Jeff Garzik, a close colleague of Satoshi Nakamoto, said that although Bitcoin may not have reached its original goal of being used as a private currency, there is ”no question” of its survival.
Garzik, who until 2014 was the third largest contributor to Bitcoin’s code, was responsible for giving away a developer’s bounty to encourage more workers onto the software in the early days of the currency, around seven years ago. He donated 15,678 bitcoins of his own funds, valued at over USD 100 million in today’s prices.
When Bloomberg probed him asking if he regretted this decision, the answer was clear: ”It was a question whether this thing would survive at all. And there’s no question of that today.”
While Garzik is proud of the strides Bitcoin has made, he admits that it has not become the private money he and Nakamoto had envisioned; recent analysis even suggests that its use in commerce is decreasing. The early days, Garzik says, were aimed at getting Bitcoin accepted by merchants, but now trends show it’s been treated more like an asset such as gold.
The software developer happily accepts this outcome, however, saying “It is an organism, it’s something that evolves,” calling its store-of-value ability an ”[unquestionable] success.”
In 2016 disputes between miners and developers over how to scale the network promoted Garzik to give up coding for Bitcoin, moving on to work on projects including cryptocurrency payment solution BitPay and blockchain enterprise service Bloq Inc.
Who is the real Nakamoto?
Kleiman is a former Florida sheriff officer turned computer forensics expert who passed away in 2013.
His estate is currently involved in a lawsuit with Craig Wright over Wright’s claim to be the real Nakamoto, with representatives of Kleiman alleging he stole both intellectual property and billions of dollars in Bitcoin from him.
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