Hal Finney

Wild Satoshi Theories: The Curious Case of Bitcoin Block 3654 from 2009

21/05/2020 by Idelto Editor

On Wednesday, 50 bitcoin mined on February 9, 2009, was moved from the original address to a new address. The movement of coins caused a great commotion throughout the cryptocurrency community, as some individuals assumed it may have been the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. However, skeptics believe that even though the coins stemmed from an address a touch over a month old from the time Nakamoto bootstrapped the Bitcoin network, it may have been someone else who mined alongside the creator.

The Incredible Fascination With Bitcoin Block 3,654

The creator of Bitcoin and early cryptocurrency mining, has been a topical conversation on Wednesday. The reason is because 50 BTC from February 9, 2009, was moved from the original block reward address to another address. This has made people break out their notes, analyze the blockchain, and become armchair sleuths hot on the trail for whoever the person might be. Various theories have come into play, as people have thought that maybe it was Hal Finney’s wife, one of the Kleimans, Craig Wright, Marti Malmi, someone who may have mined alongside Satoshi Nakamoto, or possibly even the creator.

One of the first issues at hand is how many people were mining bitcoin in 2009. Some people believe a few others had access to Satoshi’s software around that time. There are instances where Satoshi told the public that the software was given to others for peer review. A mailing list response to James A. Donald on Nov. 17, 2008, explains that Satoshi gave files to possibly a few people before the launch on January 3, 2009. A bitcointalk.org member dubbed “Cryddit” told the public he had access to early software. Prior to block 3,654, Satoshi Nakomoto also said he distributed the software to a few other people and thanked two people named “Dustin” and “Nicholas” for their feedback.

Sergio Demián Lerner’s Patoshi Pattern

Coin Metric’s executive, Nic Carter, also discussed the 50 BTC coins from 2009 moving on Wednesday. “Early non-Satoshi mined coins are periodically awakened, just not frequently,” Carter said. “Keep in mind it’s basically impossible to prove that Satoshi ‘didn’t’ mine these coins, but the best research we have suggests that Satoshi mined a specific set of blocks, of which this is not one.” At this point, Carter is discussing the research done by RSK Labs chief scientist Sergio Demián Lerner. “Here’s a visualization of the Patoshi pattern with the block that was just spent. The blocks believed to be Satoshi have a specific pattern in the nonce, which this block does not have,” Carter stressed on Twitter. Other bitcoin advocates came up with the same hypothesis using Sergio Demián Lerner’s “Patoshi” pattern research.

Wild Satoshi Theories: The Curious Case of Bitcoin Block 3654 from 2009 — Chart: Nic Carter, via Twitter

That particular research shows that there is strong evidence to suggest that a single miner or very small group of miners (5 CPUs) could have mined 22,000 blocks. One person asked software developer Jameson Lopp if he “thought the ‘Patoshi Pattern’ is an exhaustive list?”

“IIRC the pattern drops off after block 50,000 or so,” Lopp replied. “That’s all it is, though – a pattern. The list is exhaustive in that it’s what matches the pattern; the real Satoshi might have mined other blocks with another setup,” the developer added. The RSK Labs chief scientist wasn’t the only one who studied early patterns in Bitcoin history as another person in 2017 tried to unravel the clues.

A Single Intel CPU: 1 Miner, 5 Miners, Or 20?

Evidence suggests that back in the early days of bitcoin, around the same time block 3,654 was produced, there was only a small amount of hashpower pushing the chain forward. A blog post from eklitzke.org shows that between the birth of the Bitcoin network in January 2009 and the two months that followed, the hashrate was around 4-8 megahash per second (MH/s). We all know that an old Antminer S9 could blow that hashrate away, but back then Satoshi used a central processing unit.

“I find it reasonable to assume that most of the hashing power in the first year or so of Bitcoin’s existence came from Satoshi Nakamoto,” the blog post details. “If real users were actually joining and leaving Bitcoin, one would expect the hash rate to have varied a lot more, particularly in the first six months.”

