Bitcoin, the King of Coins

Contribution by Peter

Today, the Netherlands turns orange once again. Streets fill up with blankets spread on the ground, children sell toys they refused to part with just yesterday, parents drink lukewarm coffee from paper cups, and somewhere an out-of-tune violin plays. On King's Day, we put ourselves up for sale.

The word king has long since outgrown its royal origins. In sports, there's the marquee event — the "king's discipline." In music, Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. And in the financial world, one adage has held for decades: cash is king.

The crypto world has its own king too. Since day one, bitcoin has sat at the top. However you look at it — market cap, name recognition, security, liquidity, or trust — bitcoin towers above everything else. It's no surprise, then, that for most people outside the industry, bitcoin is still synonymous with crypto. Ask someone on the street to name a cryptocurrency, and the answer usually begins and ends with bitcoin.

Seventeen years ago, that was anything but a given. The crypto market is a permanent laboratory. For years, new challengers popped up left, right, and center. Faster, cheaper, smarter, more flexible, greener, more scalable, or more programmable. Always with a narrative about why bitcoin was obsolete.

There was sometimes a kernel of truth in that. Bitcoin moves slowly, and yes, changes don't come easily. For those who want to build fast, bitcoin can feel like an old castle with thick walls and a drawbridge that's usually raised.

But it's precisely that sluggishness that turns out to be a form of protection. Bitcoin doesn't change because someone has a good idea, and certainly not because someone is in a hurry. That keeps out attacks from the outside, but also whims from within.

Previous pretenders to the throne learned this the hard way. Bitcoin Cash was supposed to replace bitcoin with bigger blocks. Bitcoin SV claimed to be closer to Satoshi's original vision. Countless altcoins promised a better version of digital money. There was no shortage of attention for these projects, and a few even achieved serious market valuations. But none ever truly dethroned bitcoin.

And now... the next rebel has risen: eCash.

Paul Sztorc wants a new bitcoin descendant to see the light of day in August. eCash is meant to enable features that Sztorc has been trying to push through bitcoin's front door for years. Chief among them is the introduction of sidechains — separate networks that are linked to bitcoin. These could be used for specific applications without requiring changes to the main network itself. According to Sztorc, bitcoin has hit a technological dead end and a new coin is needed to move forward.

The reception has been, to put it kindly, frosty. Many bitcoiners see it as old wine in a new orange cup. Yet another hard fork with big promises, technical complexity, and a community already bickering over the name, security, and governance. Especially controversial is the plan to redistribute some of the bitcoins attributed to Satoshi to fund the project. A small group of supporters finds it useful for bitcoin to face competition and views eCash as a free dividend.

And so eCash fits neatly into a long tradition of "bitcoin successors" that march onto the palace square with great fanfare.

Perhaps eCash contains some interesting technology. Perhaps a small market will emerge. Perhaps it will earn some bitcoiners a few bucks, as with previous forks. But the bar for a new king is set higher than a whitepaper, a podcast tour, a hard fork, and a handful of finfluencers trying to sway sentiment.

That's because bitcoin is more than just technology. It's an ecosystem deeply embedded in the financial world. A global network of users, miners, developers, companies, and capital. The larger that network grows, the harder it becomes to replace. Even if a new coin has a better idea, it starts at a distance that's virtually impossible to close.

Today, the Netherlands celebrates King's Day. Next year, we'll probably do it again. Once more in orange, at the same flea markets, with the same pastries and the same music. And somewhere on a blanket, there might be a forgotten altcoin from 2026. "eCash, barely used," the tag reads. Asking price: five euros. Bidding starts at one satoshi.

More Alpha

Are you a Plus member? Then we continue with the following topics:

1. Finding Satoshi: plausible hypothesis, no smoking gun
2. Charles Schwab launches bitcoin education
3. Oil tankers need to watch out for... crypto scammers?
4. Pentagon views bitcoin as a weapon

Below that, you'll find the news snacks — a handy overview of the news that actually mattered last week.

