Rereading Martti's Satoshi Nakamoto email: The story of the first "college student" to get rich overnight in the history of cryptocurrencies
Original author: OneKey
In 2009, Martti Malmi@marttimalmi, who was a sophomore at the Helsinki University of Technology, accidentally browsed bitcoin.org and sent an email to Satoshi Nakamoto: "I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there's something I can do."
To be honest, this was a pretty sloppy job application email. But from then on, the gears of fate began to turn.
Martti Malmi became Satoshi Nakamoto's first collaborator and the person Satoshi Nakamoto trusted the most. His life has been changed by Bitcoin. There has always been a legend in the cryptocurrency circle about college students "all in" and getting rich overnight. Martti must be the ancestor of this legend.
Last month, he released his email history with Satoshi Nakamoto (https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/), giving us more perspective on the turbulent history of Bitcoin. Here are some interesting findings from OneKey.
Bitcoin's early days operated much like a startup
Like most startups back then, they registered the domain name "bitcoin.org" and had a lot of discussions about product features, UI (user interface), website, etc.
The atmosphere at that time was very different from that of entrepreneurship. All work was done through emails, and no one had ever met the boss, Satoshi Nakamoto. However, remote work has become popular in the crypto industry today, and major crypto companies such as Binance, Paradigm, and OneKey have adopted global collaboration to varying degrees.
This is the first remote work task assigned by Satoshi Nakamoto to college student Martti Malmi - FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Satoshi Nakamoto said that what the website needs most at present is some writing content, and he is "not good at writing, but better at writing code." Original translation: "You can consider building a website on SourceForge, but there is no content there yet. If you can prepare an FAQ, I can sort out the content I answered in the emails and forums for you, so that you can get the information and inspiration you need."
Satoshi Nakamoto is obviously a good boss, and he seriously considered the advice of a young college student, Martti. Here, Satoshi Nakamoto is like a product manager, discussing the features of "minimizing to tray" and "starting at boot" of the Bitcoin core client. Like many computer programs at the time, everyone was competing for user use and reducing the "user churn rate". Of course, Bitcoin adopted this "intention" so that more people could run full nodes and make the early network more secure. Original translation:
“Next I plan to add a feature that allows the Bitcoin program to automatically start on Windows startup and minimize to the system tray, which will significantly increase the number of online nodes.
In retrospect, you did point out a critical missing feature that has the potential to greatly increase the number of nodes. Without autostart, it would be difficult for us to retain users after their first try. As the secret to the success of early file sharing networks, having the program automatically start and hide in the system tray by default is crucial. Although it seemed inappropriate to introduce this feature in our first version (v 0.1.0) when stability was not guaranteed, now that the program has become stable enough, this feature is a must-add feature for our next version to ensure that users who are willing to try the new version have a better experience and are willing to continue using it. "
As an "entrepreneur", Satoshi Nakamoto couldn't help but complain to Martti about those Internet startup projects that "don't even have code" but are still very popular.
In the following email, Satoshi Nakamoto believes that SourceForge's functions can no longer meet the needs of the Bitcoin forum and needs to change the forum service provider. At the same time, he complained: "I have seen some projects attract a lot of attention just by forum discussions and planning, even though they have not started writing any code. Discussions on the forum provide a platform for the project to be exposed, attract new users, help solve support issues, and sort out the most needed features. (So this forum is very important)"
When it comes to marketing for startups, Satoshi Nakamoto is not exactly an extreme "geek". In this email, he mentioned that the "anonymity" promotion point of the official website is a bit too suspicious, and he thinks that this point can be known privately by everyone.
Original translation: "The word "anonymous" sounds a bit fishy. I think those who want anonymity can still figure it out on their own without us making a big fuss about it. I made some changes to the bitcoin.org homepage. Updating the translation is not really urgent. I tend to continue editing and correcting it for a while afterwards, so if they want to update, it's best to wait."
In the end, it was Martti who took it all.
In the email communication, Satoshi Nakamoto repeatedly expressed that he did not want to be a public figure (although in the end, most people still remember Satoshi Nakamoto). He encouraged Martti to use his real name and address. He asked Martti to use his own credit card/ID card to open a server and bank account.
If you were Martti, would you be scared and run away?
Original translation: "I received a donation request for $2,000. But I need your mailing address for him to send it. Yes, he (the donor) wishes to remain anonymous, so please protect the privacy of the source of the envelope as well."
Satoshi Nakamoto also asked Martti to speak on his behalf for some of the promotional points of Bitcoin, and also reminded of some marketing risks.
“You can express a lot of opinions on sourceforge that you can’t on my own website. However, I still feel a little uncomfortable with the direct suggestion of “consider Bitcoin as an investment”. This statement is quite risky and you’d better remove it. It’s fine if users have such ideas themselves, but we can’t promote it as a selling point.”
There seems to be nothing wrong with giving the interview task to the newcomer Martti. Original translation: "There is a blogger who wants to write an article about Bitcoin, but I don't have time to answer his questions at the moment. If I introduce him to you, would you be willing to answer his questions? This way we may get a good link resource."
The boss Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly disappeared for a month, and Martti took over the forum operation. Original translation: "I have also been busy with other matters in the past month and a half. I just started downloading my email from the beginning of April. I have dealt with most of the things and should be back to working on Bitcoin soon. It's nice to see that you have dealt with some things while I was away. Congratulations on completing your first Bitcoin transaction!"
Recharge faith for Martti
Satoshi Nakamoto also foresaw that if Bitcoin entered the mainstream, it would use a lot of energy. This may have been a very "explosive" view at the time: the banking system wastes more resources than PoW.
“It would be a real irony if we ultimately had to choose between economic freedom and conserving resources.
Unfortunately, proof of work is the only solution I have found that makes a peer-to-peer electronic cash system work without a trusted third party. Even if I didn’t use it as a secondary method for initially distributing currency, proof of work is still essential for coordinating the network and preventing double spending.
If it does start to consume a lot of energy, I think it will still consume less energy than the labor- and resource-intensive traditional banking activities it is replacing. It will cost a lot less than the billions of dollars in bank fees that go into paying for all the bricks and mortar buildings, skyscrapers, and useless credit card promotional mailings.”
The last email
We all know that on December 12, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto posted a message on the Bitcoin forum for the last time to discuss DoS (Denial of Service Attack), and then stopped the forum activities. And this was not Satoshi Nakamoto's last email.
A month later, in this email from Satoshi to Gavin Andresen (copy to Martti), Satoshi confirmed again that he did not want to participate in any media PR content or interviews. And here we can see that Satoshi was very worried that Bitcoin would grow too fast, resulting in various functions, attack defense and other needs not being met. At the same time, they were worried about the enthusiasm of public opinion. At that time, some unofficial Bitcoin spokespersons over-exaggerated and even promoted that it would replace Paypal or even the euro. They hoped to emphasize in the media that Bitcoin was a cutting-edge test and had not yet reached the level of large-scale application.
A month later, this was the last email Satoshi Nakamoto sent to Martti, in which he arranged some matters regarding the administrator password, and then disappeared again. This farewell lasted for 13 years, and there was a high probability that they would never see each other again.
The disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto is full of legends, but in these emails, we see a closer side of Satoshi Nakamoto. It seems that "God" is not out of reach, as if he is right beside us, as if everyone is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Martti’s story is not just a mirage. In the new round of bull market, how many “college student” legends will we witness?