The report also shows that the hashrate could have been kept up with a single computer. “The few months have a consistent hash rate of about 5 MH/s [and] would it have been feasible for Satoshi Nakamoto to have solo mined with 5 MH/s in 2009?” the researcher asked. The report’s author continued by adding:

The answer is yes, and in fact, it’s possible to achieve this hash rate using a single Intel CPU. The linked Bitcoin wiki page gives a 5.1 MH/s hash rate for the Core i5-650 CPU, which was released in January 2010 with a 3.2 GHz clock speed. The Intel CPUs available in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin would have been slightly earlier generation Core 2 processors. Those would have been nearly as fast as a Core i5-650. In fact, the highest-end desktop processors available when Satoshi Nakamoto started mining Bitcoin would have been much faster than that. The wiki page shows that a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (released January 2007) would have been capable of achieving 11 MH/s. The numbers for AMD CPUs in this era are similar.

Malmi Denies Involvement and Links to the Kleiman v. Wright Case

The early Bitcoin developer, Marti Malmi, has explained on Twitter that it probably wasn’t him either, when he was recently mentioned in a Cointelegraph article. “Nope,” Malmi tweeted. “Bitcoin was announced on the cryptography mailing list in January 2009 and many people could have tested it. I found Bitcoin around April.”

Then there was also the Twitter conversation involving Craig Wright, the Australian native who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. “I followed some of the output of that transaction from the old wallet,” explained one sleuth on Twitter. “It led to this wallet, 966 pages back 100 BTC was transferred last fall (it has 4800 transactions in it). Not sure if you can tell anything from this or where that 100 came from.” Craig Wright’s friend Calvin Ayre responded by saying:

I think you will find this to not be Craigs, or at least not Craig doing it…who owns this is for the courts maybe.

“It traces back to block 9. This is definitely Craig’s address as he signed from it in 2015 and in 2017 on the @satoshi handle,” another person replied to the conversation with Ayre. Some speculate that one of the addresses used in the Kleiman v. Wright court case is somehow involved with the 50 BTC movement on Wednesday.

Twitter is now going crazy about the speculation that the coins may have been the very creator’s bitcoins. However, many people are already dismissing the movement by simply referring to onchain blockchain analysis and data. Despite the debunkings, cryptocurrency enthusiasts have always been fascinated with Satoshi Nakamoto’s lore and alleged treasures.

What do you think about the 50 bitcoin from 2009 moving? Let us know in the comments below.

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The Many Facts Pointing to Wei Dai Being Satoshi

01/04/2020 by Idelto Editor

Satoshi Nakamoto has been an enigma for well over a decade and there’s been a number of suspects and self-styled Bitcoin inventors. One particular suspect is the computer engineer Wei Dai, the creator of the b-money system and the Crypto++ cryptographic library. Since the Bitcoin network was launched in 2009, a number of people have had suspicions that Wei Dai could have played the role of Nakamoto.

Also Read: The Many Facts Pointing to Ian Grigg Being Satoshi

Wei Dai and Satoshi Nakamoto

We don’t know who is behind the real identity of the person or group of people that created Bitcoin. The anonymous creator(s) not only invented the concept of cryptocurrency, but also managed to keep the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto a secret for more than 11 years. In our fifth installment of the “Many Facts” series, we discussed how Dorian Nakamoto was mistaken for being the anonymous Bitcoin creator in 2014. The following is the sixth installment in the series, offering a comprehensive look at the circumstantial evidence that might point to Wei Dai being Satoshi. Dai is a well known cypherpunk and he is referenced in the citations section at the end of the Bitcoin white paper. Over the last decade, a number of speculators have assumed Dai might be the cryptocurrency’s creator and a few armchair sleuths have tried to tie the two together as one.

One reason people think that Dai played the Nakamoto part, is because the talented cryptographer has the smarts to pull it off. Moreover, Dai created a C++ library for cryptographic functions called Crypto++ and he’s still a member of the academic and cypherpunk community. Dai is also a staunch supporter of privacy and the New York Times described the cryptographer as an “intensely private computer engineer.” Dai’s theories about anonymous electronic cash infrastructure can also be found on the cypherpunks mailing list well before Bitcoin was released. The cryptographer also crafted an electronic money system called “b-money” and it is the reason he is referenced in the Bitcoin white paper. In addition to his white paper reference, Dai and Nakamoto also exchanged a few emails in 2008, according to documents hosted on gwern.net.

Gwern.net hosts a few emails sent to Dai in 2008 that were originally published in a Sunday Times article in 2014. In the email pictured above, Satoshi explains that he’s finished the first version of the Bitcoin protocol.

B-money is an interesting system and Dai explained in 1998 that Tim May’s crypto-anarchy “fascinated” him. “Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word ‘anarchy,’ in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary,” Dai wrote in the first section of the b-money white paper. “It’s a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations,” the computer engineer added.

