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Bitcoin Forum / Satoshi's emails 2009-2011 analysis and hypothesis: Who is Satoshi?
« on: February 26, 2024, 09:59:41 AM »
The recent series of emails from Martti Malmi (aka Sirius) and Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin[1] has given BTC fans more information to understand Satoshi Nakamoto's expectations and vision better. We can refer to Rizzo's summary on X[2]. Rizzo presented the most important parts of these recently released emails. There are many interesting things!
In addition, I compiled and translated a summary and from Thuan Lam, the most famous and reputable KOL of the Vietnamese crypto community, about Satoshi's emails that were recently released[3-5].
I would like to confirm again: although I am a fan of Satoshi, my ability is not enough to provide good analysis like Thuan Lam has conducted, I can only say that because I was extremely moved when reading these analyzes and watching Thuan Lam's video on Youtube[6], I believe that these analyzes will also be valuable to someone. Because the content published by Thuan Lam is in Vietnamese, I try to translate it into English so everyone can refer to it. I hope that I have been able to convey all, or at least most, of this analysis.
First of all: Some of the summaries overlap with what Rizzo presented on X, but I still quote them as a premise for the statement that follows. The analysis also suggests a possibility about Satoshi's true identity, but since Satoshi chose to remain anonymous to protect the value of Bitcoin, I think everything should be limited to reference conspiracy theories. This theory could be made into an interesting movie about the story of Satoshi. I believe it will be extremely attractive!
Personally, I always have only one answer: Who is Satoshi? Satoshi is a living legend.
I – SUMMARY
[Email #3:]
1. Energy consumed by Bitcoin:
Satoshi said: If it did grow to consume significant energy, I think it would still be less wasteful than the labour and resource intensive conventional banking activity it would replace. The cost would be an order of magnitude less than the billions in banking fees that pay for all those brick and mortar buildings, skyscrapers and junk mail credit card offers.
2. Why did Satoshi choose a total of 21 million BTC?
Satoshi said: My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an educated guess. It was a difficult choice, because once the network is going it's locked in and we're stuck with it. I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that's very hard. I ended up picking something in the middle. If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it'll be worth less per unit than existing currencies. If you imagine it being used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be 21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per unit. Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is represented internally as 100000000. There's plenty of granularity if typical prices become small. For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro, then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed, so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is displayed as 1. (We now call the smallest unit a Satoshi, but it didn't have a name before).
3. Number of nodes:
Satoshi said: 100,000 block generating nodes is a good ballpark large-scale size to think about. (~ 50,000 nodes run the software today).
4. Inscription:
Satoshi said: Indeed, Bitcoin is a distributed secure timestamp server for transactions. A few lines of code could create a transaction with an extra hash in it of anything that needs to be timestamped. I should add a command to timestamp a file that way. (Satoshi did this with the first block, which contains the inscription: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".)
[Email #19:]
5. Bitcoin as an investment? "Cryptocurrency":
Satoshi said: I'm uncomfortable with explicitly saying "consider it an investment". That's a dangerous thing to say and you should delete that bullet point. It's OK if they come to that conclusion on their own, but we can't pitch it as that.
~
Someone came up with the word "cryptocurrency"... maybe it's a word we should use when describing Bitcoin
[Email #24:]
6. Satoshi and Hal Finney were both busy in July 2009:
Saoshi said: Hal isn't currently actively involved.
~
I'm not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work, and need a break from it after 18 months development.
[Email #28:]
7. Everyone can mine Bitcoin and own the network:
Satoshi said: Offering currency to back bitcoins would attract freebie seekers, with
the benefit of attracting a lot of publicity. At first it would mostly be seen as a way to get free money for your computer's idle time. Maybe pitched like help support the future of e-commerce and get a little money for your computer's spare cycles. As people cash in and actually get paid, word would spread exponentially.
It might help to keep the minimum transaction size above an amount which a typical user would be able to accumulate with one computer, so that users have to trade with each other for someone to collect enough to cash in. Aggregators would set up shop to buy bitcoins in smaller increments, which would add confidence in users ability to sell bitcoins if there are more available buyers than just you.
People would obviously be sceptical at first that the backing will hold up against an onslaught of people trying to get the free money, but as the competition raises the proof-of-work difficulty, it should become clear that bitcoins stay scarce. People will see that they can't just get all the bitcoins they want. It would establish a minimum value under bitcoins enabling them to be used for other purposes if, hopefully, other purposes are waiting for something to use. (Satoshi could not have imagined that 15 years later, Bitcoin mining would become an industry and only large companies would be able to mine Bitcoin).
