>> January 7, 2020
>> Blog Post #7
I’ve taken a little time to introduce myself
and some of the motivations I had for writing here in this public space that I have
named Satoshi Index. But I haven’t yet explained what Satoshi Index is and what
I have in store for this site.
Satoshi’s renown as a first name has probably
risen incredibly over the past 11 years as it is the name of the creator of very
popular Bitcoin.
However, this is not a site about either
Satoshi Nakamoto or Bitcoin. Rather it is a site that will most certainly
contain a significant bitcoin content, but also a lot of elements that have not
direct link to it.
So why did I choose this name?
First, I’ll have to admit that it was relatively
random and didn’t really know where I was going with.
Second, I instantly was happy that it was a
.com and fairly easy to recognize or memorize, or at least I have hopes it is.
Third, it felt like a nice testament of what
bitcoin symbolizes for me personally. Let me explain this a little more.
A few years ago, I went back to school as I felt
I needed to expand my horizon quite a bit and felt board at work. Something was
missing even though I did not put specific words on it. As a lot of things in
my life, the decision to go back to school was mainly due to luck. Indeed, while
I had since the end of college thought that one day, I would probably be happy to
come back to school, it wasn’t something that I was pursuing at that specific
time at all. While a pleasant thought to contemplate, I could have very well
taken the idea of going back to school to study geopolitics – something that
has always interested me greatly – to my grave. Actually, the odds of the idea
remaining exactly that, just an idea were disproportionately high.
But one night, while reading the paper by the
fireplace, I came across an ad for a new program being launched in a prestigious
school and centered around digital transformation. Its content and the way it was
structured was extremely compelling. I applied the next day.
Now I’ve never been a fan of school. I had always
been a very average student at best and I’m not sure this time was any
different. However, this time around I actually enjoyed the school experience
tremendously.
Most of the professors were absolutely fascinating
and getting back to learning was at that time an incredible breath of fresh
air. I’m not going to expand on the reasons of all of this too much as it
really seems to me that it’s a mix of the program’s quality, being around
people I didn’t know but who just like me we very willing to learn and discuss,
and breaking my routine. But one thing I know for sure is that it felt like an
awakening.
Long story short, as part of the program each
student had to write a thesis, and you might have guessed by know, the topic of
mine was Bitcoin. I had heard about bitcoin and blockchain in the news but had
never understood what it was exactly. But I started reading about it more
during the program as I wanted to pick a research topic that was both current
and had some future potential.
There are two elements to the way I approached
bitcoin that probably played a large role in me falling down the rabbit hole.
The first element is that I started my research
in a slightly historical way, focusing on the people that either created, or
participated in the beginnings of Bitcoin, or their forefathers. I quickly
ended up learning about the cypherpunks and was thoroughly impressed.
The second element is that the technicality of
bitcoin was clearly above my paygrade and not understanding how it worked was
bothering me. I read and read more, but it still escaped me. I found the same
information over and over again in every newspaper or online article and ended
up determining that the people writing these probably didn’t understand much
more than I did. So, what I did was to a local bitcoin meetup to see if I could
meet people who could explain it better to me. And once again, I got lucky. The
people I met were bitcoiners. They were smart, knowledgeable, willing to share
their love of bitcoin and a couple of them were actually extremely clear in
their explanations. I came back for the next meetup and the next one after that
and ended up not missing a single one in the next couple years. I was hooked.
Learning so much, meeting so many new faces,
opening my mind about a few topics along the way made me feel like I had just
awakened from a very long slumber. I haven’t gone back to sleep since. And I hope
I never will, because I have renewed energy and interests. Many of them go way
beyond bitcoin or have nothing to do with it.
But Bitcoin is a passion and it is a great
symbol of some of the changes that happened in me and that mean so much to me.
Satoshi Index should therefore be seen as an homage
to the people who defended and still defend certain ideals and values whoever
they may be. Satoshi is one (or maybe several) but there are others that I
admire and should be included in that homage.
My homage is simple, you contributed to wake me
up at a certain point in my life and for that I sincerely thank you.
What I do here, is my own and I claim no
lineage whatsoever.
I guess I rambled on enough in this post that I
will actually leave the presentation of what I will be doing to tomorrow…
Let’s just focus on the homage for this one.
