Astral Codex Ten

Satoshi

5 min read

Satoshi

Article

Satoshi is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between February 07, 2022 and December 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “weren’t exactly at Satoshi levels of opsec”; “Satoshi is a genius, thank goodness he did this”; “when Satoshi invents Bitcoin and it becomes the hot new thing”. It most often appears alongside Bitcoin, crypto, cryptocurrency.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: February 07, 2022
  • Last seen: December 12, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Passage Of Polymarket
February 07, 2022 · Original source
For its part, Polymarket was an easy target. Despite “decentralized” being the fourth word on their website, they weren’t exactly at Satoshi levels of opsec. They had a normal identifiable guy as CEO, a normal headquarters building in New York City, and they did normal business things like raise millions of dollars in seed funding.
Inline links: raise millions of dollars in seed funding
Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds
April 04, 2022 · Original source
So if you look at eg the invention of Bitcoin, you could say “this is boring, it’s just causing tech industry profits to follow the normal predicted growth pattern after smartphones petered out, no need to update here.” Or you could say “actually this is a groundbreaking new invention that is making trillions of dollars, Satoshi is a genius, thank goodness he did this or else the tech industry would have crashed”.
One reason to prefer the second story is that tech industry profits probably won’t keep going up continuously forever. Global population kept going up at a fixed rate for tens of thousands of years, then stopped in 1960 (it had to stop sometime or we would have had infinite people in 2026). US GDP goes up at a pretty constant rate, but I assume Roman GDP did too, before it stopped and reversed. So when Satoshi invents Bitcoin and it becomes the hot new thing, even though it only continues the trend, you’ve learned important new information: namely, that the trend does continue, at least for one more cycle.
Inline links: infinite people in 2026
The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash
November 16, 2022 · Original source
The reason cryptocurrency has changed the world, and will continue changing the world, is not because a fucking Shiba inu coin went 10,000%X because a narcissistic man-baby tweeted about it. It's because decentralized sound money has value. I've seen crypto build up from literally nothing. Even buying bitcoin was next to impossible back then. I mined BTC with my laptop at first. I stopped because I "only" mined 5 BTC per night, and it was using too much power. My first BTC I ever bought was when I met a fat dude wearing a Super Mario Brothers T-shirt at Home Depot. We met in the garden section and sat on a bench to talk about how bitcoin worked, how it was going to change the world, and how to transfer between wallets. I still have the wallet I setup and used to buy that BTC from him. Through all the craziness that has happened in the crypto space over the past 12 years, I have always been able to access my private wallets. Store your crypto in your own cold storage wallet unless you are actively trading. The moment you "lend" your coins out to someone for yields, it's already as good as gone. You've missed the entire point that Satoshi tried to get across so many years ago. Not your keys, not your coins. If you lost money in this shitshow, don't worry. This will all pass, and we will all be stronger for it. Just learn from it all and move on. Buy BTC and ETH, hold it in your cold storage wallets, and wait for the next bull cycle. Watch out for thieves and frauds trying to convince you into "the next big coin." They are all liars and thieves. Real cryptocurrency will endure. For it to really flourish, the shitcoin casinos must die. If you buy some new fucking Frodo Baggins faced shitcoin in the future and lose it all, you only have yourself to blame.
Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party
December 12, 2023 · Original source
“Did you say Sam Altman?” asks a woman who has apparently been lurking at the edge of your conversation. “Because I think I’ve got it all figured out. The accelerationist conspiracy, the effective altruist conspiracy, and the Winklevoss conspiracy all made their move against Sam at the exact same time and ended up colliding with each other. In the chaos, Sam, Greg, and the Turkish dwarf were able to escape safely to Redmond. The only part I still don’t understand is - which of them was Satoshi?”