BREAKDOWN: Satoshi’s Unappreciated Marketing Genius, Feat. Dan Held
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2020
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There is a constant free market competition to define the Bitcoin narrative, and Kraken’s Dan Held argues this is part of what makes the protocol so strong.
This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.
Satoshi Nakamoto is often recognized for his technical genius in solving the double-spending problem. He is also widely revered for his willingness to walk away from the protocol to make it stronger, something no other entrepreneur who has created anything on the scale of Bitcoin has ever done.
What people discuss less often is Satoshi’s marketing instincts. In this illuminating conversation, serial bitcoin entrepreneur Dan Held argues:
- Satoshi had strong instincts about how price would drive bitcoin adoption
- The bitcoin white paper document was a marketing pitch aimed specifically at the cypherpunks
- The competition between bitcoin narratives is something that gives the protocol strength
- The competition to shape bitcoin's narrative is truly free and open to all
Find our guest online:
Website: danheld.com
Twitter: @danheld
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Very much, I think Satoshi is a marketer at heart. He understands this. He understood that |
| 0:04.4 | the narrative would be propagated primarily through speculation. I think that took incredible |
| 0:08.5 | foresight to understand human motivation and to understand that he could tap into that one element |
| 0:13.0 | of humans, greed, and use that to market Bitcoin and that the price alone would market |
| 0:17.0 | Bitcoin. I would say Satoshi is very much a viral marketer. He understood how to |
| 0:22.8 | propagate narratives at an incredibly eloquent and simple way, which tapped into human greed. |
| 0:27.8 | And then to get the early people to help him build it, he basically tapped into their |
| 0:31.2 | sentiment around what cash should be. |
| 0:44.2 | Welcome back to the breakdownss Free Ideas Festival, a 4th of July exploration of ideas with the potential to shape the future of the economy. |
| 0:47.6 | This episode is sponsored by BitStamp and Crypto.com. |
| 0:52.5 | The breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk. |
| 0:57.3 | And now here's your host, NLW. |
| 1:01.0 | Welcome back to the breakdown. |
| 1:03.1 | It is Wednesday, July 1st, and this is day two of the Free Ideas Festival. |
| 1:09.3 | To many, Bitcoin is inevitable. But then again, many who have been around for a long |
| 1:14.6 | time, who have seen how many different forces have tried to compromise or kill it, have a slightly |
| 1:20.3 | different take. Dan Held is a serial Bitcoin entrepreneur and is currently in BD at Cracken after |
| 1:26.4 | they acquired his most recent company |
| 1:28.1 | interchange. He is known for his excellent content on Satoshi's history, on Bitcoin narratives, |
| 1:34.0 | and on so much more, and recently he released a thread about Bitcoin's quote, |
| 1:38.5 | decentralized marketing department. In this conversation, we talk about how narrative construction and competition in |
| 1:46.0 | Bitcoin is an incredibly powerful force that shapes how new people enter the space and how |
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