My response was naive. The former discussion acts retrospectively on an output, while this acts prospectively. That small difference makes this very interesting but not without pitfalls.

This has been discussed in detail in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351497.0

Two spaces is not strong evidence.

It indicates that Satoshi either trained on a physical type-writer prior to digital processing, where double-spacing was common. But we could already guess that Satoshi isn't young any more. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/two-spaces-after-period/.

I personally think that his double-spaces means that he resided in the American West, where double spaces held on culturally for longer than in other parts of the world, and which matches several of his other behaviors.

The developers of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, varied in philosophies, with "free give and take" being a common one, which does not involve money. And on the other end of the spectrum is BACS, the Bankers' Automated Clearing System, which you no doubt have used many times and which began in the 1960s during this age of ARPANET.

The sub-cultures that you may be looking for may not have been recorded well, but here are some references that gives thoughts contemporaneous to your desired time-period.

Diebold, J. (1967, December). When money grows in computers. Columbia Journal of World Business, pp. 39-46

Reistad DL (1967) The coming cashless society: Implications and benefits of pending system. Business Horizons 10(3): 23–32

Bacard, A. (1994, January). A cashfree society: Nirvana or nightmare? The Humanist, pp. 41-42

Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo, Thomas Haigh, and David L. Stearns. "Origins of the Modern Concept of a Cashless Society, 1950s–1970s." The Book of Payments. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016. 95-106.

Lauer, J. (2020). Plastic surveillance: Payment cards and the history of transactional data, 1888 to present. Big Data & Society, 7(1), 2053951720907632.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have gone from nothing to a two-trillion dollar economy. There wouldn't be as much of a need for him to continue to develop it as an existential money problem, because there are many torch-bearers who can do a better job.

If Satoshi were alive today and not enjoying retirement, I doubt he would be interested in cryptocurrencies full-time but aim to address greater existential challenges using decentralisation. For example, I'd think he would enjoy working with nostr, a decentralised social network that uses bitcoin cryptography methods. There are many social challenges that can be addressed with decentralised technologies like this. For example, standard political voting should incorporate cryptographic verification features.

Bitcoin source code and the white paper were both published under the MIT license.

Perhaps the MIT license is not completely unrestricted?

It's interesting that there is a copyright on the Bitcoin Core source code, which is owned by "The Bitcoin Core developers". This means that the code cannot be used 100% without restriction, with the single case that  can be protected against being that if someone were to claim that they wrote the code instead of acknowledging the developers who did. Who knows -- the copyright owners might even be able to stop others from using their code entirely, if those others performed continual mis-acknowledgement?? Has that ever been tested?

There is also Satoshi's identity to think about. Copyleft is tied to an individual who can exercise some rights. Since Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous and not exercise any rights, he used MIT. Copyleft would have caused a more difficult legal defense against several Satoshi claimants, where MIT allows that to be foregone entirely (hopefully).

Probably not, considering Len said, "This big Bitcoin heist shows Bitcoin suffers from the worst of both worlds: no strong anonymity, yet no fraud reversal protection."
https://mobile.twitter.com/lensassaman/status/81084436518674433

"Big Bitcoin Heist" is a strong phrase against Bitcoin.

Len Sassaman is considered a candidate for being Satoshi. He has an obituary embedded into the blockchain.
"During Bitcoin’s development in 2008–2010, Len was increasingly active in financial cryptography. He joined The International Financial Cryptography Association and presented at the Financial Cryptography and Data conferences, where he also held a committee seat."
https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10

Because Bitcoin had to be available for commercial purposes. It was intended as a currency, which meant that businesses must be left unconstrained for how they incorporate it. Otherwise you would have seen a lot more lawsuits related to it -- a simple one would be early developers who thought their contributions should be paid back in the future after projects took off that are secondary to their work.

MIT, instead of copyleft, was the best option for being open while allowing people to develop their own projects. People have a choice to not use closed source projects -- or to use them, if they fit within their philosophy.

Yes, the MIT license allows all sorts of shenanigans, but it allows businesses to develop. If businesses had to concern themselves with copyleft, then it would create even worse shenanigans, like contributors of minor changes fighting for a share after projects became much larger.

