My response was naive. The former discussion acts on an output retrospectively, while this acts prospectively. That small difference makes this very interesting but not without pitfalls.

This has been discussed in detail in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351497.0

An op_vault or op_unvault is little different than a multisig.

Timelocks, multisigs, or using multiple addresses can tackle this issue.

Two spaces is not strong evidence.

It indicates that Satoshi probably trained on a physical type-writer prior to digital processing, where double-spacing was common. But we could already guess that Satoshi isn't young any more. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/two-spaces-after-period/

I personally think that his double-spaces means that he resided in the American West, where double spaces held on culturally for longer than in other parts of the world, and which matches several of his other behaviors.

The developers of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, varied in philosophies, with "free give and take" being a common one, which does not involve money. And on the other end of the spectrum is BACS, the Bankers' Automated Clearing System, which you no doubt have used many times and which began in the 1960s during this age of ARPANET.

The sub-cultures that you may be looking for may not have been recorded well, but here are some references that gives thoughts contemporaneous to your desired time-period. David Chaum's 1983 paper is usually regarded as the first digital currency, although I'm not sure that is true.

Diebold, J. (1967, December). When money grows in computers. Columbia Journal of World Business, pp. 39-46

Reistad DL (1967) The coming cashless society: Implications and benefits of pending system. Business Horizons 10(3): 23–32

Bacard, A. (1994, January). A cashfree society: Nirvana or nightmare? The Humanist, pp. 41-42

Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo, Thomas Haigh, and David L. Stearns. "Origins of the Modern Concept of a Cashless Society, 1950s–1970s." The Book of Payments. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016. 95-106.

Lauer, J. (2020). Plastic surveillance: Payment cards and the history of transactional data, 1888 to present. Big Data & Society, 7(1), 2053951720907632.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have gone from nothing to a two-trillion dollar economy. There wouldn't be as much of a need for him to continue to develop it as an existential money problem, because there are many torch-bearers who can do a better job.

If Satoshi were alive today and not enjoying retirement, I doubt he would be interested in cryptocurrencies full-time but aim to address greater existential challenges using decentralisation. I'd think he would enjoy working with nostr, a decentralised social network that uses bitcoin cryptography methods. There are many social challenges that can be addressed with decentralised technologies like this. For example, standard political voting should incorporate cryptographic verification features, and yet I've not yet seen a solution implemented, which is an opportunity lost.

Bitcoin source code and the white paper were both published under the MIT license.

Perhaps the MIT license is not completely unrestricted?

It's interesting that there is a copyright on the Bitcoin Core source code, which is owned by "The Bitcoin Core developers". This means that the code cannot be 100% used without restriction, with the single case that it can be protected against someone who were to claim that they wrote the code instead of acknowledging the developers who did. Who knows -- the copyright owners might even be able to stop others from using their code entirely, if those others performed continual mis-acknowledgement?? Has that ever been tested?

There is also Satoshi's identity to think about. Copyleft is tied to an individual who can exercise some rights. Since Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous and not exercise any rights, he used MIT. Copyleft would have caused a more difficult legal defense against several Satoshi claimants, whereas MIT allows that to be foregone entirely (hopefully).

Probably not, considering Len said, "This big Bitcoin heist shows Bitcoin suffers from the worst of both worlds: no strong anonymity, yet no fraud reversal protection."
https://mobile.twitter.com/lensassaman/status/81084436518674433

"Big Bitcoin Heist" is a strong phrase against Bitcoin.

Len Sassaman is considered a candidate for being Satoshi. He has an obituary embedded into the blockchain.
"During Bitcoin’s development in 2008–2010, Len was increasingly active in financial cryptography. He joined The International Financial Cryptography Association and presented at the Financial Cryptography and Data conferences, where he also held a committee seat." His Belgian location though suggests he is not Satoshi.
https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10

Because Bitcoin had to be available for commercial purposes.

In brief, the 2008 MIT allows any usage or additional developments, whether freeware or commercial, with no recognition of previous authors works, other than that you may not claim that you did the original work yourself.