An excerpt from Wei Dai’s “b-money” system.

Expanding Ideas

Dai was already a well-established character well before Satoshi allegedly emailed him in order to discuss peer-to-peer electronic cash concepts. In the 2008 emails, the two discuss Nick Szabo and Dai assumes that the conversations prove Szabo could not be Nakamoto. The emails between Nakamoto and Dai were originally published in March 2014’s Sunday Times editorial. “The more important reason for me thinking Nick isn’t Satoshi, is the parts of Satoshi’s emails to me that are quoted in the Sunday Times,” Dai wrote. On August 22, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote to Dai and said:

I was very interested to read your b-money page. I’m getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system.

Further, the entropy similarities between Wei Dai and Satoshi Nakamoto’s written text also adds to the list of supporting evidence that Dai could be the mysterious creator. The only person who scored higher than Dai was former Bitcoin Core developer Gavin Andresen. Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi who has yet to prove himself, has 12 people above him after Dai.

Some speculators hunting for Satoshi Nakamoto believe that the creator of Bitcoin could have easily played two roles with any one of his correspondents. Just because Wei Dai and Nakamoto have had conversations it doesn’t mean people haven’t assumed they are the same person. Other people who had engaged with Nakamoto who have been considered ‘Satoshi suspects’ as well include Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, James Donald, Gavin Andresen, and others.

Other than mere circumstances and coincidence, there’s really not a smoking gun pointing to Dai actually being Nakamoto and he’s never admitted it either. Theories of Dai being Nakamoto are also dismissed because Dai and Nakamoto engaged in email conversations and he’s referenced in the white paper, so he would have to be playing ‘double agent’ roles. But that hasn’t stopped speculators in the crypto community who believe people like James Donald and Hal Finney could have been Nakamoto too and played double roles.

Do you think Wei Dai could be Satoshi? Let us know in the comments below.

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Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? An Introduction to Bitcoin’s Mysterious Founder

08/03/2020 by Idelto Editor

Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto – Introduction to the Mysterious Founder of Bitcoin

The true identity of the creator of Bitcoin is one of the biggest mysteries in the modern world. Over the years many theories have popped up about who Satoshi Nakamoto really is, including a time traveler, a space alien, a rogue artificial intelligence or a front for groups such as the NSA, CIA and Yakuza. This article will present only the known facts about him and the more likely candidates who people suspect may be be the elusive figure.

Also Read: 10 People Who Might Be Satoshi Nakamoto

Who Is the Mysterious Founder of Bitcoin?

The name Satoshi Nakamoto is an alias used by the person or entity who created Bitcoin to hide their true identity. He claims to be Japanese, born on April 5, 1975 and reside in Japan but people doubt this due to his native-level command of the English language as well as his preference of working hours more consistent with the U.K. time zone than Asia. Satoshi is a Japanese boy’s name that means “one with wise ancestry” and he is presumed to be male.

Nakamoto was the first to solve the double-spending problem for a decentralized digital currency, creating a new asset, the likes of which the world had never seen before: Bitcoin. In October 2008, Satoshi published the original whitepaper, describing his blueprint for a “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” In January 2009 he released version 0.1 of the source code and launched the cryptocurrency by mining the genesis block. The founder continued to work on the software project for about another year and a half before disengaging from active development.

Nobody knows why Satoshi Nakamoto really decided to disappear without ever revealing himself or even cashing out some of the billions of dollars his early minted coins are now worth. This has provided fertile ground for speculation, educated guesses and outright conspiracy theories. Researchers have pored over the few data points left by the mysterious figure, trying to analyze his vocabulary, his way of writing and other clues to find some hints to his true identity.

Let’s have a look at some of the names that have been put forward as possible Satoshis.

Will the Real Satoshi Nakamoto Please Stand Up

Dorian Nakamoto is the man with the friendly face most people now associate with the creator of Bitcoin. He was outed as Satoshi in March 2014 by Newsweek Magazine, which created a media frenzy around him and greatly disrupted his life. Dorian has denied having any connection to the development of cryptocurrency but eventually embraced a role of a mascot of sorts for the community.

