Cooperation among an anonymous group protected Bitcoin during failures of decentralization

Bitcoin is a digital currency designed to rely on a decentralized, trustless network of anonymous agents. Using a pseudonymous-address-linking procedure that achieves >99% sensitivity and >99% specificity, we reveal that between launch (January 3rd, 2009), and when the price reached $1 (February 9th, 2011), most bitcoin was mined by only sixty-four agents. This was due to the rapid emergence of Pareto distributions in bitcoin income, producing such extensive resource centralization that almost all contemporary bitcoin addresses can be connected to these top agents by a chain of six transactions. Centralization created a social dilemma. Attackers could routinely exploit bitcoin via a "51% attack", making it possible for them to repeatedly spend the same bitcoins. Yet doing so would harm the community. Strikingly, we find that potential attackers always chose to cooperate instead. We model this dilemma using an N-player Centipede game in which anonymous players can choose to exploit, and thereby undermine, an appreciating good. Combining theory and economic experiments, we show that, even when individual payoffs are unchanged, cooperation is more frequent when the game is played by an anonymous group. Although bitcoin was designed to rely on a decentralized, trustless network of anonymous agents, its early success rested instead on cooperation among a small group of altruistic founders.