Several months ago I read most of the bitcoin C++ code. I wasn’t trying to suss out the plot, just reading for dialect and stage directions. Those are thoroughly familiar, so the author must have picked up programming the same way I did, by absorption and experience, not by Computer Science training.
Now, motivated by the MacOS hullabaloo, I finally read the White Paper. It was definitely written by the same person with the same style. At this level the plot and motives are somewhat clearer.
The personality also comes through more clearly in text. American, not British. Democrat, not Repooflican. More business background than academic background. (Repoofs and academics at that time wrote in Grammarese. The tendency has faded somewhat since then.) The user is he, not one or she/he/ve/um/57 varieties.
First guess about motive, with low confidence: Bitcoin was not meant to supersede banks. It was meant as an attractive replacement for hawala, a system that runs outside of banks.
Taking one step back, why did CIA want to replace hawala? In 2008 CIA was mainly interested in recruiting and cultivating Islamic “terrorists”. If the “terrorists” were exchanging money on the web instead of through PERSONAL TRUST, Deepstate could monitor and modify and redirect the transactions. The white paper focuses heavily on methods of avoiding “attackers”, which means CIA intended to attack and subvert by methods not in the code.
Why was it supposed to be attractive? Here I’m on more solid ground. Alienated young men are introverts by automatic definition. Popular people may lead radical movements (see Jesus) but popular people don’t need to join radical movements. Introverts are often engineer types, and al-Qaeda was specifically a network of engineers founded by an engineer.
Introverts would be uncomfortable with the personal interactions needed for hawala, especially in a criminal environment. Pro criminals are extreme extroverts. CIA offered a decentralized bank JUST FOR INTROVERTS! Packed full of delicious math and code! OH BOY, MY FAVORITE!
It didn’t succeed in Islamic circles. Perhaps it wasn’t seriously tried there. By 2013, when bitcoin ‘went public’, CIA was moving its recruitment and cultivation away from Islam and toward secular young men of the same personality.
Polistra's Mill 