Rereading Martti's Satoshi Email

Source: twitter, @OneKeyCN

In 2009, Martti Malmi@marttimalmi, who was a sophomore at the Helsinki University of Technology, accidentally browsed bitcoin.org and sent an email to Satoshi Nakamoto: "I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there’s something I can do. "

To be honest, this was a rather hasty job application email. But from then on, the gears of fate began to turn.

Martti Malmi became Satoshi Nakamoto's first collaborator and the person Satoshi Nakamoto trusted the most, and his life was changed by Bitcoin. There has always been a legend in the currency circle that college students "all in" and get rich overnight, and Martti must be the ancestor of this legend.

Last month, he made public the email history with Satoshi Nakamoto (https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/), allowing us to review the magnificent history of Bitcoin from more perspectives. The following are some interesting findings of OneKey.

The early operation of Bitcoin was very much like a startup

Like most startups back then, they registered the "bitcoin.org" domain name and conducted a lot of discussions about product features, UI (user interface), websites, etc.

Very different from the entrepreneurial atmosphere at that time, work was all done via email, and no one had ever met the boss "Satoshi Nakamoto". Today, remote work in the crypto industry has become popular, and major crypto companies such as Binance, Paradigm, and our OneKey have adopted global collaboration to varying degrees.

This was the first remote work task assigned by Satoshi Nakamoto to college student Martti Malmi - FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Satoshi Nakamoto said that what the website needs most at the moment is some writing content, and he is "not good at writing, but better at writing code." Original translation: "You can consider building a website on SourceForge, but there is no content there yet. If you can prepare a FAQ, I can organize the answers I gave in my previous emails and forums, which can help you get the information and inspiration you need."

Satoshi Nakamoto is obviously a good boss, and he seriously considers the suggestions of a young college student Martti. Here, Satoshi Nakamoto is like a product manager, discussing the features of "minimizing the tray" and "starting at startup" of the Bitcoin core client. Like many computer programs at the time, everyone was competing for user use and reducing the "user churn rate." Of course, Bitcoin adopts this "intention" to allow more people to run full nodes and make the early network more secure. Original translation: "Next, I plan to add a feature that allows the Bitcoin program to automatically run when it starts on Windows and can be minimized to the system tray, which will significantly increase the number of online nodes. In retrospect, you have indeed pointed out a critical missing feature that has the potential to greatly increase the number of nodes. Without automatic startup, it is difficult for us to retain users after their first try. As the secret to the success of early file sharing networks, it is crucial to let the program run automatically and hide in the system tray by default. Although in our first version (v0.1.0), it seemed inappropriate to introduce this feature because stability was not guaranteed. But now that the program has become stable enough, this feature has become a feature that must be added to our next version to ensure that users who are willing to try the new version have a better experience and are willing to continue using it."

As an "entrepreneur", Nakamoto could not help but complain to Martti about those Internet startup projects that "don't even have code" but are still very popular.

In the following email, Nakamoto believes that SourceForge's functions can no longer meet the needs of the Bitcoin forum and that a new forum service provider is needed. At the same time, he complained: "I have seen some projects attract a lot of attention just by forum discussions and planning, even though they haven't started writing any code yet. Discussions on the forum provide a platform for the project to be exposed, attract new users, help solve support issues, and sort out the most needed features. (So this forum is very important)"

In the marketing of start-ups, Satoshi Nakamoto is not completely an extreme "geek". He mentioned in this email that the promotion point of the official website "anonymity" is a bit too suspicious, and thought that their point could be known by everyone privately.

Original translation: "Anonymous, this word sounds a bit suspicious. I think those who want anonymity can still figure it out by themselves without us making a big fuss. I made some changes to the bitcoin.org homepage. Updating the translation is not really urgent. I tend to continue editing and correcting it for a while afterwards, so if they want to update it, it's better to wait."

Martti took it all after all

In email communications, Satoshi Nakamoto repeatedly expressed that he did not want to be a person who was in the spotlight (although in the end most people still remembered Satoshi Nakamoto). He encouraged Martti to use his real name and address. He asked Martti to use his own credit card/ID card to set up a server and bank account.

If you were Martti, would you be scared to "run away"?

Original translation: "I received a donation request of $2,000. But I need your mailing address for him to send it. Yes, he (the donor) wants to remain anonymous, so please protect the privacy of the source of the envelope."

In the rhetoric of some Bitcoin propaganda points, Nakamoto also asked Martti to speak on his behalf, and reminded of some marketing risks. Original translation: "On sourceforge's website, you can express many opinions that I cannot say on my own website. However, I still feel that it is a bit inappropriate to bluntly propose "consider Bitcoin as an investment". This statement is quite risky, and you'd better remove this point. It's fine if users have such ideas, but we can't promote it as a selling point." There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with throwing the interview task to the newcomer Martti. Original translation: "There is a blogger who wants to write an article about Bitcoin, but I don't have time to answer his questions right now. If I introduce him to you, would you be willing to answer his questions? This way we might get a good link resource."

The boss Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly disappeared for a month, and Martti took over the forum operation. Original translation: "I have also been busy with other matters for the past month and a half. I just started downloading my email from the beginning of April. I have most of my things taken care of and should be back to work on Bitcoin soon. It's nice to see that you have done some things while I was away. Congratulations on completing your first Bitcoin transaction!"

Recharge faith for Martti

Nakamoto also foresaw that if Bitcoin entered the mainstream, it would definitely use a lot of energy. This may have been a very "explosive" view at the time: the banking system is more wasteful of resources than PoW.

"It would be ironic if we eventually had to choose between economic freedom and conserving resources.

Sadly, proof of work is the only solution I have found that makes a peer-to-peer electronic cash system work without a trusted third party. Even if I don't use it as a secondary way to initially distribute currency, proof of work is still essential for coordinating the network and preventing double spending.

If it does start to consume a lot of energy, I think it will still consume less energy than the labor- and resource-intensive traditional banking activities it is replacing. The cost will be a lot less than the bank fees, which are billions of dollars to pay for all the masonry buildings, skyscrapers and useless credit card promotional mailings."

Last Email

We all know that on December 12, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto posted on the Bitcoin forum for the last time to discuss DoS (Denial of Service Attack), and then stopped forum activities. This is not Satoshi Nakamoto's last email.

A month later, in this email from Satoshi to Gavin Andresen (copy to Martti), Satoshi once again confirmed that he did not want to participate in any media public relations content and interviews. And here we can see that Satoshi was very worried that Bitcoin would grow too fast, resulting in various functions, attack defense and other needs not being met. At the same time, they were worried about the enthusiasm of public opinion. At that time, some unofficial Bitcoin spokespersons appeared to over-exaggerate and even promote that it would replace Paypal or even the euro. They hope to emphasize in the media that Bitcoin is a cutting-edge test and has not yet reached the level of large-scale application.

One ​​month later, this was the last email that Satoshi Nakamoto sent to Martti. He arranged some matters regarding the administrator password, and then disappeared again. This farewell lasted for 13 years, and there is a high probability that they will never see each other again.

The disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto is full of legends, but in these emails, we see a closer side of Satoshi Nakamoto, as if "God" is not out of reach, as if he is right beside us, as if everyone is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Martti's story is not just a mirage, in the new round of bull market, how many "college student" legends will we witness?