Early Bitcoin developer releases emails from Satoshi Nakamoto during trial

Lawsuit over the creator of Bitcoin

260 emails from Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the crypto asset (virtual currency) Bitcoin (BTC), were released on the 23rd by Maruti Marmi, an early Bitcoin developer and contributor. .

My email correspondence with Satoshi in 2009-2011: https://t.co/jyoX8gXckp

— Martti Malmi (@marttimalmi) February 23, 2024

These emails were sent by the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a nonprofit organization made up of virtual currency companies, to Craig Wright, who claims he owns the copyright to the Bitcoin white paper. It was released as part of a lawsuit filed.

Marmi said he was reluctant to share his personal email communications, but decided to make them public because he was appearing as a witness in the COPA lawsuit in London, England.

In 2021, Wright filed a lawsuit against Bitcoin.org, which is involved in the development and maintenance of Bitcoin, alleging copyright infringement and requesting them to withdraw the publication of the white paper.

In order to challenge this, COPA has filed a lawsuit with the aim of limiting Mr. Wright's authority.

If Wright were to win, he would have intellectual property rights to Bitcoin, which would allow him to restrict developers from using Bitcoin's codebase and determine the terms of use of the system. The fate of the trial is attracting a lot of attention.

connection:Cryptocurrency Patent Alliance COPA sues Craig Wright over copyright of Bitcoin “white paper”

Bitcoin design

The email exchanges released by Marumi have revealed new aspects of Satoshi Nakamoto's thoughts on Bitcoin design.

Regarding the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining, he wrote, “It would be ironic if we had to choose between economic freedom and conservation.”

Nakamoto said that Bitcoin's consensus mechanism, proof-of-work (PoW), is the basis for coordinating the network and preventing double-spending, and that it “allows P2P electronic cash to be used without a trusted third party. It claims to be the only solution to make it work.

However, even if PoW consumes more energy, it will be less wasteful than traditional banking operations, which consume large amounts of labor and resources in brick buildings and high-rise buildings.

Issuance limit of 21 million BTC

It is also mentioned that the upper limit of Bitcoin supply has been set at 21 million BTC.

Nakamoto said the decision on the number of bitcoins to be issued and the schedule for distribution was based on “educated guesswork.” He wanted to choose something with a price similar to existing currencies, but because he couldn't predict the future, he ended up choosing something in between.

If the use of Bitcoin were limited to small, specific sectors, the price per BTC would be lower than existing currencies, but if used in some parts of world commerce, there would only be 21 million of them, so He explained that the price per BTC will be much higher.

He acknowledged that even if the price were to be lower, there was still plenty of margin in terms of precision, as the value could be expressed as a 64-bit integer with eight decimal places.

Regarding the value of Bitcoin, it also notes that since it is a 64-bit integer with eight decimal places, 1 coin is internally represented as 100,000,000. This means that Bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places, and the smallest unit, 1 Satoshi, is the smallest transaction unit of Bitcoin, and 1 Bitcoin is equivalent to 100 million Satoshi.

This design allows Bitcoin to be used not only for large-scale transactions but also for small-scale transactions, making it possible to use it in everyday life and for micropayments even as the value of Bitcoin rises.

About anonymity

Additionally, Nakamoto pointed out in an email at the time that it would be better not to emphasize the anonymity aspect of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, he later stated that Bitcoin transaction history would be tracked and it would be difficult to maintain complete anonymity, and seemed to have foreseen the possibility of a crime abusing blockchain. He argues that it's important to warn people in advance of the need to be careful in the event that information they thought was anonymous is revealed.

connection:Bitcoin gift worth 170 million yen to Satoshi Nakamoto, mysterious money sent to monumental address

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