Satoshi - Sirius emails 2009-2011

[Vincom]

It's also interesting to read his thinking about the word anonymous and why it was later removed from Bitcoin.
Anonymous sounded a bit shady to him.

Maybe Satoshi had knowledge of the law so he didn't want people to think Bitcoin was a network used to anonymously transact, which would attract attention from governments.

Email #3
I was really impressed with Satoshi's calculations when determining the total supply of BTC was 21M.

If you imagine it being
used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be
21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per
unit.  Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is
represented internally as 100000000.  There's plenty of granularity if
typical prices become small.  For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro,
then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed,
so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is
displayed as 1.

Email #137 & #138 Fri, 25 Dec 2009
Satoshi Nakamoto worked on Christmas Day, it seems like Satoshi really wanted to contribute more to Bitcoin, like Satoshi knew he didn't have much time left.

Sorry, this seems to coincide with Hal Finney as he had ALM and only lived 2-5 years. This makes me more confident that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto. If this is true, Satoshi was truly great when he spent the last time of his life developing Bitcoin.

[Mpamaegbu]

~

I'm Trickstern from the anti-state.com forum, and I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there's something I can do.

At least, that should give us a perspective why most governments are playing the attack game on Bitcoin. Most of those who supported its creation never hid their displeasure with the state. Perhaps, even those who created it too.

Satoshi is full of wisdom, am still thinking how he manage to understand that they will look for him one day. He is truly the epitome of genius, he is so talented that, he no one could trace him.

He understood the nature of what he was getting into from the word go. Anyone who's into a venture that will liberate the people should know that the state won't be happy with them. Satoshi understood that and that's why he masked his/their identity from the very beginning and did all that could be done to remain untraceable.

[okae]

Sorry, this seems to coincide with Hal Finney as he had ALM and only lived 2-5 years. This makes me more confident that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto. If this is true, Satoshi was truly great when he spent the last time of his life developing Bitcoin.

and here we go with another "coincidence" about that HF is/was SN, i could not agree more with you, there is LOTS of "coincidences" about them...

Check the life of HF and you will discover a good and a very intelligent man, even in his last days of life.

[nullama]

~snip~
Sorry, this seems to coincide with Hal Finney as he had ALM and only lived 2-5 years. This makes me more confident that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto. If this is true, Satoshi was truly great when he spent the last time of his life developing Bitcoin.

Satoshi mentions Hal here (and other places):

Hal sort of alluded to the possibility that it could be seen as a
long-odds investment.  I would be surprised if 10 years from now
we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know
a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the
trusted third party gets cold feet.

I just don't see how Satoshi would create a second persona, specially given how much he wanted to reduce duplicity of things.

For example, Satoshi went with the most permissive type of license because otherwise someone else would implement it, duplicating effort.

It just doesn't make sense in my mind. Hal was involved, but Hal was not Satoshi as far as I can see with the public evidence.

[Eddie Sockittome]

I am surprised that someone has not thought to use readily available AI apps like EmmaIdentity (or something newer), to compared Satoshi's large amount of emails to other early Bitcoin advocates discussions to find out Satoshi's identity. I would think this would now be quite simple and fast to do.

[nutildah]

I am surprised that someone has not thought to use readily available AI apps like EmmaIdentity (or something newer), to compared Satoshi's large amount of emails to other early Bitcoin advocates discussions to find out Satoshi's identity. I would think this would now be quite simple and fast to do.

There have been all sorts of linguistical analysis comparisons done over the years. For example, this is a thesis/dissertation that was posted in the BSV scam thread that compares Satoshi's writings to those by Craig Wright, Gavin Andresen, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Mike Hearn, and Nick Szabo. Spoiler alert: the only thing it definitively concluded was that Wright is farther away from being Satoshi than any of the others.

