Bitcoin inventor Dr. Craig Wright on education and the West

Satoshi Nakamoto is said to be a pseudonymous cryptographer and coder who just somehow happened to have invented Bitcoin. However, since Dr. Craig Wright is publicly acknowledged as the man behind the pseudonym which was confirmed by the outcome of the Kleiman v Wright court case, we have to ask ourselves how exactly Dr. Wright was able to invent Bitcoin. 

In this video, Bitcoin entrepreneur Ryan X. Charles described Dr. Wright as “a genius with 17 degrees.” Since the video is from 2019, we would have to add several more degrees nowadays because Dr. Wright is still enrolled at plenty of universities at the same time, getting more and more degrees each year. But Charles is correct: the creator of Bitcoin is not just the inventor of Bitcoin, but educated interdisciplinary in other fields as well.

Reason enough for Joel Dalais from the MetaNet ICU and myself to have caught up with Dr. Wright to discuss what he spends much of his time, energy, and resources on: education!

Bitcoin and a technology-driven Victorian culture—wait, what?

Whatever Dr. Wright video you may dig up, you will find that mentioning one topic to him ends up in sparks of cross-references, going back in history, touching the root of things, and bringing it back to the times we live in. When we started discussing education with Dr. Wright, we quickly came to the topics of meritocracy, Chinese education back then and today, a future technology-driven Victorian culture, and Washington’s refusal to be a king.

However, what really caught my attention was when Dr. Wright mentioned the reason for the kind of decline in Western education. Not being saturated and lazy Western people, not watching Netflix, but foremost World War I. 

“In 1918, the majority of people who were supposed to be actually educated and go to Cambridge and Oxford—we grabbed them and sent them and basically made them run at machine guns, thinking that was a good idea (…). 80% of the educated class in Britain died. (…) Can you imagine taking all of that generation, all of the people who were educated and then having to replace them and promote someone who was not educated?” Dr. Wright said.

Good points. Dr. Wright then invited Dalais and me to imagine a world that is culture-wise Victorian, but with high-end technology such as Bitcoin. That brings you to a hierarchy, a meritocracy, but with decent access for everyone to achieve more by using technology and information. Right now, we also have a hierarchy in this world, but it is not transparent and pretty much denies access. Dr. Wright mentioned that elites are not the problem. Having an elite class is necessary—but the elites have to be held accountable for their actions, which is not happening sufficiently nowadays.

Bitcoin, education, and democratic republics 

Dr. Wright seems to be worried about education in Western countries. In his recently published article “Constitutional Design Proposal,” he writes:

“The modern secular state has created a secular religion and replaced many aspects of Christianity with scientism. In part, secular religions such as scientism have grown with the power of the press and accelerated because of social media. For a democratic republic to work well, the free media must be based and founded on truth, and the people must be educated. The debate around the role of journalism and democracy is not a new one. Equally, education has been considered as a crucial part of the democratic process since the foundation of the United States. It has been recognised for a century now that education presents a necessary foundation for the development of citizenship in a democracy. The progressive movement has long been seeking to erode this role of education in the United States. The process of eroding civic education has not abated.”

However, Bitcoin, as in the BSV blockchain, is able to help with all of this. Social media is going to change by using Bitcoin to value data. No more “free content” that ends up being paid deception by the hidden and rotten advertisement model of Silicon Valley. Education as data will be able to be valued by society using Bitcoin. Democratic republics get what they need to thrive: a public ledger that records facts. Exciting times ahead.

Bitcoin needs education, and the world needs Bitcoin

Still questioning whether Dr. Wright “has some education”? Have a look at these topics and tell us again how Satoshi Nakamoto is just a cryptographer and coder:

  • Dr. Wright on chaos and order in religion
  • Bitcoin as an informational commodity explained by Dr. Wright
  • Satoshi Nakamoto commenting on archaeology and money as memory
  • Bitcoin as a unilateral contractual offer by Dr. Wright
  • Dr. Wright on Trickle-Down theory

Bitcoin is not just code. Bitcoin is economics and works within existing law. No wonder people think Bitcoin is digital gold—which it definitely is not—because to understand Bitcoin as intended by the inventor, one needs to have a pretty wide education that covers various disciplines.

However, Bitcoin is not complicated. The Bitcoin confusion of the past years was a commercial attack launched against Dr. Wright in order to hinder Bitcoin from prospering economically. This will end now, though. People will be able to use Bitcoin as it was meant to be used by Satoshi Nakamoto: as cash, with ultra-low transaction fees, to value data and all of it at scale.

Watch: CoinGeek New York Dr. Craig Wright’s keynote speech, Set in Stone: What is a Commodity?

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