Every day, more and more evidence comes to light that the cryptocurrency industry is overrun with fraudsters and other types of criminals. At this point, one might even be able to reasonably state for bitcoin that the second 2013 bubble, and the 2017 and the 2021 bubbles, were almost entirely supported by increasingly complex and widespread scams, which ended in the ruin of millions of lives.

One point, however, that remains unclear is whether bitcoin was expressely designed to facilitate fraud in its early days, or whether a promising technology was completely hijacked by criminals.

Evidence supporting that bitcoin was designed for fraud may come to light during the trials of Sam Bankman-Fried, Alex Mashinsky, and other people who have defrauded depositors like Barry Silbert and Zac Prince (if they are charged.) During these trials, for example, Caroline Ellison has already testified that multiple companies such as Genesis, other than FTX, were all aware of the fraud and took part in an industry-wide conspiracy to find more victims.

This market will resolve to YES if, sometime before the market's close, testimony or other evidence is revealed that supports the theory that bitcoin was intentionally designed for fraud, or manipulated to support fraud. For the purposes of this market, the timeperiod of the "early days" ends on the day of the BCH fork, when the architecture of the bitcoin network was "locked in." If no such evidence is revealed by then, the market will resolve to NO.

Examples that would support a YES resolution include, but are certainly not limited to:

• A member of a criminal gang being shown to be Satoshi Nakamoto, as rumors have been floating around about for years

• Evidence that Michael Marquadt or others involved in the blocksize debate intentionally manipulated the debate to result in a blockchain more amenable to fraud

• E-Mails from early bitcoin pioneers discussing how to code the network to best enable scams

Evidence showing that people discussed how to use the bitcoin network to commit fraud is insufficient to resolve this market to YES. The evidence must show that the network was intentionally designed or changed to make scams easier to commit than before.