Bitcoin was intended as a currency, which meant that businesses should be left unconstrained for how they incorporate it. This allowed developers freedom to develop without fear that some capricious original developer could usurp, and thus negate, their work. This prevented the need for additional licensing or agreements for any start-up businesses.

Otherwise you would have seen a lot more lawsuits related to Bitcoin. A simple one would be early developers who thought their contributions should be paid after projects took off that are secondary to their work. Or even trying to enforce FOSS, but killing projects along the way that would have been helpful to the community. (Of course they deserve compensation, but if they do not like the MIT license then they can develop on different projects. Bitcoin is a currency intended to be much broader than any individual.)

MIT, instead of copyleft, was the best option for being open while allowing people to develop their own projects. People have a choice to not use closed source projects -- or to use them, if they fit within their philosophy.

Yes, the MIT license allows all sorts of shenanigans (like new developments not being FOSS), but it allows businesses to develop. There is no perfect license, yet. Satoshi said himself that he was not a lawyer, so coming up with a new license might have exposed his code to additional legal holes. It was better to go with an already existing license. Thus, MIT.

If businesses had to concern themselves with copyleft, then it would create even worse shenanigans, like contributors of minor changes fighting for a share after projects became much larger. Even a FOSS model has problems for Bitcoin, as they do not all allow businesses to have their independent implementation of the software without being subject to restrictions -- even having to put in a notice with every software distribution can be overly burdensome for smaller IOT projects.

I personally have nothing against copyleft, and it makes sense in many cases. But MIT made the most sense to help the project flourish in what was intended to become, and has become, a global project across many different municipalities.

New Liberty Standard first listed an exchange rate on October 11, 2009.

One day later, Martti Malmi transacted with him, which is the first known Bitcoin to fiat transaction.
https://twitter.com/marttimalmi/status/423455561703624704

Martti Malmi, who set up this forum, set up bitcoinexchange.com, which was first fully functional on 23 March 2010 -- within two weeks after Bitcoin Market.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68.msg1202#msg1202

The 10-minute block time and 21-million Bitcoin both imply a store-of-value, due to slow updates and limited Bitcoin.

The Genesis block tells us Satoshi's intention: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The bailouts were due to large banks and mortgages failing.  These would be large accounts, ones where value would be stored, and the statement of "bailout"'s says that Satoshi was annoyed by a loss-of-value.

"The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
"Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula."
"Bitcoin [is] more like a collectible or commodity."
"As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases."
" if you get larger amounts then you can upgrade to the actual bitcoin software."
"Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange... Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it."
"Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies! Bitcoin’s total circulation is limited to 21 million coins."
(lifted from http://sampatt.com/blog/2019/06/06/breakdown-of-all-satoshi-writings-proves-bitcoin-not-built-primarily-as-store-of-value#evidence-for-store-of-value)

At the moment, Bitcoin is not a store-of-value. It's not stable enough for that. It is likely an increase-of-value after several years, but not always within a short yearly period.

If you wanted to force people to transact, you would go for a different model. Inflation encourages spending, so to encourage transactions it would be better to have a schedule that starts with block halvings to encourage uptake, but after a few decades change to block doublings.

Bitcoin's value is determined on the difficulty of obtaining new Bitcoin. While that may be CPU/hash power, difficulty can also come in the form of legal restrictions. More legal restrictions increases difficulty, which would increase the cost of creating new Bitcoin, and push the price upwards. You may find that if Bitcoin becomes banned in some countries that miners will still continue in those countries because they find Bitcoin worth it. Hash rate is partially irrelevant since that automatically adjusts -- it's the "difficulty" that matters, and "difficulty" includes hash rate, technological progress, power generation and consumption -- but social reasons can also increase "difficulty".

Satoshi edited the post, but he did not author the post.

I think it was something pretty mundane. Possibly an external link, removing a name, some small line that was near the end.


The user deleted his account, but after Satoshi had edited the post.

It's not Satoshi.

It wasn't that it included spam. There was something in it, it was a funny phrase, link, or something identifying, just a line or two, and Satoshi removed it. Satoshi was light on moderation, but there was also less of a need.

Wallet software changed over time. Wallets used to not be deterministic in early versions, so if you took the same wallet to different computers, it would generate a different set of keys.

