Original Text: "Analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto's Early Remarks and Email History"

Author: BitcoinMagazine Editor Rizzo

Translation: How did Odaily do it

With the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF, Bitcoin is gradually being accepted by the mainstream world. Looking at the continuous flow of funds every day, it is hard not to think about the various difficulties Bitcoin faced when it was born. However, the light boat has passed through the mountains, and now the development of Bitcoin and the crypto world is in line with the vision of its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Was there any hidden reason behind Satoshi Nakamoto's sudden departure?

Perhaps the analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto's early remarks and email history can clarify this. Thanks to BitcoinMagazine editor Rizzo for analyzing and excerpting parts of the historical records, allowing Satoshi Nakamoto's will to reappear in the crypto world.

Odaily compiled the key points of the email history based on Rizzo's thread on the X platform.

Academic Discussions between Satoshi Nakamoto and Adam Back Before the Release of Bitcoin

1. The following image shows the email exchange between the two for the first time in 2008. Satoshi Nakamoto quoted Adam Back's notification letter regarding the Hashcash paper. From the content, those familiar with the Bitcoin whitepaper should be able to recognize that most of it is an abstract of the whitepaper.

Subsequently, the two discussed academic issues:

2. Adam Back wrote back to Satoshi Nakamoto and suggested that Nakamoto read Wei Dai's "B-money" paper. (Note by Rizzo: Dai is a well-known cryptographer who has been researching digital cash and is often mentioned as a possible candidate for Nakamoto.)

3. Satoshi Nakamoto replied to Adam Back, thanking him and stating that he had not read the "B-money" paper. Nakamoto also explained that the main innovation of Bitcoin is the use of proof of work to support a distributed timestamp server. The same proof of work that users generate to create new coins also supports the network timestamp. This replaces Usenet.

4. Adam Back wrote back to Satoshi Nakamoto again, apologizing for not having read Nakamoto's paper yet. Back also mentioned another related paper called "micromint," written by Rivest et al., which uses k-way collisions to provide a computational advantage over time for creating tokens for a bank. The scenario Nakamoto mentioned about a group of players gaining advantage through computational cycles reminded me of micromint. In micromint, the bank's advantage grows over time as it accumulates some advantage through the accumulation of partial results, which helps create further partial collisions more cheaply.

5. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote back again, expressing gratitude for Adam Back's help and for providing other materials such as Wei Dai's "b-money" paper. Nakamoto mentioned that they have released the open-source code related to the paper called Bitcoin v 0.1 and provided the link and screenshots to Back. Nakamoto also introduced the main idea of the system, which is to create self-proven consensus by generating a series of hash-based proof of work. Users gain new coins by contributing proof of work to the chain. (Note by Rizzo: According to Adam's public statement, he did not pay further attention to Bitcoin until late 2012.)

Odaily Note: The above email history between Adam Back and Satoshi Nakamoto is completed. Adam probably only regarded Satoshi as a knowledgeable person at that time and did not expect Bitcoin to become one of the top 10 global assets in the future.

Q&A after the release of Bitcoin: emails between Satoshi Nakamoto and early collaborator Martii 'Sirius' Malmi

1. Satoshi Nakamoto sought a collaborator, Martii, to become an early partner of Bitcoin. The image below shows the first email between Satoshi Nakamoto and Martii. In the original text, Satoshi Nakamoto thanked Martii for starting a topic on ASC and praised his accurate understanding of Bitcoin. He also indicated the current main direction of Bitcoin and hoped that Martii could create a website on Sourceforge and manage a compilation of frequently asked questions about Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto also mentioned that he could provide Martii with a compilation of emails, forum replies, and thoughts for answering questions.

2. When asked about how Bitcoin should scale in the future, Satoshi Nakamoto's answer was that the Bitcoin network could have a maximum of 100,000 nodes and calculations and discussions on the economics of a large-scale network were based on the situation at that time. (Note by Rizzo: Currently, there are about 50,000 nodes running Bitcoin clients.)

The image below shows Satoshi Nakamoto's statement.

3. Satoshi Nakamoto believed that the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining would be less than that of traditional banking systems. By reading the original text in the image below, one can admire Satoshi Nakamoto's foresight.

The original text says, "Ironically, we may eventually have to choose between economic freedom and environmental protection. Unfortunately, the only solution I have found is proof-of-work (POW). Proof-of-work is crucial for coordinating the network and preventing double-spending. Proof-of-work is the key that allows a peer-to-peer electronic cash system to work without relying on a trusted third party.

Even if energy consumption increases to a considerable level, I believe it is still more cost-effective than the labor and resource-intensive activities of traditional banking. Its cost will be much lower than the billions of dollars in bank fees required to pay for all those physical buildings, skyscrapers, and junk mail credit card offers."

4. Satoshi Nakamoto foresaw that Bitcoin would have at least one viable non-currency use case, supporting timestamp use cases.

The original text states, "Some people were talking about secure timestamps the other day. You want to be able to prove that a certain file existed at a certain point in the past. To me, the Bitcoin blockchain is perfect for this use case. Bitcoin is a distributed secure timestamp server, and you can create a transaction with a few lines of code that has an additional hash, which can be used to timestamp anything you want. I should add a command to add a timestamp to a file in this way."

5. Satoshi Nakamoto described the differences between Bitcoin and David Chaum's failed digital currency DigiCash. (Note: Chaum's remarks had a profound impact on cypherpunks, including Hal Finney.)

