Free Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper Page B

became particularly pronounced after Bitcoin’s next big jump into the spotlight. In November, WikiLeaks, the organization founded by a regular participant in the old Cypherpunk movement, Julian Assange, released a vast trove of confidentialAmerican diplomatic documents that revealed previously secret operations around the world. The large credit card companies and PayPal came under immediate political pressure to cut off donations to WikiLeaks, which they did in early December, in what became known as the WikiLeaks blockade.
    This move pointed to the potentially troubling nexus between the financial industry and the government. If politicians didn’t like the ideas of a particular group, government officials could ask banks and credit card networks to deny the unpopular group access to the financial system, often without requiring any judicial approval. The financial industry seemed to provide politicians with an extralegal way to crack down on dissent.
    The WikiLeaks blockade went to the core of some of the concerns that had motivated the original Cypherpunks. Bitcoin, in turn, seemed to have the potential to counteract the problem. Each person on the network controlled his or her coins with his or her private key. There was no central organization that could freeze a person’s Bitcoin address or stop coins from being sent from a particular address.
    A few days after the WikiLeaks blockade began, PCWorld wrote a widely circulated story that noted the obvious utility of Bitcoin in the situation:“Nobody can stop the Bitcoin system or censor it, short of turning off the entire Internet. If WikiLeaks had requested Bitcoins then they would have received their donations without a second thought.”
    It wasn’t clear if Bitcoin could actually be used in this particular instance, but whatever the practical possibilities, the blockade was helping elevate the debate around Bitcoin beyond the rather narrow issues of privacy and government money-printing that had been dominant in the early days. Here was a broader philosophical issue that could attract a wider audience, and the forums were full of new members who had been drawn in by the attention. Onenew user, a young man in England named Amir Taaki, proposed making Bitcoin donations to WikiLeaks. Amir argued this could raise Bitcoin’s profile at the same time that it could help WikiLeaks raise money.
    This kicked off a vigorous debate on the forum. A number of programmers worried that the Bitcoin network was not ready for all the traffic—and government scrutiny—that might come if it started to be used for controversial donations.
    â€œIt is extraordinarily unwise to make Bitcoin such a highly visible target, at such an early stage in this project. There could be a lot of ‘collateral damage’ in the Bitcoin community while you make your principled stand,” one programmer wrote.
    Satoshi eventually ended the debate. When someone on the forum wrote, “Bring it on,” Satoshi responded forcefully:
    No, don’t “bring it on.”
    The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way.
    I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.
    This was enough to convince Amir.
    â€œI’ve done a U-turn on my earlier view and agree. Let’s protect and care for Bitcoin until she leaves her nursery onto the economic killing fields.”
    This was one of an ever-diminishing number of communications from Satoshi during the fall of 2010. Messages from both Satoshi and Martti had been increasingly rare. In Martti’s case, after a year of working on Bitcoin free, he needed a regular source of income. In September, two months after the Slashdot story, hetook a full-time job with a firm that analyzed social-media