In Oct 2010, the keypool feature was introduced to overcome this issue, at least for the first 100 transactions. After the first 100 were used, even with the same initial wallet, you would run into the same issue on different computers. When a transaction occurs, it will use one of the unused key/address pairs in your wallet as a change address if you don't specify where the unspent coin should go. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1414.0 The software has since been changed since so this issue does not exist -- wallets now generate deterministic key/address pairs based on a higher dimensional seed so that this avoids that issue when using the same wallet on different computers.

https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/wallets.html

__________________________________________________________

Although, there are clues that Stoneman was lying or fishing for problems, for whatever reason.

The first clue is that he never gave the right number -- always saying 8900 instead of 8999, so let's delve deeper.

After buying 9,000 BTC, he "4) Sent 1 BTC to myself". Why did he do this? "I was trying to watch when the network should have confirmed a payment to a website that takes bitcoins", which he did when "paying myself 1 coin at about the same time". https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=782.msg8645#msg8645

Stone Man had been a regular purchaser/seller of bitcoin for the previous month https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=444.msg4477#msg4477, posting on 20 July 2010 about that. Why is 20 July 2010 interesting? Because it was 3 days after this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=434.msg3770 , which describes exactly that same situation.  It seems very unlikely to me that Stone Man would not have seen that post when he was making regular purchases/sales of bitcoin, especially in such a small forum that he had just posted to!, where he was looking at bugs and trades regularly, when bitcoin was yet barely tested.

Stone Man never gave any correct details: he always said he transferred 1 bitcoin, which is odd (but forgivable) to not test a transaction with the larger amount to a known address if you were testing things. Stone never stated the correct amount of 8,999, always stating the incorrect amount "8,900". He also claimed that his "old wallet file is gone for good", despite having just backed up the old wallet file! One person, Insti, in that thread made a minor call out against him, "Although the numbers in your story don't add up."

He says that he sent 1 bitcoin because he was testing a 'website'. I already showed that he bought/sold regularly, so that is the most likely website. There weren't other websites then really. What website wants 8900 bitcoin or 8999 bitcoin, rather than 9000, other than an exchange and an odd user request? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=782.msg8645#msg8645 Stoneman questions that the cause was a double spend or because he didn't wait for confirmations, and these seem to be his focus as the problems initially. He would know if it were a double spend, and seems to be suggesting that's what he did yet never outright claims that. He offered no proof that he that owned the original nor final wallet.

Perhaps he was testing flaws in bitcoin or the bitcoin community. This would be one of the first bitcoin transactions with non-negligible value ($200-$700 USD) so it makes sense to have been the target of a potential scam. A common scam tactic is to give the wrong value, but just wrong enough - it gives plausible deniability if someone proves him decisively wrong, after which he can say that his was a slightly different thing,  but if no one can do that perfectly, it gives him the ability to be super disruptive.

An interesting sub-note to this story is this address: 1FJuzzQFVMbiMGw6JtcXefdD64amy7mSCF
There is no post related to that transaction, despite mirroring the 1 bitcoin transacted leaving a 999 pattern, about a month after the other X,999 transaction.

Whether Stoneman ever held any of these coins at any point can be called into question. All transactions are visible to everyone, and Stoneman could have used that ability to claim bitcoin that were not his after that transaction.  I wouldn't be surprised if one of the first exchanges shut down from later actions by Stoneman by reversing paypal payments, which favored the buyer claiming fraud - but in itself enabled the possibility of fraud.

157PiPgqphedUvrco3mKU3Xoof7yzhj9pW
167ZWTT8n6s4ya8cGjqNNQjDwDGY31vmHg        

Bitcoin is based on something that has value -- energy, or the energy that proof-of-work requires.

All currencies are based on the value of energy production more than anything else. All civilizations develop according to the energy that they have available.

Wow! Ten years. That's pretty impressive commitment from Van der Laan.

It looks like he wanted to decentralize developing ability so that less relied on a single individual.

