Bitcoin’s White Paper Gave Us Liberty – Let’s Not Give It Back

One of bitcoin’s earliest entrepreneurs, Charlie Shrem is the former founder of BitInstant and co-founder of cryptocurrency intelligence service CryptoIQ.

This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” opinion series.

Ten years after Satoshi published the white paper that gave us bitcoin – and the explosion of innovation it launched – I continue to be astounded at its transformative power.

Money is such a fundamental part of life, and it has played such a huge role in mine, for good and bad. Bitcoin is the awakened sleeping giant of it all because it has fundamentally and forever changed money and, more importantly, money’s seat of power.

For me, this is the most important aspect of bitcoin and cryptocurrency: its role in propagating power to the greatest number of people possible. What Satoshi did when he democratized money was hand every individual alive – and generations to come – vast personal liberty.

This shift in power…