When Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the white paper in 2008, he was actually answering three fundamental questions:

  1. How to prevent counterfeiting in electronic cash? (to avoid you copying and pasting 100 times)

  2. How to keep accounts without a bank? (Do transactions in the vegetable market need a notary?)

  3. How to stop bad actors from causing trouble? (For example, if someone deliberately gives fake money)

These three questions troubled the cryptography community for 20 years, until Bitcoin provided a disruptive answer.

II. The 'Vegetable Market Economics' of Bitcoin

Imagine a vegetable market without an administrator, how the vendors spontaneously maintain transaction order:

  1. Public Ledger: Every stall has a loudspeaker, and every transaction (like Old Wang selling potatoes for 5 yuan) will be broadcasted by the loudspeaker, with all vendors keeping synchronized accounts

  2. Stamp certification: Every 10 minutes, one 'stamper' is selected to stamp the transaction records of that period with an anti-counterfeit seal, binding them into a volume (this is a block)

  3. Stamping rewards: Stamping requires solving a mathematical problem, and the first person to solve it can receive a Bitcoin reward (this is mining)

Key breakthrough: Using 'broadcast + stamping + rewards' to replace banks and achieve 'trust without managers'.

Three to four core technologies

  1. Blockchain → A ledger with anti-counterfeiting numbers
    Each new ledger's homepage is stamped with the fingerprint (hash value) of the previous ledger; to tamper with an old ledger, you must redo all subsequent ledgers, which is extremely costly.

  2. Proof of Work → The 'deposit system' of stamping rights
    To gain stamping rights, a large amount of computing power must be invested (equivalent to paying a deposit). If stamps are misused, the deposit is wasted. Miners will maintain the system to earn money.

  3. P2P network → A gossip network in the market
    Each new transaction is spread by word of mouth, and it is considered valid only if confirmed by more than 51% of people, preventing private mischief.

  4. UTXO model → The 'change system' of cash transactions
    Bitcoin does not record balances, but tracks the flow path of each 'electronic bill', just like when you use 100 yuan to buy something, the process of the merchant giving you 80 yuan in change is accurately recorded.

I am Lao Wang, a traveler who has experienced several rounds of bull and bear markets in the crypto world. From being a liquidated retail investor to a trading tool developer, I want to lay bare the survival rules of the crypto world, guide you to break through the fog of the crypto world from a technical perspective, and together appreciate the starry sea that belongs to us. Are you ready?

Four, Satoshi Nakamoto's 'humanity game theory'

The most ingenious design of Bitcoin lies in using incentives to drive system security maintenance:

  • Miner: Spending real money to buy mining machines → Honest mining is more profitable

  • User: Holding Bitcoin → Hope for the system to stabilize and appreciate

  • Developer: Open source code → Modifying rules requires consensus from the entire network

This is true decentralization — not that technology cannot be destroyed, but that the cost of destroying the system far exceeds the benefits.

Five, the 'vital point and armor' of Bitcoin

Fatal weakness:

  • Slow transaction speed: 1 block every 10 minutes vs Alipay's tens of thousands of transactions per second

  • Energy controversy: The global electricity consumption of mining machines exceeds that of the entire country of Finland

  • Private key risk: Losing a private key = losing money, there is no loss reporting service

Invincible armor:

  • Anti-censorship: Bitcoin cannot be eliminated by shutting down servers

  • Anti-inflation: The total supply of 21 million coins is hard-coded (due to lost private keys, the available total is estimated to be no more than 15 million)

  • Anti-tampering: 16 years of operation with zero successful attacks

Six, the 'subtext' not mentioned in the white paper

Satoshi Nakamoto intentionally hid two deeper meanings:

  1. Code is law: Replacing human judges with mathematical rules

  2. The power of timestamps: Each block carries a 'historical seal', forming an irreversible arrow of time

This essentially reconstructs the characteristics of the 'physical world' in the digital world — just like you cannot make a broken cup restore itself automatically.

Seven, insights for ordinary people

  1. Trust can exist without intermediaries (banks/Alipay)

  2. The essence of value is collective consensus (both gold and Bitcoin are)

  3. The code world is devouring the physical rules

In summary: The Bitcoin white paper is not just a technical document, but also a 'declaration of a digital social experiment'. It uses cryptography + economics + game theory to build a 'trust power station' in the virtual world — this is the true starting point of the blockchain revolution.

$BTC

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One tree cannot form a boat, a lone sail cannot navigate far! In this circle, if you do not have a good circle, and do not have first-hand information from the crypto world, then I suggest you follow Lao Wang, who will help you get a ride to shore. Welcome to join the team!!!