Rostrum’s Law Review ISSN: 2321 - 3787
not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.‛viii Thus, Nakamoto’s ideologies in creating Bitcoins would seem to be entirely political. Supporting this argument is the fact that he introduced the currency just a few months after the collapse of the global banking sector. ix His Bitcoin software would allow its users to send money over the internet directly to each other without an intermediary, and no outside party could create Bitcoins, x entirely cutting out the role of the central banks and governments in online transactions. As Nakamoto said, ‚everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust‛.xi Furthermore, unlike the banks and governments which can print more money whenever they deem fit, the bots that are currently creating Bitcoins are supposed to stop doing so in or around the year 2140 according to their programming itself. xii And unlike fiat currencies, whose value is derived through regulation or law and underwritten by the state, Bitcoins derive their value through the simple principles of supply and demand – they have no intrinsic value and no backing, and their value depends entirely on what people are willing to trade for them. Nakamoto had created the first working cryptocurrency, making it as different from the existing fiat currencies as possible. It was meant to be an alternative to them, a new method of transaction, entirely free of government control, and, perhaps a challenge to it. It was to challenge the governments, to make people rethink the existing economic systems, to question their faith in it. And the fear that Klabnik notes in his article, is a sign that it is succeeding.
A COMMENT ON BITCOINS , AND ANONYMITY There are two essential problems that digital currencies had always faced - doublespending, and hacking. What is to stop someone from creating a copy of the data of their digital currency and spending it again, and what is to stop a hacker or a group of hackers from hacking the Bitcoin code?
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