Bitcoin Forum

I find it very odd that satoshi used this specific .ae domain as seen in this email he sent to Wei Dai https://www.gwern.net/docs/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto. How did he even find it? Note that .ae domains (United Arab Emirates) were hard to acquire and definitely nowhere near top google results, not even in .ae region. Also, why not upload the pre draft to sourceforge like he did for the completed first version of bitcoin? I ran a history check on the domain and saw snapshots & old sitemap, check https://web.archive.org/web/sitemap/upload.ae You can see the domain was only active circa 2007/2008. If you hover the mouse over the sitemap you can see titles of the uploaded files which some contain tv series, movies etc... Is it possible the owner ran google ads and satoshi simply googled a website to upload file for free? Or maybe this domain was a side project he owned? Also, did sourceforge back then offer any free options or was it all paid? Did satoshi pay them to use their service? Did they offer paypal or direct card payments or maybe both?

I think we're never know about this reasons, unless if satoshi is telling about the reasons, but can't find any result. I guess it's personal reason from satoshi, he can use any domain what he want. Maybe he want be more anonymous, so he using other domain than 1 only.

Very much possible! But sadly there's no way to know the reason now unless we find the actual Satoshi and ask him this question! You can speculate and assume a lot of things but you will never know how close you are to the truth!

Or it can be that satoshi was familiar with the site, maybe was involved to some extent or used it so often that it came first in his mind. The domain .de is a country code top level domain of Germany and most people might not be familiar with that specific site. It suggest a bit that Satoshi could be based on Germany, but that's still a blind guess until at least one another hints so.

why not actually? maybe this was just a random file hosting that he found

It barely can be a project which Satoshi would own. He was maintaining privacy from the beginning. The site was probably offering file hosting for free. It's not impossible to get such a domain; no google search appear is needed for that. More or less all the domain "upload" with any extension would be offering file hosting services. Satoshi might be trying with all the extension one by one to get a free file hosting service.

Aside from it's free for hosting, the file-hosting also practices security and privacy, so as a guy like satoshi that matters security will probably use it or so.

It is .ae not .de so it is united arab emirates which much less common domain extension.

This is just another mystery that no one can answer except the man himself. I'm only guessing that it is a free hosting.

1. uses a Japanese sounding name
2. uses GMX a German based free email provider, satoshin@gmx.com
3. uses upload.ae

So everything Satoshi does is shrouded in mystery.

Hard to hide the truth when you use the internet. What about satoshis usage of sourceforge website for email list and file uploads? He had to pay for their services and to pay he had to use either paypal or direct credit card which ultimately will trace back to more information.

I also think this is the case, why read too much into it when he could've been just "what's a domain that will keep it up long enough for people to pick it up that's also not very commercial?" and a lot like this can come to mind.

Visa debit cards and other pay services were around during this time. There's many ways to get around these road blocks, just like the FBI uses Starbucks WiFi to conduct "business".

I didn't find anything 'odd' of Satoshi back then to use an uploading site that is free. Besides, it is pre whitepaper anyways. We can all speculate however, we may never know the exact reason of Satoshi. Most probably as others have speculated it is free and it has nothing to do with .ae domain name.

Using this particular file sharing website just because it was free doesn't seem like a right conclusion to me.
I'm not familiar with file sharing websites back in 2008,but I'm sure that there were many free file sharing websites with .com domains.Why would the owner of a file sharing website service purchase a domain extension connected with the United Arab emirates and run Google ads to gather worldwide visitors?
People in western countries won't trust such weird .ae domain.They will definitely trust .com/.org/.co.uk domains.

Do we really need to discuss something like this? There's no way of knowing whether a guess is true or not. Curiosity is good but if there's no way to check the truth it will be as good as imagination.

There have been many websites with the same (upload for free under 20mb files) and such. It was common and still valid to this date.
I was only curious on how he ended up landing in this very specific unknown one.
I will try to get in touch with the owner of the domain back then and ask if he ever ran ads.
Note satoshi used sourceforge which requires sign up and maybe payments to use when he released his official btc paper.

For such website function (upload for free and definitely earn from ads), it is a practice targeting temporary tasks so i would use any website no matter the extension as long as i was able to upload and get the link for that upload. Owner definitely ran ads bcz u can see in his history 2008 had some sudden spike of activity. Anyway am past this domain am convinced it was ad that made him discover it. I am now on anonymousspeech.com which he used to register bitcoin.org. Seems the website is owned by the same person who owned vistomail.com which satoshi used too, whois records show name as "Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: VISTOMAIL.COM Created on: 27-Jul-06 Expires on: 27-Jul-08 Last Updated on: 28-Jul-06

Administrative Contact: Weber, Michael wwwmichi@gmx.ch 2-4-3 Ogikubo Tokyo, Tokyo 167-0052 Japan 09098044243 Fax --

Technical Contact: Weber, Michael wwwmichi@gmx.ch 2-4-3 Ogikubo Tokyo, Tokyo 167-0052 Japan 09098044243 Fax"

Do you think there was a special plan for this? I'm not sure about that.

Mystery will never end until satoshi clear everything by himself and I think it's not  going to happen IMO since still he stay anonymous. I think there is an answer why satoshi use upload whitpaper on that website. See below quote's bold part.

I will share my opinion, most likely satoshi had uploaded draft whitepaper in order share with multiple peoples and get their opinions or suggestions. On the other hand that website was quite secure and was able to set password in order to open file. Since it was free hosting that's why he had choose this website to share it. That's what I have understood from the mail.

Here is the proof that it was free hosting site
 (http://web.archive.org/web/20080701025827/http://www.upload.ae)
I believe there wasn't any special plan expect I mentioned above.

Satoshi is free to upload on every website he wants, and we don't know what his reason to use upload.ae domain. I think if he wants, he will use the other website to share the whitepaper, but I don't think that is the point. We don't have to think more about that. No one will know what the reason behind that, including why Satoshi Nakamoto disappears until now is, and why he doesn't reveal himself to the public, and many more why which we want to ask him.

It will be the same, why you always visit on some website every time you online on the internet? Or why you always check your list first and not just do one or two things that you want.