Honoring the Past: The Decentralization Promise

In the years since Bitcoin's birth, cryptocurrencies have morphed. Initially a niche interest of cryptographers and tech geeks, cryptocurrencies now attract governments and the world's largest corporations. However, in that span of years, the world has changed dramatically. This change reflects the worries that Bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, foresaw when he mined the first Bitcoin block with a message to humanity:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Satoshi Nakamoto

This message referenced the ongoing fallout from the Global Financial Crisis. Satoshi was telegraphing to ordinary people their need to prepare for what was coming, a global financial crisis caused by profligate Western governments. These governments would rob people of wealth as they institute policies to save themselves from their own failures over the last four decades.

A World in Debt

Today, Satoshi's warning is coming true. Western debt has grown even larger since the Global Financial Crisis. It now surpasses $226 trillion, more than two time the size of the entire global economy. By comparison, total world debt in 2007, before the crisis, was about 70% of the global economy.

All of this debt creates a problem that has no solution: How to manage debt-repayment costs? For 15 years, central banks kept interest rates near 0% to save economies from collapsing into stagnation or deflation. That made expanding debts relatively affordable.

Now, however, interest rates are much higher across much of the world, and governments' debt-repayment costs have soared. In the U.S. alone, the world's largest economy paid more than $650 billion in interest payments in 2023. This is a record amount and nearly double the $400 billion the White House initially anticipated. Clearly, that number will only continue to rise.

This rise in debt and interest rates is unsustainable and could lead the world towards another Great Depression, potentially worse.

It's unsustainable and leading the world toward another Great Depression, though possibly worse. The primary downside for humanity is that governments must destroy the value of local currencies to save themselves.

By drastically devaluing the dollar, euro, yen, etc., governments will be able to pay down their extreme debts with less valuable currencies. Every government in history has resorted to this tactic when faced with the consequences of relying heavily on debt to run the nation, afford wars, and buy the people's votes.

Bitcoin’s Birth

Satoshi knew this history when he built Bitcoin. He knew history always repeats and that Western governments would do what every other government has always done: kill the currency. So, to counteract this, the primary trait Satoshi built into Bitcoin was decentralization. In his view, no one should control a currency because control means one group can design changes that benefit that group over others.

Yet, more than a decade after Bitcoin's birth, the crypto space risks violating the primary principle of decentralization. Specifically, blockchain developers are chasing speed and security at the cost of decentralization.

Certainly, speed and security are crucial to the long-term success of blockchain adoption. However, without decentralization, crypto technology is at risk of losing the very reason it exists: to prevent centralized power from corrupting a currency to its own benefit and to the detriment of the people.

Honoring the Past: Fushuma’s Commitment

To address this, Fushuma is reaffirming its commitment to the core values that Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned with Bitcoin. These values position Bitcoin as a remedy for the corruption of fiat currencies.

We’ve built a blueprint called the 'Philosophy of Decentralization' that articulates why decentralization is more important now than ever.