He was starting to delegate more tasks to others since Jan 2001, according to his blog: https://laanwj.github.io/2021/01/21/decentralize.html

This is a Coinbase wallet: https://bitinfocharts.com/de/bitcoin/wallet/Coinbase

It's identified because people transfer their Bitcoin to Coinbase regularly, and so you can track the amounts.

1LQoWist8KkaUXSPKZHNvEyfrEkPHzSsCd is likely a Coinbase wallet because it is unlikely that they would transfer $3B to another group, especially at such regular steps and in such large amounts. This is not 100% confirmed, but a very good guess. Nearly all of those transactions are immediately from the Coinbase wallet or <2 jumps away.

This is likely a miner?

The transactions are <two jumps away from a mined coinbase.

I would like a discussion on the pros or cons of deflation. Please add in your 2 bits.

I do not believe that either inflation nor deflation are bad if they are predictable and within a small percentage. It is the rapid inflation and deflation or unpredictability that causes massive failures.

Deflation is inherent in the system that we live in. As humans, we try to produce everything more efficiently. It's what drives us. It frees us to deal with new or unexpected problems. Deflation is obtaining more value for less work. Deflation is the increased production efficiency of goods, which efficiency we should strive for.

The typical argument against deflation is that it prevents spending, which causes a collapse of the system. This argument is self-defeating: if deflation causes collapse of the system, there is no reason to hold onto the coin that causes that deflation (and therefore deflation doesn't exist). Usually deflation is blamed for economic depressions, but instead, it's normally the other way around: massive inflation had preceded these depressions until production and investment capacity had become unsustainable and untethered to real value, which caused massive distrust of such systems. That distrust then led to deflation to find the ground-floor of value. Deflation is often the by-product of the poor preceding policies that perpetuated perennial problems, but was not the cause. Policies often try to alleviate this poor policy pain by inflating their currencies, but it is difficult to fight fire with more fire (but not impossible). Deflation can be a healthy, but painful, correction of these systems (as we see in bitcoin boom-bust cycles). It's better to have good policies in the first place instead of having to worry about how to make a 'soft landing'.

Another argument against deflation is that people who were first into the system benefit more than people who enter later. This happens with any system, and inflation does not remove this problem. New amounts of money, the new inflated amounts, are normally awarded to those who maintain power over the system and causes similar, if not worse, rewards to those at top. In this sense, inflation is worse than deflation because it allows an artificial group to remain at the top, rather than allowing that money to be distributed throughout the system. Inflation without proper policy does not change this problem of deflation.

A usual argument is that inflation allows people to pay off their debts. This is only true if people's salaries rise with the inflationary measures, which you are lucky if this holds true. The problem with inflation here is that the new inflation amounts of the currency are given originally to close allies, rather than through broad distribution among all classes. It is difficult to force all businesses to keep up with inflationary policies. Companies must have also received inflation-related gains to be able to award their employees with similar (or usually lower) gains. Employees also have to continue to receive those matching gains to benefit, so they must have enough soft power within their organisations to argue for those gains, otherwise they do not receive higher compensations. It is far too easy for companies higher in the chain of companies to keep their inflation-given gains and not pass them on, and for companies to not pass those inflation-given gains to their employees.

Are there other arguments to inflation or deflation? I'm interested in hearing more discussion on this. Thanks.

What's your long term plan? You have enough for yourself, but there must be an idea for what you'll do beyond that?

Hahaha, you are correct. Rookie mistake on my end. Cheers.
Bitcoin keys have only ever been 64 bytes (or 512 bit), plus the few variations on that for the different types of address types.

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A few other things:

Within parts of the bitcoin source code, you will find that 'setFloat' causes a double to be defined, rather than a float. In most programming languages, floats are 32 bits and doubles are 64 bits. Bitcoin plays it loose with the typical definition here
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/univalue/include/univalue.h#L58

The calculations for an address from a 64 byte key relies on mathematics where 32 and 64 bit would not be sufficient. I actually once programmed a search for any exceptions to the general Fermat conjecture (Fermat's last theorem with fewer constraints, also known as the Beal conjecture) using 32 bit as the first stage, then moving to 100+ bit after I thought there might be exceptions. After looking at the solutions with higher bit resolution, my exceptions turned out to not exist.