[Email #195:]
8. Satoshi refused to accept $2000 donation in June 2010:
Satoshi said: I got a donation offer for $2000 USD. I need to get your postal mailing address to have him send to. And yes, he wants to remain anonymous, so please keep the envelope's origin private. (Satoshi was very conscious and wise to protect anonymity).
[Email #35:]
9. Satoshi always wanted Bitcoin to be free to use:
Satoshi said: I'm going to hide the transaction fee setting, which is completely not
needed and only serves to confuse people. (Satoshi did not think that when many people use it, the network will be congested, leading to high fees. Of course, it was not until 2017 after segwit that there was a layer 2 network called Lightning Network with low fees).
[Email #137 & #138:]
10. Satoshi worked non-stop, even working on Christmas Day 2009, unlike Bitcoin which was just a side hobby. It seems like Satoshi knew he didn't have much time left to devote?
[Email #197:]
11. In 2010, Satoshi went absent for a period of time and during that year, he edited the Bitcoin Whitepaper to remove the word 'anonymous':
Satoshi said: I think we should de-emphasize the anonymous angle. With the popularity of bitcoin addresses instead of sending by IP, we can't give the impression it's automatically anonymous.
~
Also, anonymous sounds a bit shady. I think the people who want anonymous will still figure it out without us trumpeting it.
[Email #245:]
12. In December 2010, Satoshi asked to have his name removed from the list of contributors to Bitcoin and also requested that the Bitcoin.org domain name be registered in someone else's name. At this point, he did not say anything about leaving Bitcoin, but it is clear that this was the first step for him to be able to disappear without affecting Bitcoin:
Satoshi said: Mind if I add you to the Project Developers list on the Contact page? You wrote some code before so you should be there. It would have to be your real name for consistency. If you want to have an e-mail address listed, I'll make an image out of it so it doesn't attract spam.
II – ANALYSIS
13. In the emails, Satoshi also frequently changes the way he writes English between American English and British/European English, a typical example being the word 'cheque' [Email #142, #150, #151] instead of 'check' and 'realize' [Email #38, #39, #40] instead of 'realise'. It is not uncommon for people to use different types of English, depending on where they are, but it is very unusual for someone to mix up 2 types of English. This is a sign that someone is trying to hide where they live.
14. Satoshi likely understood very well that attracting government attention too early would cause Bitcoin to fail. And now we are talking about the SEC, but from the beginning, Satoshi was worried about the legal aspects from investment regulators. This shows that he must be a person with knowledge of the law in the United States or in Europe.
15. These emails, of course, do not tell us who Satoshi is because he/she/they are very careful and all the people mentioned in the emails also say they do not know who Satoshi is, but there is a coincidence between Satoshi and Hal Finney:
• Is it possible to prove that Hal Finney is Satoshi?
>> It is not possible to say for certain whether or not Hal Finney is Satoshi. However, to this day, no one has been able to provide better evidence to prove that they are Satoshi.
III – HYPOTHESIS
Note: Hal Finney has never said that he is Satoshi. However, these coincidences lead to a hypothesis:
Hal Finney was afraid of the legal and US government so he created a character, an avatar named Satoshi to distract everyone. Then he joined the developer community as a supporter of Satoshi. A few years later, he got sick and knew he didn't have much time left, so he worked hard, even on Christmas Day, and only missed when he went for treatment. He didn't want the Satoshi myth to die of illness, so he created a scene where Satoshi suddenly left Bitcoin to 'do other things' in 2011 and he himself stayed until he died.
• If you were the real Satoshi, would you have gone to the trouble of hiding your identity only to reveal yourself now?
>> Most likely, the answer is no. So there are many doubts about those who claim to be Satoshi.
• What about the more than 1 million Bitcoins that Satoshi owns?
>> If Hal Finney is Satoshi, then the holder of the private key is his wife, and she may have lost it or she may never reveal herself until an emergency to protect her husband's secret.
References:
[1] Satoshi - Sirius emails 2009-2011
[2] Rrizzo: the most important new findings ✨
[3] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15322
[4] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15323
[5] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15324
[6] Video 1832-2: Email Revealed, Who Is Satoshi???
Note:
In addition, I compiled and translated a summary and from Thuan Lam, the most famous and reputable KOL of the Vietnamese crypto community, about Satoshi's emails that were recently released[3-5].
I would like to confirm again: although I am a fan of Satoshi, my ability is not enough to provide good analysis like Thuan Lam has conducted, I can only say that because I was extremely moved when reading these analyzes and watching Thuan Lam's video on Youtube[6], I believe that these analyzes will also be valuable to someone. Because the content published by Thuan Lam is in Vietnamese, I try to translate it into English so everyone can refer to it. I hope that I have been able to convey all, or at least most, of this analysis.
