Satoshi Nakamoto Answers To Bitcoin and Bitcoin Mining Questions

[Igebotz]

These are some basics questions and answers on bitcoin far years back when Satoshi invented bitcoin, the questions were asked by SmokeToomuch one of my favourite Bitcointalk user, I've read so much of him in different books and articles, he was the same man who auctioned 10,000 btc for $50 in 2010. He was one of the early birds who invested in bitcoin, he is very much active on the forum till date.

Reading this gave me a wild knowledge about bitcoin and blockchain so I feel some crypto newbies out there might need to read this as well.

N/B: Some of the software mentioned  are outdated




Questions and Answers

1. Is Bitcoin really anonymous ? I mean totally and
completely ? Is my ISP able to detect, that i have sent or
received a Bitcoin payment ? Maybe he is even able to
see that i am running Bitcoin right now?


2. If i understood this correctly, my payment partners are
not able to see who I am. Does this mean, he can not see
my real IP adress ? Only the Bitcoin-adress ? Even if he
monitors his network connections and stuff?


3. If there is a way to tell that I am running Bitcoin for my
ISP or a way to find out my IP for my payment partners,
would it be more safe to tunnel the network traffic through
a VPN (payed with Paysafecard for example). ? Could
this be dangerous, because the VPN provider will be able
to capture my payment?


Satoshi replies

1—3: For that level of anonymity you need to connect through TOR, which will be possible with version 0.2, which is only a few weeks away. I’ll post TOR instructions at that time.

4. What files need to be backed up for not loosing my
“money” ? Only the wallet.dat or the whole Bitcoin
AppData directory?

 Satoshi replies

Version 0.1.5: backup the whole %appdata%\Bitcoin directory.Version 0.2: you can backup just wallet.dat.

5. Isn`t it possible to multiply a wallet and use it on different machines ? This way you would double your money without doing anything for it. Are there security measures for this case?

 Satoshi replies

Nope. The whole design is all about preventing that from
working.

6. When someone loses his wallet, will there be a way to
recreate the lost coins in the system ? Else the 21 million
maxmimum will not be correct. (I mean not to recover the lost coins for one person, but if all the 21mio coins were created, and someone loses his wallet with 1mio coins, will the the others be able to create these 1mio coins now or are they totally lost for the bitcoin network ?)

 Satoshi replies

Those coins can never be recovered, and the total circulation is less. Since the effective circulation is reduced, all the remaining coins are worth slightly more. It’s the opposite of when a government prints money and the value of existing money goes down.

7. I have read that there currently are about 130k blocks
out there. At my pc it only shows me about 24k. Is there
something wrong or is this a normal behaviour?


Satoshi replies

 It’s currently 29,296 blocks. The circulation is the number of blocks times 50, so the current circulation is 1,464,800 bc. If you only have 24k blocks, it must not have finished the initial block download. Exit bitcoin and start it again. Version 0.2 is better/faster at the initial block download.


8. I`m afraid I didn`t understand everything about the
bitcoin creation. How many coins are created by a
machine in 24h in average?

Satoshi replies

Typically a few hundred right now. It’s easy now but it’ll get harder as the network grows.


9. I know that port 8333 should be forwarded to the bitcoin￾running machine. Now I ask myself if this goes for the TCP or the UDP. And is this port required for generating coins ? Or only  for payment transactions?

Satoshi replies

Good question, it’s TCP. The website needs to be updated to say TCP port 8333.The port forwarding is so other nodes can connect to you, so it helps you stay connected because you are able to be connected with more nodes. You also need it to receive payments by IP address.


10. I`ve seen that the source code for bitcoin is open for
everybody. Can this be an actual danger ? If the code is
manipulated people can create more bitcoins than others,
can`t they ? This would be a massive leak of security

Satoshi replies

No, the other nodes won’t accept that.
Being open source means anyone can independently review the code. If it was closed source, nobody could verify the security. I think it’s essential for a program of this nature to be open source.

11. I`ve seen a formular to clalculate the coins that will be
created in a certain amount of time. It had something to
do with the maximum cpu speed and the availabe. Can`t
find it anymore, so I`m asking you to explain me the coin
creating. Do slow machines produce as much coins as
high-end ones?

Satoshi replies

Slower machines produce fewer coins. It’s proportional to CPU speed.

12. Are there any other exchanging systems or potential
payment partners except for new liberty standard?
 
Satoshi replies

There are more coming.

13. What happens when my system crashes ? Is the wallet
saved automatically or only when bitcoin gets closed
manually ? (Maybe even real-time saving when a coint is
created or payment is made ?)


Satoshi replies

It uses a transactional database called Berkeley DB. It will
not lose data in a system crash. Transactions are written to the database immediately when they’re received.

14. Is there a way to see how many bitcoins have beenm
generated this far ? And how old is Bitcoin already?

Satoshi replies

For now, you can just multiply the total blocks by 50. The
Bitcoin network has been running for almost a year now. The design and coding started in 2007.


