> Satoshi combined some existing ideas with an uncommon area of application, currency instead of mere transactions, to create Bitcoin. It's clever and a lot of activity happened but its components aren't original and similar things were promoted before.
That's pretty much how genius works much of the time, seeing possibilities that exist with existing stuff that haven't been done yet.
I agree. It's what I did in high-assurance security. Almost everything I built was composed of premade parts and ideas. Usually in a way that was straight-forward with some really clever. Really just recycling ideas, though, into hopefully better ones.
Doesn't make me feel dumber when I realize how few programmers or systems people are re-using or recombining the best stuff from CompSci or past commercial activities. Versus how many ignore it to repeat same crap and failures. :)
That's pretty much how genius works much of the time, seeing possibilities that exist with existing stuff that haven't been done yet.