New Liberty Standard first listed an exchange rate on October 11, 2009.

One day later, Martti Malmi transacted with him, which is the first known Bitcoin to fiat transaction.

https://twitter.com/marttimalmi/status/423455561703624704

The 10-minute block time and 21-million Bitcoin both imply a store-of-value, due to slow updates and limited Bitcoin.

The Genesis block tells us Satoshi's intention: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The bailouts were due to large banks and mortgages failing.  These would be large accounts, ones where value would be stored, and the statement of "bailout"'s says that Satoshi was annoyed by a loss-of-value.

"The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
"Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula."
"Bitcoin [is] more like a collectible or commodity."
"As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases."
" if you get larger amounts then you can upgrade to the actual bitcoin software."
"Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange... Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it."
"Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies! Bitcoin’s total circulation is limited to 21 million coins."
(lifted from http://sampatt.com/blog/2019/06/06/breakdown-of-all-satoshi-writings-proves-bitcoin-not-built-primarily-as-store-of-value#evidence-for-store-of-value)

At the moment, Bitcoin is not a store-of-value. It's not stable enough for that. It is likely an increase-of-value after several years, but not always within a short yearly period.

If you wanted to force people to transact, you would go for a different model. Inflation encourages spending, so to encourage transactions it would be better to have a schedule that starts with block halvings to encourage uptake, but after a few decades change to block doublings.

Bitcoin's value is determined on the difficulty of obtaining new Bitcoin. While that may be CPU/hash power, difficulty can also come in the form of legal restrictions. More legal restrictions increases difficulty, which would increase the cost of creating new Bitcoin, and push the price upwards. You may find that if Bitcoin becomes banned in some countries that miners will still continue in those countries because they find Bitcoin worth it. Hash rate is partially irrelevant since that automatically adjusts -- it's the "difficulty" that matters, and "difficulty" includes hash rate, technological progress, power generation and consumption -- but social reasons can also increase "difficulty".

Satoshi edited the post, but he did not author the post.

I think it was something pretty mundane. Possibly an external link, removing a name, some small line that was near the end.



The user deleted his account, but after Satoshi had edited the post.

It's not Satoshi.

It wasn't that it included spam. There was something in it, it was a funny phrase or link, and Satoshi removed it. Satoshi was light on moderation, but there was also less of a need.

Wallet software changed over time. Wallets used to not be deterministic in the 2010 versions, so if you took the same wallet to different computers, it would generate a different set of keys after the first 200 were used, even with the same initial wallet. This wouldn't explain Stoneman unless he had over 200 transactions with the same wallet, which is pretty unlikely since nothing like that has been tracked and it would leave evidence. The software has since been changed since so this issue does not exist -- wallets since then generate deterministic keys on different computers to avoid this issue.

The very honest answer is that Stoneman was a bloody liar. All transactions are visible to everyone, and Stoneman used that ability to claim bitcoin that were not his after that transaction. He gave the wrong details, being very slightly off, and only one person back then called him out on it. If you look it up, the transaction was for 8,999 and not 8900 like Stoneman said. This is a common scam tactic - giving the wrong value, but just wrong enough - it gives plausible deniability if someone can prove him wrong without a doubt and he can say that his was a slightly different thing, but also gives him the ability to be super disruptive if no one has sufficient proof.

He argues that it was a double spend, which he would have evidence / know if it were -- but then changes his argument to the explanation above. He offered no proof that he that owned the original nor final wallet. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the first exchanges shut down from later actions by Stoneman by reversing paypal payments, which favored the buyer claiming fraud - but in itself enabled the possibility of fraud.

I want this to show up in future searches on this topic, so I am writing these addresses: 157PiPgqphedUvrco3mKU3Xoof7yzhj9pW 167ZWTT8n6s4ya8cGjqNNQjDwDGY31vmHg        

Bitcoin is based on something that has value -- energy, or the energy that proof-of-work requires.

All currencies are based on the value of energy production more than anything else. All civilizations develop according to the energy that they have available.