The evidence cited by the magazine includes the fact that Dorian was actually born with the name Satoshi. He was trained as a physicist at Cal Poly University and worked as a systems engineer on classified defense projects and a computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies. Nakamoto also has libertarian tendencies and encouraged his daughter to have a business “not under the government’s thumb.” And when he was first asked about Bitcoin, Nakamoto mistakenly thought it was a question about one of the classified projects he did for U.S. military contractors and said: “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It’s been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.” For a more detailed look at Dorian as Satoshi Nakamoto see here.

Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? An Introduction to Bitcoin's Mysterious Founder — Dorian (Not Satoshi?) Nakamoto at a Bitcoin Conference in San Fransisco

Hal Finney was a cryptographic pioneer, cypherpunk activist and the first person ever to receive a bitcoin transaction. Coincidentally or not, he also was a neighbor of Dorian Nakamoto. A Caltech engineering graduate and a developer for the PGP Corporation, he had the required skills to create a cryptocurrency from scratch and was the first person to improve the Bitcoin source code after Satoshi.

Finney died in August 2014 and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Hopefully one day the technology to revive him will be invented and he can provide more clarity on the issue if it has not been resolved by then. For now you can see all the many facts pointing to Hal being Satoshi here.

Nice Szabo, self-described “Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer,” was in contact with like Hal Finney and his name often comes up as a possible Satoshi despite his claims otherwise. People who think he may be the creator of Bitcoin point out his proposal for a decentralized currency called bit gold from 2005 which uses similar concepts to those eventually perfected by Bitcoin. For a breakdown of the facts pointing to Nick Szabo being Satoshi see here.

Craig Wright is mostly thought of as a conman these days but there was once a time when some of the most prominent names in the crypto community thought he was Satoshi. This abrasive character is an Australian academic and businessman who first emerged in December 2015 with reports in Wired and Gizmodo. Since then he tried to force people to accept him as the creator of Bitcoin in various unconvincing ways, such as lawsuits against his critics. For the latest developments in the Craig Wright claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto saga see here.

Paul Le Roux is a much scarier Satoshi candidate who came to light from the legal cases around Wright. Le Roux is a former encryption software programmer and vicious cartel boss turned informant to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. After he was arrested in September 2012 for conspiracy to import narcotics, the criminal mastermind admitted to participating in seven murders. See this link for more on why Satoshi Nakamoto could be Paul Le Roux.

Other less discussed possible Satoshi candidates include cypherpunk pioneer Ian Grigg, Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki and tech mogul Elon Musk.

Bitcoin is *not* my safe word

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2020

Elon Musk is mainly involved in the cryptocurrency sphere as a meme lord and casual troll, but he too had to deny being the creator of Bitcoin. As the founder of Paypal, Tesla, Spacex and a multitude of other companies in different fields, Musk probably has the ability to learn whatever skills he needs to create a cryptocurrency from scratch.

In November 2017 a former intern at Musk’s rocket company by the name of Sahil Gupta presented the case that his old boss was really the founder of Bitcoin. A Yale University computer science student at the time, he claimed that Musk had both a preference and an excellent grasp of the C++ programming language like Satoshi did.

Gupta also pointed out that the stability of the financial system was a major global concern in 2008, and Musk is someone who “identifies the most urgent problems of our time and dedicates his time to solving them,” suggesting he had the drive “to solve the lack of trust in banks by creating a currency that doesn’t need them.” He also claimed the tech mogul had a deep understanding of economics and cryptography needed to write the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Musk, who is already a billionaire many times over thanks to Paypal and Tesla, also wouldn’t be tempted to cash out his old coins in a hurry. But the massive stash of BTC and BCH could be used to kickstart the Martian economy once he is out of reach of the IRS on the surface of the red plant. So perhaps he is Satoshi after all and is just using humor to misdirect?

Well, now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been discovered, I guess it is case closed …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2014

What do you think about the possible identity of the creator of Bitcoin? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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A Deep Dive Into Satoshi’s 11-Year Old Bitcoin Genesis Block

03/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

11 years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network at approximately 18:15:05 UTC and the world hasn’t been the same since. The Bitcoin blockchain came to life on January 3, 2009, and so far, more than 600,000 blocks have been mined into existence. Nakamoto’s genesis block is special and the hardcoded block has a few unique characteristics compared to the rest of the chain of blocks that followed.

Also Read: BTC’s Hashrate Touches 120 Exahash, But the Price Has Not Followed

The Genesis Block

This week the cryptocurrency community is celebrating the 11th anniversary of the Bitcoin network. Satoshi brought the network to the world two months after publishing the whitepaper on October 31, 2008. The launch of the Bitcoin blockchain started with a hardcoded block called the ‘genesis block’ or ‘block zero.’

