Dan Held almost gets Satoshi’s Vision correct

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Dan Held may be a notable cryptocurrency veteran and a former executive with Blockchain.com, but several recent Twitter posts offering his take on digital currencies and, in particular, the interpretation of the original Satoshi’s Vision miss the mark. Yes, digital currencies could be an “alternative to banks” and no, Satoshi’s Vision is not “a silly endeavor.”

In a tweet taken from a Medium post he authored, Held (who goes by “Dan Hedl”) stated, “1/ Satoshi’s Vision™ is a silly endeavor, as it doesn’t matter what it was, we are where we are now. However, those pushing the ‘Bitcoin was first made for payments’ narrative insist on cherry-picking sentences from the white paper and forum posts to champion their perspective.”

In reality, that’s exactly why Bitcoin Core (BTC) was created – to offer a different form of payments. The abstract from Satoshi’s white paper even begins by explaining that this was its purpose. It reads, “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another…”

To state that “we are where we are now” is to ignore the bigger picture. We are where we are now because BTC, for a number of reasons, saw its price skyrocket in less than 12 months, leading many to expect continued gains. They poured their fiat into the crypto ecosystem, hoping to see returns that are only the subject of dreams. However, as has been evident since money was first created, an economic system is fluid – we are where we are now, but we aren’t where we’re going to be once digital currencies receive further adoption.

Held also states, “With the 2008 financial crisis, trust had been lost in a world that ran on trust. Bitcoin was launched in a time of absolute necessity, Satoshi planted the seed at precisely the right moment.” That is absolutely correct. The timing could not have been better. However, the financial crisis was crucial only in the sense of the timing of BTC’s introduction; not an impetus for its creation.

It’s not a legitimate comparison to look at cryptocurrencies in relation to banking. Just the opposite, Satoshi argued that digital currencies would completely forego banks – hence the “peer-to-peer” description – and allow individuals to control their own financial assets. The financial crisis was, in part, a result of banks overextending themselves, exploiting customer-held assets as much as five-fold. This cannot be sustained for any significant amount of time.

Cryptocurrencies give control of money back to the people. When used intelligently, it can be the ultimate form of cash – instant payments to virtually anyone in any part of the world, extremely low transaction fees ($8000 in BTC can be sent in a matter of minutes for less than $1), private transactions and the security that funds cannot be misused.

Cryptocurrency is not “where we are” today; it is evolving and gaining significant support. It took almost 100 years for the U.S. dollar to be recognized on a global stage; crypto has made substantially more progress in the short ten years it has been around.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) is the only digital currency to understand why crypto is here and why it is so important to a global economy. The currency has been developed, and will continue to be developed, to ensure that Satoshi’s Vision – the vision that was born mature – lives on and helps to give everyone better control of their own money.

https://youtu.be/gBb9FSxfyVs