[MoneroModel]

For sure, way too many people are doing it, even now - I constantly see countless AI linguistic analyses related to new Satoshi emails on Twitter and other corners of the internet. The good thing is that whatever any such analysis shows, it's irrelevant, as it will never be definitive and is destined to be lost among billions of other analyses and 'educated guesses'. Sincerely, I can't understand why some people who clearly respect Satoshi can't also respect his/their evident desire for privacy and security. I understand why malicious entities like criminals and states would want to identify Satoshi, and he/they have covered his/their tracks well to evade such entities (hopefully). And this should clearly signal 'leave me the f%^&* alone' to anyone who appreciates his creation, even just a little bit.

I really hope Mpamaegbu is right and Satoshi understood the nature of what he was getting into from the very beginning.

He understood the nature of what he was getting into from the word go. Anyone who's into a venture that will liberate the people should know that the state won't be happy with them. Satoshi understood that and that's why he masked his/their identity from the very beginning and did all that could be done to remain untraceable.

Being a smart person, Satoshi was likely exposed to at least some authors who predicted or fantasized about the scenario, such as Lord William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson's non-fiction book "The Sovereign Individual" (1997) or Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (1966), etc. which vividly warned about state actions in the transition period long before 2009. It's clear that Satoshi had to be fully prepared for this scenario and took steps to protect himself/themselves, and the least we can do is respect his/their will to remain anonymous, imho.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Satoshi - Sirius emails 2009-2011
https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/

Thanks for this buddy.
I hope that CSW won't claim that he has exchanged that many emails with Sirius. Even if he claims that I guess he will say that he does not remember these things because he is an autistic patient. Or maybe some other excuse? I don't know how I should specify this, Fortunately, or unfortunately, old-timers do not want to reveal private information related to Satoshi. Some bad people like CSW are trying to take advantage of that. Theymos knows Satoshi's IP address but he never shared Satoshi's IP address because of the privacy. That MF will always find out some excuses.

[apogio]

Amazing read, and he is not sounding so academic like in public, but he is just one of us

I 've heard in a podcast, where they were unravelling the discussion between Satoshi and Sirius, the phrase "Satoshi seemed to be a bitcoiner". It felt kind of funny   The argument was exactly that! That he was sounding very casual, despite his academic background.

As I perceive it, Satoshi saw a young man who was thirsty for programming. He must have respected how Sirius recognized Bitcoin from the very beginning. I remember that most people were a little doubtful at first, looking at the mailing lists, forums. That wasn't the case with young Sirius.

Well Satoshi made some mistakes, trusting people who, in my opinion, he shouldn't. But  yeah, with Sirius it looks like he hit the jackpot.

I hope that CSW won't claim that he has exchanged that many emails with Sirius.

The person that talks with Sirius, the real Satoshi, is polite, technically savvy and respectful.
CSW is arrogant, selfish and highly unlikely to have any technical knowledge regarding Bitcoin.

Spot the differences 

[Lucius]

~snip~
Sorry, this seems to coincide with Hal Finney as he had ALM and only lived 2-5 years. This makes me more confident that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto. If this is true, Satoshi was truly great when he spent the last time of his life developing Bitcoin.

and here we go with another "coincidence" about that HF is/was SN, i could not agree more with you, there is LOTS of "coincidences" about them...
Check the life of HF and you will discover a good and a very intelligent man, even in his last days of life.

Anyone who claims that Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto should read the research done by James Lopp in which he proved that while Satoshi was active online Hal was on the other hand active in real life running races. Unless Hal had an associate who "played" Satoshi for him, this is very concrete evidence that Hal Finney was not Satoshi.

On Saturday April 18, 2009 at 8 AM Pacific time Hal Finney, an avid runner, began a 10 mile race in Santa Barbara, California. We can see his results here:
Source: https://archive.is/46t9A

Why is this noteworthy? Because Satoshi was performing activities at the same time that Hal was running. For the hour and 18 minutes that Hal was running, we can be quite sure that he was not interacting with a computer.

It turns out that early Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn was emailing back and forth with Satoshi during this time. Hearn later published his emails on his web site; you can find a copy archived here.