The block is unique because it has a 50 BTC reward subsidy that can never be spent. Alternative coins that have copied Bitcoin’s framework also use a hardcoded block to start a new chain. Most early bitcoin blocks and the hash of the genesis block have two more leading hex zeroes. In addition to this characteristic, block zero has a message in the coinbase parameter, which represents a possible reminder of why the cryptocurrency was created. The genesis block’s message reads:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

During the last 11 years, members of the crypto community have sent small fractions of BTC to the genesis block’s address. To date, block zero has 68.13 BTC, which is 18.13 BTC ($131,527) more than it originally started with. There are messages sent with the satoshis as well, as most transaction messages sent to block zero beg Bitcoin’s creator for money. Three people sent the address some funds today, and there’s been a number of satoshis sent to the address all week long. An interesting fact about the 18.13 BTC worth of outputs sent to block zero is that the funds can be spent, if Nakamoto still possesses the keys to the wallet address. Another interesting fact about the “bailout for banks” quote is that Satoshi added the statement twice into the codebase. When someone decrypts the original hexadecimal format, the “bailout for banks” quote is also written backward.

Seven-Day Theory

No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto was, but many people believe that Bitcoin’s creator was a Microsoft user. Bitcoin version 0.1, the original Bitcoin codebase implementation, is written in the coding language C++ and blocks that were mined in the early days used a Windows GUI mining application. Nakamoto mined the first bitcoin blocks after block zero by leveraging a central processing unit (CPU), which is much less powerful than the warehouses filled with ASICs today. The network did not kick into gear right away and unlike today, with blocks processed roughly every 10 minutes, the subsequent block after the genesis block took six days. There are those that assume Bitcoin’s creator took a break between block zero and block one. Some say Nakamoto purposefully made it so the timeline was similar to the Bible’s Genesis tale when the earth was created in seven days.

Hal Finney was the first person to transact with BTC in coordination with Satoshi Nakamoto. The first transaction took place three days after block one and coins were sent to Hal Finney from block nine. Finney told the world a few days earlier he was “running Bitcoin” on Twitter on January 10, 2009. In addition to the very first transaction, Nakamoto had decided to send BTC to other network participants on the same day he sent funds to Finney. The veteran cryptographer Finney told the public in 2013 that he was the first person to mine Bitcoin alongside Nakamoto. “When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away — I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin,” explained Finney.

Nakamoto’s Pre-Release Source Code Tells a Story

While examining the first versions of the Bitcoin source code, which was a pre-code release prior to Jan. 3, 2009 distributed to bitcointalk.org member “Cryddit,” people have found some interesting details. The source code mentions certain terminology that crypto users did not know Nakamoto used at the time. For instance, he referred to the blockchain as a “timechain” and the words “bitcoin miner” can be found as well. The words “bitcoin miner” in the early code are meaningful to some individuals because Nakamoto never used that term within the original whitepaper.

Other intriguing words can be found in the early code like how Nakamoto referred to Bitcoin’s smaller units as “coin” (1,000,000) and “cent” (10,000) rather than today’s popular term “satoshis.” The source code also describes the “timechain” as “a tree-shaped structure starting with the genesis block at the root.” The pre-release Bitcoin code also contained early framework for an IRC Client, a peer-to-peer marketplace and a virtual poker game.

To a great number of people, Nakamoto’s code and initial Bitcoin launch on January 3 were the start of a monetary revolution. The software has sparked the idea that peer-to-peer and censorship-resistant money can exist, removed from governments, corporations, and any single entity. Bitcoin has also given birth to over 4,000 individual blockchain networks that have allowed transactions between global individuals across any border. The fact that the Bitcoin network and the protocol’s offspring continue to thrive today after 11 years is quite a milestone. Nakamoto’s creation has been a gift that keeps on giving.

What do you think about the 11-year anniversary of the genesis block and Satoshi Nakamoto’s infamous creation? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, bitcointalk.org, cypherpunk mailing list, pre-release code, Twitter, Wiki Commons, Fair Use, and Pixabay.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH, and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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Early Cypherpunk Emails Reveal a Blueprint for Bitcoin

03/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

The cypherpunks, a ragtag group of tech tinkerers, cryptographers, and privacy advocates, were obscure in their 1990s heyday. And it would have remained that way in perpetuity were it not for a certain Satoshi Nakamoto launching a digital currency in 2009 encapsulating their core beliefs. We don’t know if Satoshi was a cypherpunk. But what we do know from rediscovered mailing list conversations is that many of the cypherpunks’ early ideas were to be enshrined in Bitcoin more than a decade later.

