planning to buy or sell
Bitcoins, but he indicated that
the bank was taking a hard
look at how the blockchain
might be used to change basic
things about how banks do
business. It currently took the
bank three or so days to settle
stock trades. What if that
could happen instantly and be
recorded on a blockchain for
everyone to see?
Barry Silbert and Chris
Larsen were beaming. Few
things could help a financial
cause more than getting the
imprimatur of the firm known
as “the smartest on Wall
Street,” a bank renowned for
always seeing what was
coming around the next
corner and making the right
bets. Walker wasn’t making
any official announcements,
but everyone could see the
Goldman executive was into
this.
Walker
reflected
an
increasingly
widespread
fascination in financial circles
with the blockchain concept
underlying
the
Bitcoin
technology. Many bankers
had begun to understand what
Gavin Andresen had seen
back in 2010 when he first
became entranced by the idea
of a financial network with no
single point of failure. For
banks that were terrified of
cyber attacks, the idea of a
payment network that could
keep running even if one
player, or one set of servers,
got taken out was incredibly
attractive. More broadly, the
banks were waking up to
several increasingly viable
efforts to decentralize finance
and take business that had
belonged to the big banks.
Crowdfunding
companies
like Kickstarter, and peer-to-
peer lending services like
Lending Club, were trying to
directly connect borrowers
and savers, so that a bank was
not
necessary.
The
blockchain seemed to present
a decentralized alternative to
an even more basic part of the
banking industry’s business
—payments.
The banks were notably
not becoming any more