[jere]

>This realization raises interesting questions about the political motivations of Satoshi Nakamoto in presenting their creation as a digital currency when they must have known that they had solved this far more important general problem.

Why oh why must every mention of Nakamoto imbue him/them with certain politics? We're led to believe Nakamoto is a subversive anarcho-capitalist libertarian who wants to overthrow governments.

There are certainly hackers driven by ideals and politics (e.g. rms), but there are plenty more who solve a problem just because they can. The Morris worm wasn't published in order to promote anarchy. Quicksort wasn't invented as a metaphor for classism. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358561

It seems far more likely that Nakamoto saw an existing problem, solved it in a clever fashion, and published the result.

[richcollins]

Pretty sure Satoshi had political motivations:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

[jere]

Perhaps, but that's kind of thin:

>This was probably intended as proof that the block was created on or after January 3rd, 2009, as well as a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.