We can see from the timestamps that Mike emailed Satoshi on Apr 18, 2009 at 3:08 PM and Satoshi replied at 6:16 PM. But what time zone was Mike's email client reporting? Well, Hearn conveniently included his IP address at the time (because one way of sending and receiving bitcoin back then was via direct connection to a peer node's IP address) and his address was 84.73.233.199. A quick lookup shows that this IP belongs to a Swiss ISP.
Source: https://www.whois.com/whois/84.73.233.199

This lines up with the well-established fact that Mike Hearn was working for Google at the time, out of their Zurich office. I additionally confirmed these details directly with Mike during my investigation.

What can we determine from all of this? Satoshi sent the email to Mike at 9:16 AM Pacific time - 2 minutes before Hal crossed the finish line.

[apogio]

Anyone who claims that Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto should read the research done by James Lopp in which he proved that while Satoshi was active online Hal was on the other hand active in real life running races. Unless Hal had an associate who "played" Satoshi for him, this is very concrete evidence that Hal Finney was not Satoshi.

On Saturday April 18, 2009 at 8 AM Pacific time Hal Finney, an avid runner, began a 10 mile race in Santa Barbara, California. We can see his results here:
Source: https://archive.is/46t9A

Why is this noteworthy? Because Satoshi was performing activities at the same time that Hal was running. For the hour and 18 minutes that Hal was running, we can be quite sure that he was not interacting with a computer.

It turns out that early Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn was emailing back and forth with Satoshi during this time. Hearn later published his emails on his web site; you can find a copy archived here.

We can see from the timestamps that Mike emailed Satoshi on Apr 18, 2009 at 3:08 PM and Satoshi replied at 6:16 PM. But what time zone was Mike's email client reporting? Well, Hearn conveniently included his IP address at the time (because one way of sending and receiving bitcoin back then was via direct connection to a peer node's IP address) and his address was 84.73.233.199. A quick lookup shows that this IP belongs to a Swiss ISP.
Source: https://www.whois.com/whois/84.73.233.199

This lines up with the well-established fact that Mike Hearn was working for Google at the time, out of their Zurich office. I additionally confirmed these details directly with Mike during my investigation.

What can we determine from all of this? Satoshi sent the email to Mike at 9:16 AM Pacific time - 2 minutes before Hal crossed the finish line.

Not only that, but there is also an argument that Hal wasn't very competitive in C++ but more in C and Bash. But, this argument can be easily discarder because nobody can really say how much knowledge in a programming language is enough.

To me it is clear that Hal Finney wasn't Satoshi. It's also obvious that it would take too much time for someone to develop a conversation between him (Hal) and himself (Satoshi). So, Satoshi and Hal can't had been the same person. Satoshi wanted to be hidden, not by tricking people to think he was someone else, but by following all the cypherpunks tools that allowed him to stay reasonably private. In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto managed to make no mistakes, unless he has but we were unable to see them. Satoshi managed to accomplish true anonymity, which is, in my opinion, infeasible in the digital space.

[okae]

Anyone who claims that Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto should read the research done by James Lopp in which he proved that while Satoshi was active online Hal was on the other hand active in real life running races. Unless Hal had an associate who "played" Satoshi for him, this is very concrete evidence that Hal Finney was not Satoshi.

Yeahh i know it mate and thats not the only one thing that could make you think that HF is not SN, was just an opinon take it easy mate, but nobody should underestimate the intelligence of a man who would like to do everything he could to not make himself known   there is always someone more intelligent than you/me...

In the end "everything is plausible", more or less probable in mathematical terms ofc... except that CW is SN


Anyway, ty to the OP for this piece of history, i really apreciate it.

[Learn Bitcoin]

I hope that CSW won't claim that he has exchanged that many emails with Sirius.

The person that talks with Sirius, the real Satoshi, is polite, technically savvy and respectful.
CSW is arrogant, selfish and highly unlikely to have any technical knowledge regarding Bitcoin.

Spot the differences 

Well, we know that. I guess the judges also know these facts and even they know that he is not Satoshi. Even his lawyers know that they are working for nothing. They won't be able to prove anything with those fake documents. Yes, he is trying to be in the spotlight with those dramas. I cannot imagine how stupid a person could be. How many insults a person can take.

The fun fact is, that his lawyer was saying that he attempted suicide because he wasn't able to prove that he was Satoshi. I don't think this stupid did something like that. These are just pure lies. We all know that. But this stupid has some money and want to waste.