Wow! Ten years. That's pretty impressive commitment from Van der Laan.

It looks like he wanted to decentralize developing ability so that less relied on a single individual.

He was starting to delegate more tasks to others since Jan 2001, according to his blog: https://laanwj.github.io/2021/01/21/decentralize.html

This is a Coinbase wallet: https://bitinfocharts.com/de/bitcoin/wallet/Coinbase

It's identified because people transfer their Bitcoin to Coinbase regularly, and so you can track the amounts.

1LQoWist8KkaUXSPKZHNvEyfrEkPHzSsCd is likely a Coinbase wallet because it is unlikely that they would transfer $3B to another group, especially at such regular steps and in such large amounts. This is not 100% confirmed, but a very good guess. Nearly all of those transactions are immediately from the Coinbase wallet or <2 jumps away.

This is likely a miner?

The transactions are two jumps away from a mined coinbase.

I would like a discussion on the pros or cons of deflation. Please add in your 2 bits.

I do not believe that either inflation nor deflation are bad if they are predictable and within a small percentage. It is the rapid inflation and deflation or unpredictability that causes massive failures.

Deflation is inherent in the system that we live in. As humans, we try to produce everything more efficiently. It's what drives us. It frees us to deal with new or unexpected problems. Deflation across consumer is the increased production efficiency of those goods, which we should strive for.

The typical argument against deflation is that it prevents spending, which causes a collapse of the system. This argument is self-defeating: if deflation causes collapse of the system, there is no reason to hold onto the coin that causes that deflation (and therefore deflation doesn't exist). Usually deflation is blamed for economic depressions, but instead, it's normally the other way around: massive inflation had preceded these depressions until production and investment capacity had become unsustainable and untethered to real value, which caused massive distrust of such systems. That distrust then led to deflation, but deflation is the by-product of the poor preceding policies that perpetuated perennial problems, but was not the cause. Deflation can be a healthy, but painful, correction of these systems (as we see in bitcoin boom-bust cycles), while policies often try to alleviate this pain by inflating their currencies.

Another argument against deflation is that people who were first into the system benefit more than people who enter later. This happens with any system, and inflation does not remove this problem -- because the inflated amounts are normally awarded to those who maintain power over the system. In this sense, inflation is worse than deflation because it allows an artificial group to remain at the top, rather than allowing that money to be distributed throughout the system. Inflation without proper policy does not change this problem of deflation.

A usual argument is that inflation allows people to pay off their debts. This is only true if people's salaries rise with the inflationary measures, which does not keep true. The problem with inflation here is that the inflation amounts are given originally to close allies, rather than broad distribution among all classes. It is difficult to force all businesses to keep up with inflationary policies, as they must have also received inflation-related gains to be able to award their employees with further gains. For those employees to continue to receive those gains, they must have enough soft power within their organisations to argue for those gains, otherwise they do not receive higher compensations. It is far too easy for companies higher in the chain of companies to keep their inflation-given gains and not pass them on, and for companies to not pass those inflatino-given gains to their employees.

Are there other arguments to inflation or deflation? I'm interested in hearing more discussion on this. Thanks.

What's your long term plan? You have enough for yourself, but there must be an idea for what you'll do beyond that?

Hahaha, you are correct. Rookie mistake on my end. Cheers.
Bitcoin keys have only ever been 64 bytes (or 512 bit), plus the few variations on that for the different types of address types.

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A few other things:

Within parts of the bitcoin source code, you will find that 'setFloat' causes a double to be defined, rather than a float. In most programming languages, floats are 32 bits and doubles are 64 bits.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/univalue/include/univalue.h#L58

The calculations for an address from a 64 byte key relies on mathematics where 32 and 64 bit would not be sufficient. I actually once programmed a search for any exceptions to the general Fermat conjecture (Fermat's last theorem with fewer constraints, also known as the Beal conjecture) using 32 bit as the first stage, then moving to 100+ bit after I thought there might be exceptions. After looking at the solutions with higher bit resolution, my exceptions turned out to not exist.