1️⃣ Finding Satoshi: plausible hypothesis, no smoking gun

Contribution by Erik

Many of the greatest pop songs were written by duos. Is it conceivable that bitcoin, too, was the brainchild of a duo? The Lennon and McCartney of cryptography? It's not a new idea, but the way the documentary Finding Satoshi arrives at that conclusion is thorough and brings new insights to light. Without presenting hard proof, they make a compelling case that Hal Finney and Len Sassaman worked together in 2008 to launch bitcoin.

You might sigh: yet another research project about Satoshi? Just days after a widely covered piece in the New York Times concluded that Adam Back is Satoshi (see our coverage), here's yet another quest — and once again from a reputable name.

The team conducting the investigation is from the New York-based private investigation firm QRI. The researchers approach the search for Satoshi as classic detective work. They build a chain of evidence from empirical material and testimonies from experts inside and outside the crypto world. This way, they gradually narrow down the list of possible candidates.

"A Remailer Guy"

First, they reconstruct who Satoshi must have been as a person. This is the part of the documentary that devotes considerable attention to the ideals of the cypherpunks of the 1990s. As such, the documentary also serves as a solid introduction to bitcoin for newcomers, tracing the evolution of the technology. It's a crash course in the backstory (for those who want to dive deeper, read Aaron van Wirdum's excellent The Genesis Book).

Because we're dealing with a highly specialized activity at the intersection of cryptography and computer science, the list of candidates for Satoshi is limited. Adam Back once said he assumes Satoshi is a "remailer guy." Both remailers and bitcoin solve a similar problem: how do you send information over an open network without a central authority needing to know who the sender and receiver are?

On the shortlist the research team assembled after their initial investigation (Adam Back, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Len Sassaman), Adam Back, Wei Dai, and Nick Szabo are eliminated. They worked in different time zones from the one in which Satoshi was active, as evidenced by the timestamps of the email correspondence of all those individuals. Two candidates remain: Finney and Sassaman.

The documentary then zooms in on the person of Hal Finney. Three former colleagues share insights about his work and character. In 2014, Finney passed away from complications of ALS.

Hal "Running Bitcoin" Finney worked openly — not under a pseudonym — on a predecessor to bitcoin, RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work). He tweeted openly about running bitcoin in January 2009. What was new to me is what Finney's colleagues reveal about the period between October 2008 and January 2009. Finney had received carte blanche from his manager to work on further developing RPOW during that time. This coincides with the period between the whitepaper's release and bitcoin's launch — the period when the software's finishing touches must have been applied.

So was Finney Satoshi? The researchers have to conclude he wasn't — at least not solely — after a conversation with Jameson Lopp, who has access to email correspondence showing that Finney was running a road race at the same time Satoshi sent an email.

The person sending emails under Satoshi's name was therefore not (exclusively) Finney. Here, the focus shifts back to an earlier candidate on the shortlist: Len Sassaman (1980–2011). An American cypherpunk deeply embedded in the remailer world. He was the lead developer and maintainer of Mixmaster, an important remailer project.

Sassaman knew Hal Finney well: he had worked with him as a colleague. He also worked for one of the founding fathers of the crypto movement, David Chaum. According to Bram Cohen, founder of BitTorrent, close friend of Sassaman, and co-organizer of a conference with him, Sassaman may not have had the necessary programming skills, but he was a seasoned academic, well-versed in writing whitepapers. Finney, on the other hand, had no experience with that.

That brings me to a salient detail that isn't in the documentary: Sassaman's photo archive reveals that he had on his bookshelf a copy of a nearly unobtainable book about a 1999 conference on information technology. It's the second item on the reference list of the bitcoin whitepaper: 20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux, May 1999. This book was available at the University of Leuven, where Sassaman lived and worked from around 2003, but almost nowhere else.

