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Comment by jes5199 | Hacker News Reader

Satoshi's motivations are interesting to me. What was he/she/they actually trying to accomplish by creating bitcoin? Were they really hoping to anonymously buy things? Or were they trying to get rich? Or were they trying to get geeks to commit to a pseudonymous-but-public cryptocurrency to prevent a zerocoin-style really-anonymous currency from being developed? Or were they trying to get a distributed computing project going to really test the strength of sha256? Or were they trying to sabotage Folding@home and distributed.net?

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"Nakamoto’s work appears to be politically motivated, as quoted: “Yes, [we will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography,] but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years. Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.” – Satoshi Nakamoto “[Bitcoin is] very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m better with code than with words though.” – Satoshi Nakamoto In the Bitcoin network’s transaction database, the original entry has a note by Nakamoto that reads as: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” Some claim this quote implies Nakamoto had great concern or contempt for the current central banking system."

http://bitcoinreport.com/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto/

But isn't that also exactly how someone would talk if they wanted to manipulate technolibertarians into joining a project?

Isn't the simpler explanation more likely?

Maybe! But by that metric, it would be impossible to catch scams - isn't it always simpler to assume that everyone is telling the truth?

He invented something a lot of geeks had been dreaming about for a long time. That alone is probably incentive enough.

You're over thinking this based on current information and developments.Seems pretty clear that the primary (and originally only) motivation was to create a decentralized cryptocurrency, just to show that it is feasible and practical, and for the satisfaction to see one's work have an impact.

Should Bitcoin succeed, that makes an anonymous crytptocurrency more likely in the future, not less.

If we have one main cryptocurrency, we'll also have a number of secondary ones, filling various niches.

For some reason, a lot of criticism of bitcoin seems to focus on it becoming the sole currency, but that's never going to be the case.

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