Did you know Satoshi was a poker player?

[rbynxx]

He had no intentions of making it a store of value. He intended it for P2P payments/txs on a decentralized network, but after reading the article, I also have the same question. Does he really want to add a poker game, P2P marketplace, and a messaging app?

He definitely had a lot of plans according to this article, but I have not checked the code as I won't be able to understand it. But if they have said it, then I will trust it haha. But still bro, it really hints Satoshi had many plans for the Bitcoin project. Like, was he really able to work on that poker game built on the BTC blockchain? The rest are good projects in my sight, but I don't admire gambling haha.

I think Satoshi wanted to but I think that would have been a lot of workload and if just a one-man army, that will probably be too much or there has been some caveats along the way. I think gambling was the easy way to connect people especially when it comes to digital payments, so, probably Satoshi being a pokerhead think through a lot on that as a side quest.

Satoshi Nakamoto acted like a sculptor, cutting away all unnecessary elements. He focused on creating global, digital, decentralized money and created Bitcoin!

Focusing on one will definitely make a good difference than creating it all at once.

[SensitiveEyes]

Satoshi was most definitely a poker face.

I think I have heard something similar on this matter of him being a poker player previously but can't remember exactly where I saw it but seeing it again come up then there has to be soon truth to this stories and looking at all your evidence I couldn't agree more. First thing first, Satoshi was a human being like most of us here (since we have some bots among us) and as such he would have had hobbies he enjoys like playing poker games. And if he was human then I have no doubts as someone who was this intelligent to create Bitcoin should be at least good at playing poker.  Nevertheless, it's quit nice to see we are getting to see what Satoshi could have been interested in  and having to enjoy knowing he was like one of us.

Intelligent people like to spend the day doing things which are disconnected from their job. Satoshi could like poker or enjoy building castles with lego bricks or selling cherries online, Humans finds way to amuse themselves, Satoshi was a human with hobbies. He could have inserted the code because he liked to throw people off finding him with erroneous plans before stripping for later releases. People are discussing it 17 years later so Satoshi’s plan worked.

[Hamza2424]

I think Satoshi wanted to but I think that would have been a lot of workload and if just a one-man army, that will probably be too much or there has been some caveats along the way. I think gambling was the easy way to connect people especially when it comes to digital payments, so, probably Satoshi being a pokerhead think through a lot on that as a side quest.

He wanted a lot of things because, in the article, the term timechain is used for the blockchain. The messaging part, though, still works. We can send someone a small UTXO with a message, but it should be big enough to show the message.

I am even surprised that in the early stage, he called fractions of BTC cents instead of satoshi. Thank God he did not keep it that way.

The P2P marketplace idea was resembling the OpenBazaar style marketplace at that time. Mike said this, so maybe it was abandoned, so he was not alone. If he would have been alone and wouldn't get any more help, consultation, or suggestions, then maybe he would have created all that.

But the other developers, whom we don't even know the names of, helped him to give us a sophisticated system.

[HeatBit]

OP, did you know that majority of men does poker? Satoshi is just been a man ♂️, it this is ever true.

[wapwapwendy]

Interesting find. Never knew there was a poker framework in the early code. Satoshi definitely had some interesting ideas. 😄

[Lida93]

It isn't surprising to know this about Satoshi being a poker guy as every man outside his busy life must have something that interest him for fun or leisure. What we can't really know is if it was only poker he was into or there could be some other things we're yet to uncover.

Does this tells us that Satoshi isn't a group of persons but a single individual?

[Patikno]

There's never a boring day in Bitcoin, you always learn something new.

According to some old findings, the original 0.1.0 Bitcoin repository contained the framework for a virtual poker game, added on April 16, 2008, months before the white paper, alongside a peer-to-peer marketplace and an IRC client for bootstrapping.

Neither the marketplace nor the poker game was ever developed after launch. The scraps persisted through roughly v0.1.3, then were stripped out. You can still see them in mirrors of the original source.

Satoshi was most definitely a poker face.

As far as I know, poker has been around for a long time, and was widely known well before the advent of Bitcoin. So, I think it is reasonable to assume that Satoshi was a poker player. That said, I believe Satoshi was a prudent person, and I am convinced he was just a casual player who played for the sake of entertainment.

Beyond that, I think Satoshi might have intended to use poker as a starting point for testing transactions in Bitcoin, right? or, maybe he considered integrating it early on, but ultimately decided against it.

[YOSHIE]

Satoshi was most definitely a poker face.

I just found out that Satoshi Nakamoto is a poker player, but in Japan as far as I remember there are several poker players who could be said to be professional poker players, I have seen in several poker tournaments, such as the same names Satoshi Tanaka and Satoshi Kuriga, they are experts in the game of poker and have won hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the Bitcoin book I once read about poker, Satoshi Nakamoto had the initial intention of creating Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to add game features such as peer-to-peer poker, which was linked to implementation on the network, but for some reason this idea was notaccomplished.

I saw the news you posted (Published: March 14 2019) it's been seven years, I think it's not a new discovery about Satoshi Nakamoto and poker.

[justdimin]

I am not sure what OP suggests is that he was a "poker player"; it just suggests that he wanted to maybe put something that could be a use case for Bitcoin, to make sure that it had some places that people could use it for, but then decided against it and removed it so that people could decide what they wanted to do with it. And we would never know for sure if SatoshiDice had no help from Satoshi either; maybe he helped them; we can't be sure. In the end, use case would have been a good idea in many other cases, so he wasn't on the wrong path; he could have done something that would have made sense, but at the same time we have to realise that we are not going to see that because he removed it.

