Satoshi Index’s Content

>> January 8, 2020

>> Blog Post #8

What should you expect to find on this website?

My goal is to build content around topics that interest me. I want to write, collect, organize and get creative.

Fields you should see regularly covered include social sciences, politics, current affairs. There is no set limit on the various topics I might touch on, but do expect to read a lot about Bitcoin, liberty, privacy, education – with a heavy focus on educating children – money, critical thinking, risks, etc.…

At first, you will probably only see blog posts as I get accustomed to this new writing enterprise. However, in time I do have a few ideas to present content in a few other formats that I hope will be of interest.

I’m also looking forward for opportunities of discussing certain of these themes with anyone interested. I guess group study is a thing and I’ve never tried it. If there is any topic you’d be interested in, please let me know if the comments.

Introducing Satoshi Index

>> 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.