Bitcoin’s White Paper Isn’t Just Words – It’s a Constitution

Bruce Fenton is CEO of Atlantic Financial, founder of Chainstone Labs, host of the Satoshi Roundtable and board member of Medici Ventures.

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

The bitcoin white paper changed how money can work, yes, but less discussed – and even more important – is how it is changing how we share and place value on ideas.

As we look back at the 10 years since bitcoin’s white paper was first published, I think it’s clear Satoshi’s words aren’t just words. Like another famous white paper, Alan Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” bitcoin’s was clear and scientific, describing with authority a particular – and new – idea.

This is an important differentiator. We tend to think of bitcoin as the network, nodes, miners and HODLers, but it’s really an idea, first expressed in the white paper. (Many so-called white papers today are simply marketing or legal documents.)

Everything that came…