Sylvain this question seems to have become incredibly important because the answer to it is somewhat under our control, I think.
The outcome depends on our understanding.
Like you said we might never know what Satoshi really had in mind, if he never gets to tell us. He would at least have known that money is somewhat open to interpretation.
We used to think it represented pieces of gold, then it came to represent human labour, and then human debt, and now we have no idea.
Its value continues to rally despite all predictions based on dilution of the money base.
So now the M1 money base is a fallacy, if indeed it was ever true.
The zero-sum box no longer applies.
That it might have been true at one time, and is no longer true, is the most likely and most believable possibility I think.
The implication of all of this is that since we never really understood exactly how money works, we also never realised the integral part that it has played in the ever worsening planetary disaster that is global pollution.
We seem to understand now that it has worked, and continues to work, to shift wealth away from the poor, to the rich, but maybe not that it plays also a very insidious part in environmental pollution.
In fact, when we realise that part, by studying and tracing the transfer of physical energy, as it is possible to do only with POW crypto currencies like Bitcoin, it seems almost like a biblical revelation, when we start to see the real solution to all of the problems of our inhumanity to one another, as well as our incompatibility with our environment, which begs us to ask again the true origin of Satoshi.
It looks like, to fix all, money must simply become a share of power.
Not energy, measured in some time removed quantity, but power, containing a fully time dependent term, such as Joules per second (Watts).
When we do that, everything seems to fall into place, and 21 million Bitcoins suddenly makes perfect sense.
Each Satoshi worth 10 mili-watts of forever power, might be just perfect.
Did he know?
Who knows.
Anyone interested to see the basics of such an analysis (I trust if it is the only one, it won’t be for very long) can find it here:
