Ten years ago today, the pseudonymous programmer (or programmers) Satoshi Nakamoto logged into the forum bitcointalk.org one last time, and left the Bitcoin community for good. The day prior Nakamoto wrote a final message to the crypto community by offering a quick build and telling developers that there’s more work to be done on denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
‘More Work to Do’
When Satoshi Nakamoto was around, Bitcoin’s inventor was a mysterious enigma and often led developers in the right direction from 2008 to 2010. Bitcoin’s creator also left a final message to the community when he/she or they added to the thread on bitcointalk.org called: “Added some DoS limits, removed safe mode.” The message was written over a decade ago on December 12, 2010, and Nakamoto stressed that “there’s more work to do.”
“There’s more work to do on DoS, but I’m doing a quick build of what I have so far in case it’s needed, before venturing into more complex ideas,” Nakamoto said at the time. “The build for this is version 0.3.19. Added some DoS controls. As Gavin and I have said clearly before, the software is not at all resistant to DoS attack. This is one improvement, but there are still more ways to attack than I can count. I’m leaving the -limitfreerelay part as a switch for now and it’s there if you need it. Removed “safe mode” alerts, ‘safe mode’ alerts was a temporary measure after the 0.3.9 overflow bug,” Bitcoin’s creator added.
Nakamoto further wrote:
We can say all we want that users can just run with ‘-disablesafemode,’ but it’s better just not to have it for the sake of appearances. It was never intended as a long term feature. Safe mode can still be triggered by seeing a longer (greater total PoW) invalid block chain.
‘Wikileaks Has Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and the Swarm Is Headed Towards Us’
While bitcoin (BTC) was swapping for $0.20 per coin, Nakamoto left a great number of technical replies on the forum that month, which addressed the current Bitcoin build at the time. In fact, during the first two weeks of December 2010, Nakamoto was very active on the forum.
No one knows why the inventor left so abruptly, but Nakamoto had shown he was a bit upset the day before his very last bitcointalk.org forum message. This was because bitcoin was mentioned in a viral pcworld.com article called: “Could the Wikileaks Scandal Lead to New Virtual Currency?”
At the time, Wikileaks was blocked by a U.S. financial blockade and because Paypal, Mastercard, and Visa stopped servicing the nonprofit whistleblowers, Wikileaks leveraged bitcoin donations.
From Nakamoto’s responses to the Wikileaks subject, one can assume the crypto inventor was very annoyed by the attention the small little network was getting at the time.
“It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context,” Nakamoto stressed. “Wikileaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.”
Bitcoin was changing fast, and Nakamoto seemed to know that he was steadily losing some of the control and people were making up their own minds on how the cryptocurrency should be back then. The same day the Wikileaks article from pcworld.com published, Nakamoto also thanked Hal Finney in a post called: “minimalistic bitcoin client on D language?”
Six days prior to Nakamoto speaking about the pcworld.com editorial, he responded to someone who said “bring it on,” after hearing that Wikileaks was considering cryptocurrency acceptance. Again, Nakamoto seemed flustered and wasn’t a big fan of onboarding the nonprofit whistleblowing organization led by Julian Assange.
“No, don’t ‘bring it on,’” Nakamoto insisted. “The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to Wikileaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage,” the inventor added.
‘I Am Not Dorian,’ Self-Proclaimed Satoshis, and Logging Off
Nakamoto’s appeal did not sway Wikileaks and soon after, the nonprofit began accepting bitcoin donations. Bitcoin’s inventor has not been heard from in over a decade, but there are a number of ostensible emails and messages from the creator that many assume stem from his legitimate accounts. For instance, when Newsweek published a story about Dorian Nakamoto being Bitcoin’s creator, a post published to p2pfoundation.ning.com on March 7, 2014 says: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”
Moreover, ever since Nakamoto left, there have been many self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamotos and even clues and messages that have been widely debunked. There are tales from individuals like Craig Wright, a man who has claimed to be Bitcoin’s inventor for the last five years. Although, Wright’s stories have been widely dismissed and debunked by the greater cryptocurrency community.
There was also that time when Bloomberg columnist, Matthew Leising, told people about a so-called Satoshi and published an alleged tell-all about the nakamotofamilyfoundation.org and an individual dubbed: ‘Duality.’ The patent holder and Hawaiian resident named Ronald Keala Kua Maria said he is Satoshi on a variety of website domains bearing the name “Bitcoin” and “Satoshi.”
A man with intense hair like Fabio believes he is Satoshi Nakamoto, but nobody believed Jörg Molt’s absurd story. In mid-August 2019, a PR firm called Ivy McLemore and the Pakastani Bilal Khalid said he was Bitcoin’s inventor. Of course, Khalid’s story was considered ridiculously unfathomable as well. A Belgium native called Debo Jurgen Etienne Guido has told the crypto community he is Satoshi Nakamoto on numerous occasions.
It has also been said that the 47-year-old cartel boss Paul Le Roux could have been Satoshi as well. Still, none of these suspects and self-proclaimed individuals have ever provided a smoking gun pointing in their direction and have always failed to sway the greater crypto community.
As far as recorded history is concerned, Satoshi Nakamoto left the Bitcoin community ten years ago on December 12, 2010, with his final message about adding some DoS controls. Almost everything else from that point forward has been suspect and lacking evidence of legitimacy.
After Bitcoin’s inventor published the post, the creator must have been curious about the responses and may have been prepared to write one last message. Nakamoto logged into bitcointalk.org on December 13, 2010, logged off, and has not been seen on the forum since then.
What do you think about the last message Satoshi Nakamoto wrote? Let us know what you think about this story in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, p2pfoundation, bitcointalk.org, pcworld.com,
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