Crypto enthusiasts received a litany of insights into the early days of Bitcoin (BTC) when one of Satoshi Nakamoto’s earliest collaborators, Martti Malmi, published 120 pages of email conversations between the two from 2009 until 2011 on GitHub.
The emails were initially introduced as evidence in a London court case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) against Australian computer scientist and creator of Bitcoin SV (BSV), Craig Wright, who controversially claimed that he is the father of the most popular cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Pioneers Produce Email Conversations With Satoshi Nakamoto In Court
Adam Back, a pioneer in Bitcoin and CEO of digital asset infrastructure provider Blockstream, also testified in the UK High Court of Justice on Tuesday. During the testimony, Back also produced several emails between him and Satoshi, dating back to 2008 and 2009, which were entered into the court record.
However, those who thought the emails would reveal the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto were left disappointed. Nevertheless, the conversations that were recently published on GitHub by Malmi provide historians and Bitcoin lore enthusiasts with a never-seen-before glimpse into the early development days of the world’s most traded crypto asset.
Satoshi Wasn’t Sure About Calling Bitcoin A “Cryptocurrency”
A long-standing argument in the community is that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator was the one who coined the term “cryptocurrency”, but according to one email sent to Malmi in June 2009, Satoshi asked what he thought about using the word to describe Bitcoin.
To Malmi’s credit, he responded by saying the term “sounds good” and was more interesting than calling the apex cryptocurrency a “digital P2P cash”.
Bitcoin’s Creator Envisioned Having A Maximum Of 100,000 Nodes Running The Network
When asked how Bitcoin might scale in the future, Satoshi theorized that the blockchain would have a maximum of 100,000 nodes.
In this correspondence, the founder goes into the calculations assessing the economics of bandwidth costs to nodes or “miners” validating transactions on the network, the costs miners would incur, and how the cost could be effectively passed on to Bitcoin users.
Satoshi and Malmi also discuss how the user fee structure would be implemented on the network, hinting at the potential for the fee charged for confirming Bitcoin transactions to be driven by its market due to the processing capacity of the blockchain.
Here Satoshi shared their vision of how the Bitcoin network might grow larger in the future.
Notably, about 50,000 nodes run the software today.
Bitcoin Network Is Less Wasteful Than Conventional Banking
One of the first and major criticisms against Bitcoin is the idea that mining the cryptocurrency is a wasteful process that is not environmentally friendly. When addressing the concern on forums, Satoshi most notably said that not having a currency like Bitcoin would have been a bigger waste.
They believed that Bitcoin mining would be less wasteful than the labor and resource-intensive conventional banking activity “it would replace”. Satoshi noted that the network’s cost would be less than the “billions in banking fees that pay for all those brick and mortar buildings, skyscrapers, and junk mail credit card offers”.
Another subject of debate concerning Bitcoin is whether it is money or if it can or has any other ancillary value. Satoshi seemed to offer insight into this topic in another email exchange where they noted their belief that the blockchain can be used as a distributed time-stamping server.
A real-world example of this is currently taking place in Guatemala, where recent elections have been certified on the Bitcoin network.
Satoshi Didn’t Want Bitcoin To Be Anonymous
Satoshi was particularly concerned about the legal risk of promoting Bitcoin as an investment, noting they were “uncomfortable” with the idea.
Malmi’s email correspondence also demonstrated Satoshi’s understanding of anonymity, what it meant, and what risks misinformation could have on Bitcoin. Satoshi said that introducing specifically designed wallets for transacting in BTC instead of IP would not give the impression that it is automatically anonymous.
“It’s possible to be pseudonymous, but you have to be careful”, said Satoshi.
They even went on to remove the word “anonymous” from the official website as they were worried it would make Bitcoin sound “shady”
Satoshi even predicts the rise of blockchain forensics. They note that if someone were to dig through the transaction history and start exposing information people thought was anonymous, then there would be a backlash that would be much worse. Therefore, it is important to warn users that they have to take precautions, Satoshi wrote.
Satoshi Supports Increasing Mining Difficulty To Protect Bitcoin’s Intricate Value
When discussing how Bitcoin might gain adoption, Satoshi emphasized that the cryptocurrency was easy to obtain given that it could be mined on a computer. They also went on to explain how the nature of trading Bitcoin would evolve and how skeptical people might be of its value, stating that he was confident with the idea of increasing mining difficulty to prove its scarcity to users.
Satoshi Was Burnt Out After 18 Months Of Sheer Dedication To Developing Bitcoin
By July 2009, Satoshi felt burnt out and said they needed a break from their brainchild. In this email exchange, it is revealed that they had spent 18 months developing the network.
Come 2010, Satoshi had a mysterious leave of absence, stating they had been “busy with other things” and were glad that the team, including Malmi, was handling things without their presence.
The True Identity Of Satoshi Nakamoto Still Remains A Mystery
15 years later, the mystery surrounding Satoshi’s true identity remains unsolved. There are several speculations as to who could have been the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Some believe it to be the late Hal Finney, who was the first to download the Bitcoin software and receive BTC. However, this claim has been debunked.
Meanwhile, in his testimony, Adam Beck asserted that he did not in any way contribute to the coding or programming of Bitcoin. In a written statement, the Blockstream chief said the conversations he had with Satoshi were not “elaborate” and that he only became interested in the cryptocurrency as a contributor in 2012.
Satoshi would be proud of where his creation stands at this juncture. Last month saw the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approve the first-ever Bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for trade on US spot markets.
Asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity, who once opposed the digital asset, even calling it a fraud, now hold billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin in their respective ETFs.
The funds are instrumental in bringing mainstream retail and institutional investors to Bitcoin, further expanding its scope for large-scale adoption.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $51,047 – down 0.3% in the last 24 hours.
