Satoshi Lore Grows as More Bitcoin Inventor Emails Emerge

The court case between the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright is unlikely to produce any blockbuster revelations. But the release of emails attributed to Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto has provided a surprisingly nuanced history lesson for the celebrated cryptocurrency.

The Bitcoin inventor's most recent emails – dated between February 5, 2009 and July 12, 2010 – were addressed to computer scientist and software developer Martti Malmi, an early Bitcoin contributor who went by the nickname Sirius. Malmi took the stand Wednesday to testify in the COPA v. Wright case.

“Sending cash by mail may involve risks, but it may still be the best anonymous option,” Nakamoto once wrote, favoring the analog method as a way to protect identities. “We can also ask for donations in BTC in the forum.”

The messages between Nakamoto and Malmi were entered into evidence as the British court considers the disputed identity of the Bitcoin inventor. Since 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright has claimed to be the investor in Bitcoin.

On Thursday, the court received an initial batch of emails addressed to cryptographer and cypherpunk Adam Back – CEO and co-founder of Blockstream – that accompanied Back's testimony. These emails mentioned computer scientist Hal Finney, who received the first Bitcoin transaction from Nakamoto – and who some believe is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

As with the previous email dump, the 120-page batch of messages came to light on Twitter by Bitcoin historian and editor of Bitcoin Magazine, Pete Rizzo.

NEW: Satoshi Nakamoto's earliest collaborator Martii “Sirius” Malmi just released his entire email history.

At 120 pages, it is the most significant addition to the archives of the unknown inventor of #Bitcoin.

Here are the most important new findings ✨ pic.twitter.com/lDSh0xzojH

— Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) February 23, 2024

While Bitcoin remains the number one cryptocurrency with a market cap of $1 trillion, the emails show that Nakamoto did not coin the term “cryptocurrency” and was uncomfortable calling Bitcoin an investment.

“That is dangerous to say and you should delete that bullet point,” Nakamoto told Malmi. “It’s fine if they come to that conclusion on their own, but we can’t present it that way.”

Although politicians and pundits continue to describe Bitcoin as anonymous, the news showed that Satoshi also wanted to remove this language from the Bitcoin.org website.

“Besides, anonymous sounds a bit shady. I think the people who want anonymity will still find out without us trumpeting it,” Nakamoto said. “I removed the word 'anonymous' and the sentence about 'anonymity means' – even though you worded it so carefully – can remain hidden… it was a shame to remove it.”

In a message, Nakamoto explained how Bitcoin could scale in the future and suggested that the network would have a maximum of 100,000 nodes.

“100,000 block-generating nodes is a good size to think about,” Nakamoto wrote. “Spreading a transaction twice across the entire network would consume total [$0.02] Bandwidth at today’s prices.”

In his commentary, Rizzo noted that there are currently 50,000 nodes running Bitcoin software.

When asked how #Bitcoin could scale in the future, Satoshi assumed that the network would have a maximum of 100,000 nodes.

Here he discusses the computation and economics of the network at scale.

Note: About 50,000 nodes are running the software today pic.twitter.com/JWUnbhP09j

— Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) February 23, 2024

Wanting to add more server administrators, Nakamoto suggested Gavin Andresen.

“It should be Gavin,” Nakamoto said. “I trust him, he is responsible, professional and technically much more knowledgeable about Linux than I am.”

While proof-of-stake is praised for its lower impact on the environment, Nakamoto advocated in the messages for proof-of-work as the only solution to make peer-to-peer e-cash work without a trusted third party. ”

“While I have not used it secondarily to allocate initial currency distribution, PoW is fundamental to coordinating the network and preventing double spending,” Nakamoto wrote.

To prove his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, Wright separately submitted over 160,000 accounting documents to BitMex Research on Wednesday.

“A real proof of Satoshi would only be around 150 bytes in total,” said BitMex Research, responding to a tweet from well-known Bitcoiner, software engineer and cypherpunk Jameson Lopp. “Instead, he created a 160,000-page fake evidence.”

List of Craig Wright's apologies for fraudulent documents he submitted as evidence supporting his claim to be Satoshi:

1. The traces of manipulation in the document were stored there electronically because:
A. Citrix
B. An nChain employee accessed or viewed the file…

— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) February 23, 2024

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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