Also read: Why Nick Szabo Probably Isn’t Satoshi

Hal Finney Described Bitcoin Before It Was Born

Building on David Chaum’s digital cash, a certain Hal Finney proposed several improvements, suggesting to his fellow cypherpunks that “Alice and Bob could be pseudonyms, using anonymous addresses to communicate with each other and with the bank … If these problems can be solved, a big advantage of this approach is that the banker can be anonymous. He would be known only by his anonymous address and his public key(s). This would provide some safety in the event that even a small-scale experiment like this was targeted for a crackdown.”

If you think that sounds a lot like Bitcoin – minus the central bank – you’re not alone. Last month, bitcoiner Nadav Ivgi shared the full trove of cypherpunk emails from the early 90s to the present day, and this particular despatch from Hal Finney immediately stood out. What’s most remarkable is that those words were written in November 1992 – 16 years before Satoshi’s whitepaper was published. Given the perspicacity of Hal Finney’s vision for the form electronic money could take, it’s no wonder that some suspect him of being Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

But the resurfaced cypherpunk mailing list is not a rich mine of clues to Satoshi’s identity – it’s a blueprint for Bitcoin itself. Satoshi – whether he lurked there or not – did more than simply cobble together the ideas of others; he solved the Byzantine Generals Problem for one thing. Yet it’s hard to sift through these early internet conversations without sensing the shape of what was to come in 2009.

Cypherpunks Foresaw Blockchain Surveillance

Hal Finney wasn’t the only cypherpunk who foresaw a future in which digital cash was a reality. Others had the prescience to envision the up- and downsides that this would entail. In a November 1992 thread on the topic of a “cypher bank,” one respondent warned:

It is said information should be free… however, if someone was (and someone undoubtedly would) … monitor the bank(s) they would probably see accounts going up and down by various amounts and it should be possible to track transactions between identities … This probably isn’t particularly inviting to the majority to know that your funds could be traced very anonymously and that patterns could be formulated… If you wish to entertain such a testbed financial system be very careful with any decision made and work through each possible consequence. Most people I think would prefer to remain anonymous. I know I would.

In light of the surveillance era the cryptosphere has sleepwalked into, that prediction has been fully vindicated.

In February 1993, cypherpunk Alan Hetzel proposed another potential drawback to digital cash, writing: “One of the serious deterrents to crimes such as kidnapping is the probability that one will get caught attempting to communicate one’s demands or collect the payment … I could send you an anonymous note threatening to poison your dog, kill your wife, burn down your house, whatever, unless you pay me $$$ in untraceable digital cash. What can you do?”

He added: “I foresee a great way for jerks to “earn extra income in their spare time” threatening hundreds of people in mass anonymous mailings. Some of these folks will be scared enough to pay off.” Bitcoin does not provide true anonymity, but given its ability to facilitate ransomware and blackmail attempts, it would be disingenuous to dismiss this prediction altogether. It can be tempered, however, by this riposte to Hetzel’s post, composed by Perry Metzger. It may have been despatched by email, but if you listen closely, you can almost hear the mic drop at the end:

“To eliminate the capacity to use digital cash means to require monitoring of all speech and ban most international traffic, to prohibit strong cryptography and require key registration. Even then I’m not convinced that it would work because people would still try to avoid these restrictions.

“All technologies are fraught with dangers. All of them. The knife you use to slice your bread can be used to kill your wife. Shall we dispense with knives? Shall we pretend that we can unlearn what we know? A bright 10 year old with a computer can produce a cypher machine. Shall we lobotomize all ten year olds and destroy all the computers? You can’t put some genie back in the bottle after you’ve rubbed the first time. We can’t stop people from knowing things.

“At least the well meaning fools who advocate gun control have the fact that good machine shops aren’t in practically every home on their side — telephones, modems, and computers are becoming ubiquitous, however, and they are all capable of aiding and abetting in the criminal techniques you mention. Welcome to the world.”

Have you read any of the cypherpunks’ emails? Do you think Satoshi was among them? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Wiki Commons, Fair Use.

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