Clarifying Bitcoin’s Original Design: Direct Sending of Electronic Cash - Ultimate Guide

To Dr. Craig S. Wright, the white paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” wasis quite clear when it was published in 2008. But because developers have differing interpretations about how the system works, however, Bitcoin underwenthad undergone several forks that resulted in different implementations.

It is evident that Bitcoin has been derailed since its launch, with BTC becoming more popular as its price wentgoes up—making it seem like an expensive toy for rich people to play with. This is so far from how Dr. Wright envisioned his creation to be, which is an electronic cashsomething that can be used by everyone. Hence, it is understandable why Dr. Wright isfeels compelled to clear vague areas of his original concept.

Dr. Wright expresses his dismay over how people are still arguing about what he meant in the said paper in a blog post. When it comes to online payments, for instance, he explains that going through intermediaries or “multiple hops” defies the nature of Bitcoin.

As the term “peer-to-peer” suggests, transactions should be done directly from sender to recipient. And electronic cash, as Dr. Wright clarifies, does not refer to digital gold—something that BTC is always likened to.

In explaining the term “peer-to-peer,” Dr. Wright points out what it is not. “If you are sending something to any party other than the final party, it is not a direct peer-to-peer exchange.” A purely peer-to-peer network is best characterized by the absence of servers where users can directly exchange value. That was how Bitcoin was when it was originally created, where transactions were sent from one IP to another.

In considering how other digital currencies are utilizing blockchain, the methodology applied of transactions going through multiple servers does not conform with the pure peer-to-peer nature of Bitcoin. If information is being sent in other ways instead of directly, then, it does not fall into the purely peer-to-peer definition.


The role of IPv6 in realizing the original concept of Bitcoin is one of the hot topics at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai. IPv6 allows direct exchange without restrictions on what can be done with its scalability due to its ability to provide each individual and device on the Internet its own unique IP address.

This makes IPv6 an enabler for direct peer-to-peer and machine-to-machine communication. With true peer-to-peer functionality, security, privacy and accountability are possible, as well as many other innovations that can propel the world into the next digital age.

“If I want to be able to trace a source of meat from end to end, so that in the future, if something like the mad cow incident in Britain happens, rather than killing practically every cow in theint he country, I can monitor the individual farms, and pick and choose and have a surgical response—saving millions of farmers millions of farms. We can do that,” Dr. Wright said induring his keynote presentation at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention.

Moreover, combining the scalable powers of IPv6 and Bitcoin allows for lowering the cost of transactions substantially, which would enable ordinary people to use transactions at fees of almost next to nothing.

To Dr. Wright, Bitcoin is not as complex as how people make it seem. “It’s a ledger. It records things. It should scale. It should be cheap,” he said. He envisioned Bitcoin as a technology that can be used by everyone. It may still take a while before Dr. Wright is able to realize his vision when he created Bitcoin, but it is in sight with IPv6 enabling true peer-to-peer functionality.