Both Sassaman and Finney passed away tragically young, which "conveniently" works in the filmmakers' favor. It's rather difficult for a deceased person to reveal their identity or spend their coins. If that sounds somewhat cynical, it's worth watching the final section of the documentary, where the widows of Finney and Sassaman speak. Both had previously dismissed the possibility that their husband was Satoshi. Hal Finney denied it to his wife, and Sassaman's widow Meredith Patterson publicly stated that her husband was not Nakamoto as far as she knew. But both see the collaboration hypothesis as entirely plausible.

We actually know enough

No, Satoshi has not been definitively found. We may never find the smoking gun. But it's becoming clear that the idea of Satoshi as a lone "shadowy super coder" who had strokes of genius in some remote location is romantic but not realistic. This kind of revolutionary idea comes together in small groups of people working closely together — in "bands," if you will. We know Satoshi came from the cypherpunk world and that one or more individuals from that hotbed of ideas eventually stumbled upon the "winning" idea. While we remain curious about who exactly, we actually know enough.

2️⃣ Charles Schwab launches bitcoin education

Contribution by Peter

Bitcoin is entering the phase of life where it loses its wild streak and puts on a suit. It's growing up in the eyes of big money. Charles Schwab, for example.

The American asset manager, overseeing nearly $12 trillion in client assets, is preparing to launch bitcoin and ether trading through a new account type: Schwab Crypto. In the run-up to that, they released an educational video designed to warm up the traditional investor.

The tone is cautious. Bitcoin is volatile, and therefore exciting. They don't gloss over that — they address it head-on. Then Schwab makes it concrete. Take a traditional portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds. If you want to add bitcoin, their own research suggests that for conservative investors, a maximum allocation of 2.7% would be appropriate.

That's a relatively small number, yet with a significant effect. For a client currently at zero exposure, 2.7% is a concrete and accessible first step. And at scale, it becomes substantial. If even a fraction of Schwab's clients follow this example, it could easily translate to hundreds of billions of dollars in potential inflows.

For slightly more aggressive investors, Schwab's suggested percentage rises to about 7%. Still measured, but clearly more than symbolic. Bitcoin belongs in the mix, Schwab says, but within clear guardrails.

The firm itself is looking beyond bitcoin and ether. On Bloomberg TV, Schwab CEO Rick Wurster hinted at the integration of prediction markets — potentially once they're packaged in existing financial structures. Binary options, for instance, which the CBOE is working on. "That would be a very prudent way for us to be able to offer prediction capabilities to clients."

And so this news touches on a familiar thread. Major financial institutions rarely move first, but wait until something can be molded into a form that fits their world. Bitcoin is already there, and prediction markets seem headed in the same direction. What's experimental today becomes just another product on your brokerage account tomorrow.

3️⃣ Oil tankers need to watch out for... crypto scammers?

Contribution by Peter

You gave me clearance to go. You are fighting now.

A captain on an oil tanker sails into the Strait of Hormuz. He believes he has clearance for safe passage. He's even on the list. But he gets fired upon anyway. It sounds like a scene from a B-movie war film, but it turns out to be bitter reality.

In the hours after the clip above surfaced, various websites published reports about a warning from MARISKS. That's a Greek company specializing in risk management for shipping companies, cargo vessels, and oil tankers. The warning? Fake messages are being sent to major shipping companies promising safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — in exchange for a payment in cryptocurrency.

The implications are unsettling. In one of the world's most volatile maritime corridors, a forged message can mean the difference between safe passage and sailing into a conflict zone. And somewhere out at sea, that one sentence suddenly carries a lot more weight: You gave me clearance to go.

Laat Je Niet Hack Maken

Laat Je Niet Hack Maken legt op een begrijpelijke manier uit hoe je jezelf beschermt tegen hackers, gemaakt met de hulp van zes professionele hackers.

