Bitter Taste Consummated

Bitcoin Pizza Day bulletin celebrating history's most foolish trade

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day to all the crypto enthusiasts tuning in to Radio Free Pizza! While I’d like to keep the faith in our usual programming of full-length dispatches, today’s edition of our irregular bulletins doesn’t just mark the latest recurrence of Bitcoin Pizza Day, but also serves up a slice of intrigue: is Bitcoin (BTC) merely a machination of the American deep state?

Product of stable diffusion (“Pizza-delivery driver locked and loaded in both barrels, ready to fire upon a customer trying to stiff him on a tip of no more than a few bits.“)

I don’t know! But if you’ve spent much time perusing our menu, you know that speculation on conspiracies yields a few of the ingredients for some of our more exotic dishes. So, let’s explore the layers of this digital dough and see what we uncover! Therefore, settle in for another bulletin-style slice, and we’ll try to decipher BTC’s cryptic origins.

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For those unaware, Bitcoin Pizza Day is a celebrated event in the cryptocurrency community that marks the first-ever real-world transaction using BTC. Held annually on 22 May, it commemorates the day when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid Jeremy Sturdivant 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John’s pizzas, delivered to Hanyecz’s home in 2010. This exchange is widely celebrated as the first commercial transaction using bitcoins as the medium of exchange. Worth around $41 at time, the same BTC would fetch more than $600 million at the time of this writing: capital gains that Hanyecz surely didn’t see coming.

Similarly, we can assume (with somewhat less certainty) that, as an early adopter of BTC who started mining the cryptocurrency in the first year of its release, Hanyecz probably wouldn’t have guessed that the American deep state might have created it. Not for a few more years, anyway—though the idea that BTC might have been a product of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) first appeared as early as 2014, when P.H. Madore reported on it for CCN.com while examining a 1996 paper authored by NSA information security researchers titled “How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash.” As Madore explains, the paper outlines a system similar to the Bitcoin network that emphasizes privacy, user identification, message integrity, and nonrepudiation, while referring to David Chaum’s work on anonymous digital financial transactions. He notes that while SHA-256, the encryption algorithm used on the network, was not available at the time, SHA-1 was, and therefore speculates on the potential connection between the NSA and BTC’s creation (as well as raising questions about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity) before exploring the implications of the NSA’s involvement, inspiring Madore to emphasize the importance of privacy in online transactions.

Contentious as the idea might sound, Wes Messamore returned to the subject for CCN.com in 2019, and presented four of the most compelling reasons to entertain the idea. Firstly, Messamore points to the NSA’s publication of the SHA-256 hashing algorithm in 2001, suggesting a direct involvement in shaping the technological foundations of Bitcoin’s architecture. Secondly, it highlights the curious translation of the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” to “Central Intelligence” in Japanese, which obviously sparks speculation about a potential connection to intelligence agencies like the CIA or NSA. Thirdly, Messamore discusses how a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin could serve the interests of the American deep state by offering a financial infrastructure beyond the purview of traditional banking systems, ideal for conducting covert operations and evading institutional scrutiny. Lastly, Messamore underscores the transparency of Bitcoin’s blockchain, which—while providing anonymity to users—also enables law enforcement agencies to track transactions, aligning with the surveillance objectives of the aforementioned deep state. Overall, Messamore raises thought-provoking questions about the origins of Bitcoin and suggests possible motives for the involvement of intelligence agencies in its creature, whether directly or indirectly.

Product of stable diffusion (“Pizza-delivery driver locked and loaded in both barrels, armed and ready to shoot-to-kill at a customer trying to stiff him on a tip”)

Maybe we can say that the theory reemerges every four or five years, since Jamie Redman covered it again for Bitcoin.com last September, reporting then on the resurgence of the aforementioned 1996 research paper—in which Laurie Law, Susan Sabett, and Jerry Solinas propose a distributed framework for “untraceable” electronic coins—that first ignited speculation within crypto circles about whether the NSA play a role in Bitcoin’s creation. Here, Redman adds to the findings of prior investigators that the paper shares notable similarities with the Bitcoin white paper, which therefore prompted discussions on social media platforms like Twitter, though he notes how experts like computer scientist Ian Grigg and cryptographer Adam Back argue that the paper aligns more closely with centralized models like Chaum’s. Of course Redman mentions CCN.com’s reporting on the subject, and also mentions whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations suggesting that the NSA monitors BTC users with software like Xkeyscore.

In addition, Jess Walker offered her own overview of the theory last October for Coin Bureau. Here, Walker discusses the long-standing mystery surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. Walker explores various theories, including the possibility that Satoshi was an individual or group associated with the NSA, first introducing (at ~0:31) the long-standing mystery surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, while mentioning the various individuals—such as Hal Finney and Nick Szabo—whom have been speculated as potential candidates, but their involvement has been denied.