[Lucius]

To me it is clear that Hal Finney wasn't Satoshi. It's also obvious that it would take too much time for someone to develop a conversation between him (Hal) and himself (Satoshi). So, Satoshi and Hal can't had been the same person.
~snip~

After reading the research I'm also pretty sure Hal is not Satoshi, unless he had someone helping him be in two places at the same time. However, some people will still believe it, because Hal was one of those who is very connected to Satoshi and regardless of the evidence that exists and some new ones that may appear in the future, he will still be the best candidate for those who they are looking for Satoshi.

~snip~
In the end "everything is plausible", more or less probable in mathematical terms ofc... except that CW is SN

Look, I have no problem with anyone wanting to believe anything, even that CW is the real Satoshi - but when the evidence clearly points to the fact that it isn't, then we need to take it into account before trying to convince ourselves and others of some false conclusions. Most of those who have seriously investigated this mystery agree that Satoshi was an individual and not a group of people.

[okae]

Look, I have no problem with anyone wanting to believe anything, even that CW is the real Satoshi - but when the evidence clearly points to the fact that it isn't, then we need to take it into account before trying to convince ourselves and others of some false conclusions. Most of those who have seriously investigated this mystery agree that Satoshi was an individual and not a group of people.

All good bro, dont worry. also im not trying to convince anyone about it, i just write my opinion about it, thats all, dont be wrong with me please, peace.

But what for you is clear evidence, for me is something that a man of that category could have solved in many ways...

... Unless Hal had an associate who "played" Satoshi for him ...

As you wrote, if there is at least one remote possibility that it could happen, then we cant discard it...as i wrote, i can imagine others ways to solve it...

pd: this conversation have nothing to do with the main topic, so im sorry about that, i will not continue it, i think my position on what I think has been clear, but I'm not saying it's the only one truth, correct or perfect, is just an opinion, as valid as any other.

[LeezHamilton]

I hope that CSW won't claim that he has exchanged that many emails with Sirius.

The person that talks with Sirius, the real Satoshi, is polite, technically savvy and respectful.
CSW is arrogant, selfish and highly unlikely to have any technical knowledge regarding Bitcoin.

Spot the differences 

Well, we know that. I guess the judges also know these facts and even they know that he is not Satoshi. Even his lawyers know that they are working for nothing. They won't be able to prove anything with those fake documents. Yes, he is trying to be in the spotlight with those dramas. I cannot imagine how stupid a person could be. How many insults a person can take.

The fun fact is, that his lawyer was saying that he attempted suicide because he wasn't able to prove that he was Satoshi. I don't think this stupid did something like that. These are just pure lies. We all know that. But this stupid has some money and want to waste.

Suppose the real Satoshi appear in the Court and provide his evidence that Craig is fraud who is impersonating his Japanese pseudonym for defrauding investors the what Craig wright will do ? 
or If Craig Wright decides to contact the real Satoshi and repent his sin and convince real Satoshi to lend him a signed message from Genesis Block then how COPA is going prove that Craigs Wright is wrong ?

The truth is COPA and Craig are mutually staging this case to a secret purpose which the real Satoshi knows the truth, but if Craig really repent and request the real Satoshi, he might forgive Craig and let him play the Bitcoin drama for more few years.

[DooMAD]

Not sure about everyone else, but I'd rather this topic didn't degenerate into another inane "who is satoshi?" thread.  We've got hundreds of those already.  I'd politely ask if everyone kept the focus to the historical interest aspect (and definitely don't engage with deranged shitgibbon LeezHamilton, because that's a sure-fire way to ruin a topic rapidly).  Faketoshi does not belong in this thread.  Talk about him elsewhere, please.

[MoneroModel]

Not sure about everyone else, but I'd rather this topic didn't degenerate into another inane "who is satoshi?" thread.  We've got hundreds of those already.  I'd politely ask if everyone kept the focus to the historical interest aspect (and definitely don't engage with deranged shitgibbon LeezHamilton, because that's a sure-fire way to ruin a topic rapidly).  Faketoshi does not belong in this thread.  Talk about him elsewhere, please.