First of all: Some of the summaries overlap with what Rizzo presented on X, but I still quote them as a premise for the statement that follows. The analysis also suggests a possibility about Satoshi's true identity, but since Satoshi chose to remain anonymous to protect the value of Bitcoin, I think everything should be limited to reference conspiracy theories. This theory could be made into an interesting movie about the story of Satoshi. I believe it will be extremely attractive!
Personally, I always have only one answer: Who is Satoshi? Satoshi is a living legend.
I – SUMMARY
[Email #3:]
1. Energy consumed by Bitcoin:
Satoshi said: If it did grow to consume significant energy, I think it would still be less wasteful than the labour and resource intensive conventional banking activity it would replace. The cost would be an order of magnitude less than the billions in banking fees that pay for all those brick and mortar buildings, skyscrapers and junk mail credit card offers.
2. Why did Satoshi choose a total of 21 million BTC?
Satoshi said: My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an educated guess. It was a difficult choice, because once the network is going it's locked in and we're stuck with it. I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that's very hard. I ended up picking something in the middle. If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it'll be worth less per unit than existing currencies. If you imagine it being used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be 21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per unit. Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is represented internally as 100000000. There's plenty of granularity if typical prices become small. For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro, then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed, so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is displayed as 1. (We now call the smallest unit a Satoshi, but it didn't have a name before).
3. Number of nodes:
Satoshi said: 100,000 block generating nodes is a good ballpark large-scale size to think about. (~ 50,000 nodes run the software today).
4. Inscription:
Satoshi said: Indeed, Bitcoin is a distributed secure timestamp server for transactions. A few lines of code could create a transaction with an extra hash in it of anything that needs to be timestamped. I should add a command to timestamp a file that way. (Satoshi did this with the first block, which contains the inscription: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".)
[Email #19:]
5. Bitcoin as an investment? "Cryptocurrency":
Satoshi said: I'm uncomfortable with explicitly saying "consider it an investment". That's a dangerous thing to say and you should delete that bullet point. It's OK if they come to that conclusion on their own, but we can't pitch it as that.
~
Someone came up with the word "cryptocurrency"... maybe it's a word we should use when describing Bitcoin
[Email #24:]
6. Satoshi and Hal Finney were both busy in July 2009:
Saoshi said: Hal isn't currently actively involved.
~
I'm not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work, and need a break from it after 18 months development.
[Email #28:]
7. Everyone can mine Bitcoin and own the network:
Satoshi said: Offering currency to back bitcoins would attract freebie seekers, with
the benefit of attracting a lot of publicity. At first it would mostly be seen as a way to get free money for your computer's idle time. Maybe pitched like help support the future of e-commerce and get a little money for your computer's spare cycles. As people cash in and actually get paid, word would spread exponentially.
It might help to keep the minimum transaction size above an amount which a typical user would be able to accumulate with one computer, so that users have to trade with each other for someone to collect enough to cash in. Aggregators would set up shop to buy bitcoins in smaller increments, which would add confidence in users ability to sell bitcoins if there are more available buyers than just you.
People would obviously be sceptical at first that the backing will hold up against an onslaught of people trying to get the free money, but as the competition raises the proof-of-work difficulty, it should become clear that bitcoins stay scarce. People will see that they can't just get all the bitcoins they want. It would establish a minimum value under bitcoins enabling them to be used for other purposes if, hopefully, other purposes are waiting for something to use. (Satoshi could not have imagined that 15 years later, Bitcoin mining would become an industry and only large companies would be able to mine Bitcoin).
[Email #195:]
8. Satoshi refused to accept $2000 donation in June 2010:
Satoshi said: I got a donation offer for $2000 USD. I need to get your postal mailing address to have him send to. And yes, he wants to remain anonymous, so please keep the envelope's origin private. (Satoshi was very conscious and wise to protect anonymity).
[Email #35:]
9. Satoshi always wanted Bitcoin to be free to use:
Satoshi said: I'm going to hide the transaction fee setting, which is completely not
needed and only serves to confuse people. (Satoshi did not think that when many people use it, the network will be congested, leading to high fees. Of course, it was not until 2017 after segwit that there was a layer 2 network called Lightning Network with low fees).
[Email #137 & #138:]
10. Satoshi worked non-stop, even working on Christmas Day 2009, unlike Bitcoin which was just a side hobby. It seems like Satoshi knew he didn't have much time left to devote?
