Did Satoshi Model Bitcoin After Gold? Expert Willy Woo Shares Take

Prominent trader and Bitcoiner Willy Woo has commented on a recent statement made by another trader, Kashyap Sriram, about gold and BTC, and whether Satoshi copied Bitcoin’s model from that of gold.

Willy Woo also elaborated on whether a hypothetical shutdown of the Bitcoin mining network is an “amazing” idea.

Bitcoin vs. gold – Is that Satoshi’s plan?

Kashyap Sriram claimed that when Satoshi was working on Bitcoin, he kept gold in mind. In particular, the Bitcoin creator even used the word “mining” to describe a “coinbase transaction” (the first transaction in every new block started on the network) since “every new block begins with a miner reward.”

However, Sriram stated, there is a key difference between gold mining and Bitcoin mining. This trader believes that “if all the gold miners ceased operations today, gold will still have value,” but if all Bitcoin miners were to go offline, “the value of Bitcoin goes to zero.”

He explains this hypothesis as follows: “All bitcoin HODLers will own is an unspent transaction output on a defunct chain, which can never be transferred or spent.” He reckons that this is a real prospect for BTC since the entire Bitcoin network is under the control of 11 mining pools. Besides, he added that “Bitcoin mining is super capital intensive, highly concentrated, and therefore, extremely vulnerable.” He claimed that for this reason “gold is making all-time highs, Bitcoin isn’t.”

Willy Woo on Bitcoin mining hypothetical shut-off

Sriram does not believe in decentralization in Bitcoin, calling it “a myth.” The $1.2 trillion market capitalization of the leading crypto, he stated, is based on “a mining network worth around $25 billion,” which is “a mere 40% of the market cap of gold miner Newmont NEM.”

“The Bitcoin network is very, very fragile and at the mercy of a few giants,” Kashyap Sriram stated, adding that “gold has won the battle” because he believes gold mining to be completely decentralized and gold does not rely as much on the mining industry as Bitcoin does.

Ok that would be amazing. I’d fire up my laptop and mine myself some BTC and of course I’d be the only one because everyone else is too fragile to think about it.

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) August 19, 2024

Willy Woo weighed in to comment on this. He called the hypothetical situation of all Bitcoin miners suddenly going offline “amazing.” In this case, he stated, he would be able to start mining BTC himself and mine a bag of Bitcoins.

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