Asking Satoshi … Why RIPEMD160 and SHA-256 and Why RIPEMD160?

Satoshi over-engineered Bitcoin, and made it ultrasecure

I strongly believe that Satoshi Nakamoto was a highly technical person and who had a background in cryptography and cybersecurity research. As a result, the technical selection of the component parts of Bitcoin has stood up to modern cracking. I care little about whether cryptocurrency is a good thing or a bad thing for our society (that is for our society, governments, and the markets to decide) and have never owned any Bitcoins, but I do sit back and wonder at the amazing cryptographic machine that Satoshi created.

And, so, on 3 January 2009, Satoshi set the machine in motion and created a new digital world — and one that was mathematically sound. It cared little about the paper-based approaches of the past and wet signatures — and brought a whole new level of security. Overall, not many things in cybersecurity could run for over 16 years without breaking down in some way. For this, Satoshi basically over-engineered everything in the design and knew that a single flaw would have brought the whole infrastructure down — and never to be recovered. When you lose all your money from your bank, you don’t go back a second time with your money!