The original text states, "DigiCash is similar in using digital signatures to represent money, but it's different in privacy and preventing double-spending. The recipient of a Bitcoin payment can check that it hasn't been spent before, and if it has, the transaction is not accepted. There's no danger of offline-mode later capture and public double-spending because that would require participants to have identity. To protect privacy, the key pairs are used only once and a new key pair is generated for each transaction. The owner of the currency is whoever holds the private key. Of course, the major difference is that there's no central server. That's a deadly weak point for the Chaumian system because if the central company goes down, the currency goes down with it. In Bitcoin, the money supply is controlled. There will be exactly 21,000,000 coins. Transactions merely transfer ownership."

6. Satoshi Nakamoto resisted labeling Bitcoin as an "investment," expressing concerns about legal risks and urging Martii to delete the corresponding comments. (Note: It can be seen from the original text that the term "cryptocurrency" was not coined by Satoshi Nakamoto.)

Original text: "There are many things you can say on the SourceForge website that I can't say on my own website. However, I feel uncomfortable explicitly saying 'consider it as an investment'. That's a dangerous statement and you should remove that from the project. If they come to that conclusion themselves, then it's fine, but we shouldn't promote it like that; someone suggested using the term 'cryptocurrency' and maybe we should use that term when describing Bitcoin, what do you think?"

7. In July 2009, after 18 months of development, Satoshi Nakamoto felt tired and needed a break. The article also mentioned the issue of Hal's absence from work.

Original text: "Hal has helped me a lot on the cryptography forum, defending the design, but he is not currently active in it. He did preliminary testing for it when it was first released. He made many contributions to this field years ago with his reusable proof of work (RPOW). I can't provide much help now, as I'm busy with work and I need a break after 18 months of development."

8. Rizzo's interpretation here feels biased. Rizzo interprets it as: Satoshi Nakamoto discussed ways in which Bitcoin could be adopted. It is worth noting that he emphasized the fact that Bitcoin is easy to obtain because you can mine it on computers. This is very different from how we view Bitcoin today.

The author's understanding of the original text is: Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to express that initially Bitcoin was easy to obtain, but as scarcity and value increased, it became more difficult to acquire Bitcoin, which is consistent with the current reality.

Original Text: "Providing currency to support Bitcoin will attract free seekers, which will bring a lot of publicity benefits. At first, it will mainly be seen as a way for idle computer time to get free currency. Perhaps it can be promoted as a way to support the future of e-commerce and earn some income during idle computer cycles. As people cash in and actually receive rewards, the news will spread exponentially. It may help keep the minimum transaction amount above the amount a typical user can accumulate so that users have to trade with each other to collect enough to cash out. Aggregator merchants (the precursor to exchanges) will set up small exchange shops, which will increase users' confidence in exchanging bitcoins and have more buyers to choose from. At first, people were skeptical about acquiring currency for free, but as the difficulty of proof-of-work competition increases, the scarcity of bitcoins should become apparent. People will realize that they cannot freely acquire all the bitcoins they want. This will establish the minimum value of bitcoins, making them usable for other purposes, and if there is hope, other purposes are waiting to be used."

9. Satoshi Nakamoto received a donation request from someone, but Satoshi Nakamoto sent it to Martii.

10. Satoshi Nakamoto believed that Bitcoin would be a way to trade other internet currencies (such as Liberty Reserve). (Note by Rizzo: Liberty Reserve was later shut down by the USA.)

Original Text: "Exchanging to Liberty Reserve is also a way. It is an online currency similar to e-Bullion, Pecunix, or Webmoney, allowing transactions without questions and protecting privacy. It is difficult to buy Liberty Reserve and other currencies because the exchangers are very cautious and afraid of being cheated by reverse payments, so they need more details and holding time. Cash out, on the other hand, is very easy. Liberty Reserve is irreversible, so many exchangers are eager to convert it into any form of payment. In contrast, obtaining bitcoins through mining is very easy. Customers can easily exchange bitcoins for Liberty Reserve, and then exchange it for cash, gold, PayPal, or they just want to keep the money, they just need to exchange bitcoins for Liberty Reserve."

In addition, BTC 2 PSC proposes an idea to sell bitcoins as paysafecards. The card number can be sent by email for online delivery or delivered by mail with unopened physical cards. There are many different variants. In some countries, they are called gift cards and can be used where credit cards are accepted. Some people are unable to obtain a real credit card due to lack of credit history, so they buy gift cards themselves to pay for things that require a credit card."

11. Satoshi Nakamoto removed the word "anonymous" from the Bitcoin website, as he believed it sounded too shady.

Original text: "I think we should de-emphasize the whole 'anonymous' thing. The press just turns that into a 'drug dealer's tool', which it is not. The price is in the anonymity set, not the currency. We will never get rid of the prejudice that some people still harbor for various reasons, but we should not encourage it. It was all by design, but we didn't anticipate newspaper stories quite as inflammatory as the last few. As such, I think more likely they just pick up on the press misconceptions and repeat them. I would just remove the whole 'anonymous' thing, but as an optional feature, like 'cookie-less tracking' in websites."

12. Satoshi Nakamoto appreciates Gavin and acknowledges his development skills. (Rizzo note: It is worth noting that given the historical revisionism regarding this event, Satoshi Nakamoto's appreciation for Gavin Andresen is highly regarded.)

13. Satoshi Nakamoto wants to put Martii's name on the list of Bitcoin website developers, emphasizing that it must be a real name. (Rizzo note: Finally seeing a copy of the email that Satoshi Nakamoto sent to other developers before removing his own name from the project website. Satoshi Nakamoto did not mention his intention to quit the project in the email.)