[Email #197:]
11. In 2010, Satoshi went absent for a period of time and during that year, he edited the Bitcoin Whitepaper to remove the word 'anonymous':
Satoshi said: I think we should de-emphasize the anonymous angle. With the popularity of bitcoin addresses instead of sending by IP, we can't give the impression it's automatically anonymous.
~
Also, anonymous sounds a bit shady. I think the people who want anonymous will still figure it out without us trumpeting it.
[Email #245:]
12. In December 2010, Satoshi asked to have his name removed from the list of contributors to Bitcoin and also requested that the Bitcoin.org domain name be registered in someone else's name. At this point, he did not say anything about leaving Bitcoin, but it is clear that this was the first step for him to be able to disappear without affecting Bitcoin:
Satoshi said: Mind if I add you to the Project Developers list on the Contact page? You wrote some code before so you should be there. It would have to be your real name for consistency. If you want to have an e-mail address listed, I'll make an image out of it so it doesn't attract spam.
II – ANALYSIS
13. In the emails, Satoshi also frequently changes the way he writes English between American English and British/European English, a typical example being the word 'cheque' [Email #142, #150, #151] instead of 'check' and 'realize' [Email #38, #39, #40] instead of 'realise'. It is not uncommon for people to use different types of English, depending on where they are, but it is very unusual for someone to mix up 2 types of English. This is a sign that someone is trying to hide where they live.
14. Satoshi likely understood very well that attracting government attention too early would cause Bitcoin to fail. And now we are talking about the SEC, but from the beginning, Satoshi was worried about the legal aspects from investment regulators. This shows that he must be a person with knowledge of the law in the United States or in Europe.
15. These emails, of course, do not tell us who Satoshi is because he/she/they are very careful and all the people mentioned in the emails also say they do not know who Satoshi is, but there is a coincidence between Satoshi and Hal Finney:
- Both of them appear or are busy at the same time, like in 2010, both were 'busy' at the same time.
- Satoshi mentioned that he has a company job and only develops Bitcoin when he has time. Hal Finney said the same.
- Hal Finney was the first person to receive Crypto from Satoshi and knew Satoshi on the forum since 2008.
- Satoshi disappeared in 2011 and had started looking for a way out since 2010.
- Hal Finney was diagnosed with ALS in 2009, a disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, after the famous baseball player who contracted it.
ALS is a disease that kills motor neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It starts to weaken the muscles, then gradually increases paralysis. It is usually fatal within 2 to 5 years, which coincidentally is 2 years after Satoshi disappeared. - Satoshi also updated Hal Finney's ideas in the email chain.
- On March 22, 2013, Hal Finney praised Satoshi's choice to leave... but Satoshi never explained why he left.
- Hal Finney said that he sent all of his Bitcoins to an offline wallet in 2010 and gave the private key to his heir, which explains the large number of transactions in 2010. It is highly likely that this offline wallet was created in late 2009 or early 2010, which is also the last outbound transaction from Satoshi's address.
- Hal Finney passed away on August 28, 2014.
• Is it possible to prove that Hal Finney is Satoshi?
>> It is not possible to say for certain whether or not Hal Finney is Satoshi. However, to this day, no one has been able to provide better evidence to prove that they are Satoshi.
III – HYPOTHESIS
Note: Hal Finney has never said that he is Satoshi. However, these coincidences lead to a hypothesis:
Hal Finney was afraid of the legal and US government so he created a character, an avatar named Satoshi to distract everyone. Then he joined the developer community as a supporter of Satoshi. A few years later, he got sick and knew he didn't have much time left, so he worked hard, even on Christmas Day, and only missed when he went for treatment. He didn't want the Satoshi myth to die of illness, so he created a scene where Satoshi suddenly left Bitcoin to 'do other things' in 2011 and he himself stayed until he died.
• If you were the real Satoshi, would you have gone to the trouble of hiding your identity only to reveal yourself now?
>> Most likely, the answer is no. So there are many doubts about those who claim to be Satoshi.
• What about the more than 1 million Bitcoins that Satoshi owns?
>> If Hal Finney is Satoshi, then the holder of the private key is his wife, and she may have lost it or she may never reveal herself until an emergency to protect her husband's secret.
References:
[1] Satoshi - Sirius emails 2009-2011
[2] Rrizzo: the most important new findings ✨
[3] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15322
[4] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15323
[5] https://t.me/ThuanCapital/15324
[6] Video 1832-2: Email Revealed, Who Is Satoshi???
Note:
- My opinion was posted first in that topic, on Bitcointalk
- I leave the source link to avoid plagiarism accusation.
- I excluded/ included minor things from an original thread if necessary.