Thank you DooMAD.

Switching topics back to the emails, I've been reading them quite carefully (and therefore slowly) for a better understanding. What do the esteemed ladies and gentlemen think about https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-19, where Satoshi's email confirms that Bitcoin was meant to be a digital cash, not an investment tool, as outlined in the Bitcoin white paper title?

I'm uncomfortable with explicitly saying "consider it an investment." That's a dangerous thing to say, and you should delete that bullet point.

Also, I'd appreciate your thoughts on https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-3, specifically his response to a question about scaling.

100,000 block generating nodes is a good ballpark large-scale size to think about.  Propagating a transaction across the whole network twice would consume a total of US$ 0.02 of bandwidth at today's prices.  In practice, many would be burning off excess allocated bandwidth or unlimited plans with one of the cheaper backbones. There could be millions of SPV clients.  They only matter in how many transactions they generate.  If they pay 1 or 2 cents transaction fees, they pay for themselves.  I've coded it so you can pay any optional amount of transaction fees you want.  When the incentive subsidy eventually tapers off, it may be necessary to put a market-determined transaction fee on your transactions to make sure nodes process them promptly.

To think about what a really huge transaction load would look like, I look at the existing credit card network.  I found some more
estimates about how many transactions are online purchases.  It's about 15 million tx per day for the entire e-commerce load of the Internet worldwide.  At 1KB per transaction, that would be 15GB of bandwidth for each block generating node per day, or about two DVD movies worth.  Seems do-able even with today's technology.

Important to remember, even if Bitcoin caught on at dot-com rates of growth, it would still take years to become any substantial
fraction of all transactions.  I believe hardware has already recently become strong enough to handle large scale, but if there's any doubt about that, bandwidth speeds, prices, disk space and computing power will be much greater by the time it's needed.

I also discovered that Satoshi himself discussed this topic right here on the forum:

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

As I delve deeper into these emails, I get a peculiar feeling that Satoshi might have opposed much of what Bitcoin has become and what it represents today...

[DooMAD]

Also, I'd appreciate your thoughts on https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-3, specifically his response to a question about scaling.

That's also something we've had an awful lot of topics about, heh.  Maybe keep this discussion brief as well.

Ultimately, if Bitcoin had retained the "1 CPU = 1 Vote" concept Satoshi had, scaling would be a far simpler question.  The idea was simple.  In the long term, you would either be a miner or an SPV user.  And, conceptually speaking, there was nothing in between (there was the option to run a full client without mining, but that was never intended to be a class of user the network relied upon).  Scaling would be simple, as miners would get paid more as blocks became larger, so it wouldn't adversely impact their costs of running a mining node.  However, mining became centralised at a rate far quicker than Satoshi had anticipated.  As such, the need for non-mining nodes became essential to keep a reasonable degree of decentralisation.  Notice how there's no mention in the whitepaper of non-miners relaying transactions or enforcing consensus rules.  They were never part of the design, but we now rely heavily upon them.  It's because of these nodes that scaling is a far more nuanced and delicate matter.  Unlike miners, there's no financial reward for running a non-mining node, but they do help to secure the network.  Ergo, making it more increasingly more costly to run something that earns no rewards is a difficult ask.

[titular]

Switching topics back to the emails, I've been reading them quite carefully (and therefore slowly) for a better understanding. What do the esteemed ladies and gentlemen think about https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-19, where Satoshi's email confirms that Bitcoin was meant to be a digital cash, not an investment tool, as outlined in the Bitcoin white paper title?

The transition of bitcoin from a digital cash concept to an investment tool is a natural evolution driven by several factors that have unfolded since its inception. While SN initially designed Bitcoin with the vision of it being a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, its use and perception have shifted over time.

Fiat-currency uncertainties, mainstream news SoV narratives, and speculative interests have all shaped bitcoin's current image.

While the original intention of Bitcoin may have been as a digital cash system, its journey through a decade of development, market dynamics, and changing perceptions has led to its predominant role as an investment tool.