From there Walker explores (at ~2:59) the theory that Satoshi Nakamoto was not an individual but rather a group or entity associated with the NSA, providing background information its controversial mass surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden. Walker then examines (at ~6:07) the evidence supporting the theory—like the NSA’s involvement in developing cryptographic algorithms like SHA-256 (employed by BTC) and its research into digital cash systems like the paper discussed above (the principles of which Walker suggests match those of BTC), along with the coincidental similarity between the name “Tatsuki Okamoto” (an author of the aforementioned paper) and “Satoshi Nakamoto”—alongside (at ~11:30) that refuting it—like the argument that the NSA’s culture and policies at the time would have made it unlikely for the agency to develop a decentralized cryptocurrency like BTC, given that the post-Watergate atmosphere of scrutiny on government agencies, the open-source nature of SHA-256 that would make a backdoor unlikely, and the fact that the same 1996 paper highlighted concerns about anonymity and potential risks of digital currencies for governments.

Walker acknowledges (at ~16:59) that while the NSA’s involvement can’t be ruled out definitively, he suggests other plausible theories implicating intelligence agencies—like the idea that a rogue NSA employee or privacy-focused individual developed BTC independently from on previous research—before concluding that the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a shrouded mystery, and may never be fully resolved.

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Now, you might ask, “Why are you covering this?”

But true fanatics know that cryptocurrency has been an intermittent field of interest for our coverage since the second quarter of our Year One, when we suggested leveraging decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and tokenized securities to empower creative workers, allowing them to control and benefit more directly from their work, and using blockchain technology for decentralized governance and decision-making.

A few months later we featured a discussion from the Indie News Network’s Alternative Angle that centered on Elon Musk’s involvement with Twitter and its potential alignment with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) agenda. As Greg and Chris saw it, Musk’s focus on payment processing, AI integration, and content moderation for Twitter (rather than emphasizing free speech) all raised suspicions about his intentions.

Chris pointed out the parallels between Musk’s plans for Twitter—specifically, Musk’s desire to turn Twitter into an “everything app” with onboard payment processing—and the WEF’s hypothesized Fourth Industrial Revolution, its support for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and its overall Great Reset agenda. Additionally, the paired discussed how the WEF’s vision for the Fourth Industrial Revolution—described as controlling biometric data and promoting a Metaverse lifestyle—resonated with Musk’s ambitions. Meanwhile, last year’s launch of Unicoin, an international CBDC, by the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) further underscored the intertwined interests of organizations like the IMF and WEF in shaping the global financial landscape.

Product of stable diffusion (“Gunfight over the price of a pizza.”)

After that, our 2024 forecast included an early December interview between myself and Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire, in which our discussion juxtaposed the contemporary phenomenon of cultural austerity with the worsening economic conditions of the American public against the exponential returns of BTC for certain elites like Michael Saylor—who sees it as a hedge against monetary collapse—before expressing skepticism about BTC’s decentralized future, despite wishing success for El Salvador after adopting it as a national currency in 2021: a development for which the first Bitcoin Pizza Day laid the foundations. (I suppose the same knee-jerk skepticism may explain my reaction to the news in April about a Swiss popular initiative to amend the country’s constitution so that the national bank can hold BTC.)

I’d like to say, therefore, that coverage here of digital currencies has been multifaceted, but from where we left it last, the phenomenon had then seemed most likely to concentrate wealth among a different elite. However, what we’ve covered here today would force us to consider whether the U.S. intelligence apparatus itself created the mechanism some might use to escape a (for-some-reason) collapsing monetary system for the sake of accustoming the masses and the global financial system for whatever they slap together to replace it. That would accord then would the thinking of Martin Armstrong—of whom I spoke admiringly in my first conversation with Morić (at ~16:19 in the linked clip)—who in January reiterated his belief that “BITCOIN was started covertly by the government to get everyone accustomed to their end goal – CBDCs and total control.”

If true, then this would in some sense corroborate the conclusion of Max Azzarello, the activist and researcher who, I’m sorry to report, self-immolated at a courthouse last month after posting a manifesto claiming that the U.S. government and its allies are orchestrating a totalitarian coup through a massive Ponzi scheme centered on cryptocurrency, which he believed was designed by elite institutions to create global economic collapse and foster a fascist dystopia. If you'd like some more of the grisly details, the Indie News Network’s How Did We Miss That? covered it a month ago today.

Radio Free Pizza sends our condolences to Azzarello’s friends and family. Of course, we still don’t feel as if firm answers about BTC’s origins have yet appeared.

Though it’s been revisited over the years, the theory that BTC emerged from a 1996 research paper or other product of NSA-developed cryptographic algorithms remains only a point of periodic speculation. Despite the intriguing connections, however, the true identity of BTC’s creator (let alone motive) remains uncertain: and since its origins still remain shrouded in mystery, the idea of BTC’s ties to the American deep state only adds another layer of complexity to this celebrated cryptocurrency. Whether or not it was conceived by intelligence agencies like the NSA, its impact on the financial landscape and the ongoing debate over its creation underscore the importance of transparency, privacy, and security in the digital age.

For those of you celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day, we encourage you to continue exploring these and other questions, and to examine their broader implications for our digital future. As always, stay tuned to Radio Free Pizza for more thought-provoking discussions—along with relevant updates from the world of cryptocurrency.