But once again, I do not think that it was regards to him being a poker player, he was a crypto person and the one who created all of this, of course he knew how poker worked, that would be naive to think that he would not know the math behind it, but I am sure he just played it a few times or something, not like some big time poker player.

[m2017]

There's never a boring day in Bitcoin, you always learn something new.

According to some old findings, the original 0.1.0 Bitcoin repository contained the framework for a virtual poker game, added on April 16, 2008, months before the white paper, alongside a peer-to-peer marketplace and an IRC client for bootstrapping.

Neither the marketplace nor the poker game was ever developed after launch. The scraps persisted through roughly v0.1.3, then were stripped out. You can still see them in mirrors of the original source.

Satoshi was most definitely a poker face.

This headline is clickbait.

The presence of a virtual poker game in this repository doesn't necessarily mean that Satoshi himself was a poker player (poker, in particular, might be chosen due to its popularity). It could have been a feature designed for users, a way to attract them to bitcoin through this card game. It seems to me that this feature should have been added and developed further; doing so might have accelerated user adoption of bitcoin and allowed it to get ahead of the gambling industry that utilizes the app.

All in all, it’s fascinating information about the "dead-end" evolutionary branches of bitcoin. I wonder how things would have played out if the poker and P2P marketplace features hadn't been removed? I’d love to see a universe featuring that alternative version of bitcoin.

[Free Market Capitalist]

This headline is clickbait.

The presence of a virtual poker game in this repository doesn't necessarily mean that Satoshi himself was a poker player (poker, in particular, might be chosen due to its popularity). It could have been a feature designed for users, a way to attract them to bitcoin through this card game. It seems to me that this feature should have been added and developed further; doing so might have accelerated user adoption of bitcoin and allowed it to get ahead of the gambling industry that utilizes the app.

Probably. To put it in context, Satoshi created Bitcoin during the golden age of online poker. After Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the 2003 WSOP—he was just an amateur at the time—there was a poker boom, especially online, as many tried to replicate his feat. A decade after that, things gradually began to fall apart, but in 2008-2009, poker was at the peak of its popularity.

[OsaiEmma]

Why do people say this? Of course and the priority was peer-to-peer cash, but why selecting a hard cap if it weren't for the store-of-value proposition? Why not add a tail emission? It would still be resistant to arbitrary inflation. But he didn't, he chose to cap it at 21 million.

Actually, I never read any of his statements that say it will be used for holding purposes usually. I mostly read why and how it should be used for payments, like a currency. But bro, you definitely have a good point here. A 21 million capped supply is a good argument to say why he chose that!

I believe he wanted to fight inflation. That's why he hard capped it. But then again, you will say the same thing, that then how could Satoshi not think that it can also become a commodity like gold, used to preserve value for the long term? So bro, I agree with you and the point you made, but My point was based on what has mostly been said.

I can understand your perspective. If you look at what he said and envisioned, there is a stark difference with what and how Bitcoin is being viewed and used today. He was mostly on the P2P side and not necessarily a system that will replace fiat or a store of value. Well, Bitcoin couldn't keep up in that front so it evolved and became something more - a store of value.

I believe he designed Bitcoin as a tool to combat control while having inflation in mind. But regarding the OP and the article, I strongly believe he had those features in mind as trying to create some practical use case in the system. I mean, poker uses chips, so instead of chips you use Bitcoin. The marketplace is the most obvious use case, and the messaging app will be a way of communication while carrying out transactions. So, I believe he was trying to create some form of utility in the chain. Whatsoever reason made him change his mind I don't know. But I like this reply.

I believe Satoshi Nakamoto originally envisioned Bitcoin as a decentralized social network with chat, gambling, a marketplace, and digital money. 🙋

However, over time, he realized all the shortcomings of this concept. P2P poker could have ruined the entire project. American regulators could have classified it as illegal gambling software. As a result, the project would have died before it even had a chance to develop.

Satoshi Nakamoto acted like a sculptor, cutting away all unnecessary elements. He focused on creating global, digital, decentralized money and created Bitcoin!

As for his poker skills, I'm not at all surprised. Poker is a very intellectual game. Every student loves playing poker with friends on long winter evenings. Moreover, poker is directly related to game theory and mathematics. 💁

The regulation problem would have really been a serious roadblock and to add to this, having all these features would have created unnecessary complexity to the system.

So I believe he may or may not necessarily be a poker player.

[ultrloa]

There's never a boring day in Bitcoin, you always learn something new.

According to some old findings, the original 0.1.0 Bitcoin repository contained the framework for a virtual poker game, added on April 16, 2008, months before the white paper, alongside a peer-to-peer marketplace and an IRC client for bootstrapping.

Neither the marketplace nor the poker game was ever developed after launch. The scraps persisted through roughly v0.1.3, then were stripped out. You can still see them in mirrors of the original source.

Satoshi was most definitely a poker face.

Some parts of what you have said here is true, also there's an early Bitcoin code which is unfinished which have same like poker clients, IRC bootstrapping and a small marketplace.

The way how Satoshi try many things, it seems that he's just doing an experiment. but later on he removes those things. Those action also shows that he think about lots of ideas for Bitcoin and not just thinking about making it as digital money.

Look at this, since this is quiet interesting.

BIP-777 (GPR) The Great Poker Restoration: Add the poker client back to bitcoin #32181
Fiach-Dubh / bitcoin-0.1.0
original-bitcoin-laboratory/genesis