Lets go down a little rabbit hole I stumbled upon.
So one of the covers of the "The Economist" magazine in 1988 (Jan. 9 1988), featured a Phoenix rising from flames emanating from a pile of fiat money belonging to various countries. The phoenix is wearing a big gold medallion (symbolizing value?) that says "TEN PHOENIX 2018" with a symbol emblazoned on it, a simple circle with a line slashing through it (this symbol is VERY interesting). In the upper right of the cover it says "GET READY FOR A WORLD CURRENCY".
I had known about the cover for some time, but had never even thought to read the article it was referencing. The article goes on to basically describe BTC. I can't explain it, you must read it for yourself.
Did that sound familiar? I think it does.
Now back to the symbol ("empty set"). It has different meanings, in different contexts. The mathematical context is the one I'm interested in.
Wikipedia: "The letter "Ø" is sometimes used in mathematics as a replacement for the symbol "∅" (Unicode character U+2205), referring to the empty set as established by Bourbaki, and sometimes in linguistics as a replacement for same symbol used to represent a zero. The "∅" symbol is always drawn as a slashed circle, whereas in most typefaces the letter "Ø" is a slashed ellipse."
Ok, great. What the hell is "empty set", and who is Bourbaki? Down the Wikipedia black hole we go!
*record scratch* Wait, wtf?
The full name is Nicolas Bourbaki, it's a COLLECTIVE PSEUDONYM. Ahem, "Satoshi Nakamoto" anyone?
So who's the group, and what do they do?
They happen to be a group of elite mathematicians of their time, working to "reformulate" mathematics.
Wikipedia: "Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians, with the aim of reformulating mathematics on an extremely abstract and formal but self-contained basis, wrote a series of books beginning in 1935. With the goal of grounding all of mathematics on set theory, the group strove for rigour and generality. Their work led to the discovery of several concepts and terminologies still used, and influenced modern branches of mathematics.
While there is no one person named Nicolas Bourbaki, the Bourbaki group, officially known as the Association des collaborateurs de Nicolas Bourbaki (Association of Collaborators of Nicolas Bourbaki), has an office at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris."
Wow. It sounds like this group was successful, their work led to math we still use.
Wikipedia: "Notations introduced by Bourbaki include the symbol ∅ for the empty set and a dangerous bend symbol ☡, and the terms injective, surjective, and bijective"
Ah, so the group invented the empty set symbol (which we see on the medallion), which was a big impact they had.
Definition (I wont pretend I know what it means)
Wikipedia: "In mathematics, and more specifically set theory, the empty set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. Some axiomatic set theories ensure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set; in other theories, its existence can be deduced."
They also happened to be super secretive.
Wikipedia:"The original goal of the group had been to compile an improved mathematical analysis text; it was soon decided that a more comprehensive treatment of all of mathematics was necessary. There was no official status of membership, and at the time the group was quite secretive and also fond of supplying disinformation. Regular meetings were scheduled (totalling about 4 weeks a year), during which the group would discuss vigorously every proposed line of every book. Members had to resign by age 50."
Now lets take a look at Andre Weil, the "founder" and leader of Bourbaki group. He was the one who created the "null set" symbol, that appears on the medallion.
Wikipedia: "He says on page 114 of his autobiography that he was responsible for the null set symbol (Ø) and that it came from the Norwegian alphabet, which he alone among the Bourbaki group was familiar with."
Oh really The Rockefeller Foundation, you don't say....
Wikipedia: "In January 1941, Weil and his family sailed from Marseille to New York. He spent the remainder of the war in the United States, where he was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation."
TL;DR
Now, what do we have?
The symbol on the medallion of the 1988 cover, was created under a pseudonym used by a group of mathematicians to steer the direction of research and mathematics.
The specific person who created the symbol happens to be the person who founded and lead the super secret group. The article this is all referring to in the magazine describes the world on one main currency. They essentially describe BTC as the main and all the individual countries creating their own crypto (just my take on it).
"The Economist" is in part owned by the Rothschild family. So now both the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds are tied to this article, Rockefellers by helping Andre Weil and the Rothschilds by having an interest in the magazine.
Am I crazy to think maybe a secretive group of mathematicians may have created BTC?
What do YOU guys think?