Laat Je Niet Hack Maken

4️⃣ Pentagon views bitcoin as a weapon

Contribution by Peter

During a hearing in the U.S. Senate, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr. received a seemingly simple question. Does bitcoin help the United States in its competition with China? The question revolved around monetary competition, strategic reserves, and geopolitical leverage.

But the answer went in an entirely different direction. Paparo called bitcoin a "computer science tool" with applications for cybersecurity and even "power projection" — a term normally reserved for aircraft carriers and military bases. Proof of work, he argued, imposes costs on an adversary in much the same way other military capabilities do.

Anyone familiar with the work of Jason Lowery, who is also affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense, will recognize that line of thinking. In his book Softwar, he describes proof of work as a digital equivalent of military power: a way to protect property rights by imposing costs on an attacker.

Paparo appears to follow that line of reasoning, albeit less explicitly. But what does "power projection" via bitcoin actually mean in practice? An aircraft carrier can be deployed. A base can be built. But a decentralized network without an owner is hard to wield as a geopolitical instrument.

That tension is also visible in the reactions. Some bitcoiners speak of a historic moment — bitcoin now carries weight beyond the financial system, as a geopolitical weapon. Critics wonder what that means in practice, without receiving concrete answers.

The desire to add bitcoin to the American arsenal could, in practice, have some adverse consequences. Because if bitcoin is truly classified as a "weapon," the rules from that world start to apply. Think export controls, heavy licensing requirements, and government interference.

In a strange way, this echoes the era before bitcoin. In the 1990s, cypherpunk Phil Zimmermann was criminally prosecuted for publishing PGP because encryption was legally treated as munitions. The industry fought hard to get cryptography out of the weapons regime. This narrative inadvertently pushes bitcoin right back in that direction.

🍟 Snacks

To wrap up, some quick bites:

• Prediction markets under fire from lawsuits and integrity concerns. The rapid growth of Polymarket and Kalshi is accompanied by growing pains. In a single week, the platforms were sued by multiple states, defended by the federal regulator, and confronted with various forms of market abuse. One U.S. soldier made over $400,000 in profit by betting on his own mission. The turmoil is felt at the White House too — Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to both platforms.
• DeFi sector scrambles to contain Kelp hack damage. Following the attack, approximately $70 million in ETH was frozen by Arbitrum. Aave launched an industry-wide rescue initiative to raise funds. Within days, commitments worth tens of thousands of ETH were already pledged. Despite that, a significant shortfall remains. The damage resolution is happening without a central coordinator. The ecosystem has to save itself, with all the delays and uncertainty that entails.
• Tether freezes $344 million — its largest-ever seizure. The USDT holdings on Tron were frozen in cooperation with U.S. authorities. It's presumably related to sanctions enforcement connected to the Iran conflict. In total, Tether has now frozen more than $4.4 billion. This week's haul represents roughly 8 percent of the total. Tether says it works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries and has contributed to over 2,300 cases worldwide.
• Litecoin rewrites three hours of transactions after privacy layer attack. Attackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability to double-spend litecoin funds, including on decentralized exchanges. The network responded with a drastic measure: a reorganization of 13 blocks, erasing the malicious transactions from history. That limits the damage but shifts the problem to off-chain parties, where losses have been reported. The market barely reacted to the incident.
• Bitcoin ETFs attract hundreds of millions once more as inflows continue. Over five days, $824 million flowed into bitcoin funds, marking the fourth consecutive week of net inflows. Ether follows with three green weeks. Last week, even smaller players like Solana and XRP attracted capital. The picture is clear: interest from traditional investors seeking exposure through regulated products remains strong.
• Western Union launches its own stablecoin, aims to reinvent international payments. With USDPT, built on Solana, the company aims to settle transactions faster and cheaper than through the traditional SWIFT system. The stablecoin is initially not for consumers but for internal settlement between partners. At the same time, Western Union continues to build a network bridging crypto and fiat, and is working on a payment card for global use. USDPT is expected to launch within a month.

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