Dr. Craig Wright: “There are no forks”

Dr. Craig Wright: ‘There are no forks’

Each week, we get another peek into the brilliant mind of Dr. Craig Wright, and the valuable information gained is always tremendous. This week, nChain’s chief scientist published a piece called The myth of forks, and he covers many important topics, not the least of which was the hijacking of Bitcoin.

He begins by describing the original vision of Bitcoin, which was to be a private, but not anonymous, digital currency. Anarchists and socialists parading as libertarians and capitalists corrupted that view to be something it wasn’t meant to be. They somehow got the idea that Bitcoin could lead to a world with no laws or government.

That just won’t work though, as Wright points out that those elements of civilization are necessary to fostering complex organizations. He also points out that Bitcoin alone could not create a Utopia, as only governments can truly combat criminality.

He then tells an important story of the early days of Bitcoin, his struggles to work on the code and vision of the system, and his relationship with Hal Finney. Wright faced much adversity during this time, facing tax audits, disagreements with Finney, and working with limited code. Finney was a great help in working on the code, but disagreement started over what Bitcoin would become. Finney wanted a second layer.

Then came hard times, and more struggle with his friend Dave Kleiman. Wright was obsessed on his work, Dave’s health was fading, and money wasn’t always easy to come by. But what Wright learned from these times was that only the original vision of Bitcoin would work. Utopian ideas and second layers would fall apart, with time.

Because of those monetary struggles, Wright couldn’t protect Bitcoin at that time. He couldn’t patent the ideas that made it work, and safeguard it against a future usurping developer. What he had though, was faith, writing, “I always believed that if Bitcoin would eventually scale enough for my ideas to have a chance to succeed, nothing could stop it.”

Then to the heart of the subject, “There are no forks.” What has become Bitcoin Core (BTC) isn’t a fork of the original Bitcoin, “It was the creation of a completely new system that simply copied the existing coin holders and ledger and modified the system.”

Furthermore, he explains exactly why there’s no reason to have more than one blockchain, or more than one Bitcoin. He summarizes, “They are attempting simply to take the network effect of Bitcoin and steal it into their experiment.”

He doesn’t expect that to happen with any of his ideas since. Nearly 700 pieces of intellectual property have been patented, and there are many more on the way. That will allow Bitcoin, reborn as Bitcoin SV (BSV) to thrive, with no cheap rip-offs accepted as an alternative.

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