Lets say we know, that our neighbar uses Bitcoin, and we also know that he will receive a payment soon (maybe because he owns an internet shop and accepts bitcoin as payment option).Also, we know that he uses WLAN and his network is unsecured or weak protected. Same goes for router configuration.We now could log into his router configuration, change the ip adresses for the forwarded port 8333 to our system ip. Now every payment would be received by our bitcoin client.Is this actually going to work? I know this is highly criminal and the scenario is .. well, lets call it “uncommon”, but in theory it should work, right? (Not that I have an interest in harming people, but I know that criminal people will try many ways to get some money.)


Satoshi replies

That’s true, with the send-to-IP option, you are sending to whoever answers that IP. Sending to a bitcoin address doesn’t have that problem.The plan is to implement an IP + bitcoin address option that would have the benefits of both. It would still use a different address for each transaction, but the receiver would sign the one-time-use
address with the given bitcoin address to prove it belongs to the intended receiver.


[Reference ]
https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/threads/9/

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[Welsh]

Personally, I feel everyone that's remotely interested in Bitcoin should take a look at the post history of Satoshi on the forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3

It has a plethora of content right from the creator, as well as allowing you to see how Satoshi interacted with others on the forum, some key members which some are still around today. Its a lot of content to digest, and as someone new to the forum, and Bitcoin it might go over your head initially. Although, I would still say its worth slowly reading one post a day of theirs. Even if you aren't particularly interested in Satoshi themselves, it contains several discussions about features, and proposed changes which I find particularly interesting considering where we are today.

Its worth looking at who's influenced Bitcoin in the early days, and who remains involved. A lot of accounts aren't recognized accounts today.

[Xavofat]

Even if you aren't particularly interested in Satoshi themselves, it contains several discussions about features, and proposed changes which I find particularly interesting considering where we are today.

Its worth looking at who's influenced Bitcoin in the early days, and who remains involved. A lot of accounts aren't recognized accounts today.

I think some of the most fascinating posts from Satoshi's account aren't just technical, but probably actually the ones where Satoshi expresses a personal view.  For me reading his opinions about Wikileaks were a surprise.  It seems that the new attention Bitcoin received in late 2010 may have been a reason for his disappearance.

The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way.

I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy.  You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.

Interestingly, it suggests that Satoshi did not expect the level of popularity that Bitcoin has reached, claiming that Wikileaks would 'not stand to get more than pocket change', even though just one Bitcoin, at the time worth practically nothing, is now worth tens of thousands of dollars.  He even described the new Bitcoin users coming after the PCWorld article about Wikileaks a 'swarm'.

The posts about losing coins are really interesting too.  At the time he had the energy and time to respond to even fairly simple questions like that from people new to the forum because of the low numbers of people taking an interest in this 'beta community'!

[Igebotz]

The posts about losing coins are really interesting too.  At the time he had the energy and time to respond to even fairly simple questions like that from people new to the forum because of the low numbers of people taking an interest in this 'beta community'!

Satoshi was such an ambitious and smart guy from the way he responded to questions with a simple real-life situations you would know that this man had the bitcoin ideal right from birth to change humanity forever. Have you read about Satoshi response and explanation of escrow? I looked through his profile and forum history the guy was just everywhere and at the same time doing some coding. He claimed to be Japanese but code in fluent English language. Lol 

[hugeblack]

Thanks for these responses, I hope you add more quotes.
The first answer was honest and accurate, it seems that Satoshi was a more honest person than someone who wanted to promote his ideas.
I don't know how Bitcoin has grown like this in less than 15 years.

If I was here in 2010, I would not believe that Bitcoin would rise above $ 10,000 in such a short time, and perhaps the price of $ 100,000 would be a little bit if we look to the future.
I don't think Satoshi himself predicted such an acceptance of the coin in such a short time. If there were some quotes for the price it would be good.

[UserU]

Satoshi was such an ambitious and smart guy from the way he responded to questions with a simple real-life situations you would know that this man had the bitcoin ideal right from birth to change humanity forever. Have you read about Satoshi response and explanation of escrow? I looked through his profile and forum history the guy was just everywhere and at the same time doing some coding. He claimed to be Japanese but code in fluent English language. Lol  

I read the Wikipedia article on him and it's speculated that he's not Japanese, but rather British or Australian since he used several British English terms:

The use of British English in both source code comments and forum postings – such as the expression "bloody hard", terms such as "flat" and "maths", and the spellings "grey" and "colour"[17] – led to speculation that Nakamoto, or at least one individual in the consortium claiming to be him, was of Commonwealth origin

I mean someone trying to be anonymous would definitely go with false pseudonym.

[Igebotz]

If I was here in 2010, I would not believe that Bitcoin would rise above $ 10,000 in such a short time, and perhaps the price of $ 100,000 would be a little bit if we look to the future.

This is exactly what people thought 9 years ago and some few years back when bitcoin hit $500 in 2015 there was a lot of predictions that Bitcoin would eventually fall flat and lost value all over the media. Today bitcoin is $55k and yet some people are still doubting the possibility of Bitcoin hit $100k by the end of the end. The future is here already

I don't think Satoshi himself predicted such an acceptance of the coin in such a short time. If there were some quotes for the price it would be good.

There is a quote where "Satoshi said he would be surprised if in 10 years we are not using electronic money system which is bitcoin" he said this in 2010 after the first batch of bitcoin were released. I'll give the link when I find the quote.