The Discovery

Preparation

Adam Back in 2012 (source: Adam Back's personal page)

The publication of the white paper

• "Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network."
• "No mint or other trusted parties."
• "Participants can be anonymous."
• "New units are made from a Hashcash-style proof-of-work."
• "The proof-of-work used for generating new units also allows the network to prevent double-spending."

• First, the cypherpunk James A. Donald challenges the scalability of the system by saying that "it does not seem to scale to the required size." Satoshi replies that "the bandwidth might not be as prohibitive as you think."
• The second negative comment comes from John R. Levine, author of the book Internet for Dummies and a consultant specializing in email infrastructure, spam filtering, and software patents. He criticizes Bitcoin's security by mentioning the computational power held by "zombie machine farms" composed of computers controlled by hackers. He specifically points out that, on the Internet, "the good guys have significantly less computational power than the bad guys." Satoshi responds brilliantly: "The requirement is that the good guys collectively have more computational power than any single attacker."
• Finally, an individual named Ray Dillinger (using the pseudonym bear) wonders about the value of the unit of account, lamenting the fact that "computational proofs of work have no intrinsic value" and criticizing their inflationary nature due to the technical evolution of computer hardware. Satoshi replies that "the increase in hardware speed is accounted for" by the periodic adjustment of the production difficulty. Even though skepticism is the predominant attitude on the list, it is not shared by everyone subscribed to the mailing list. In particular, one person stands out from the others with their enthusiasm: Hal Finney, who has an optimistic view of the future and never gave up on the idea of electronic cash, despite the failures of the 90s. He stated on this matter a few years later that "cryptographic graybeards [...] tend to become cynical" but that he "was more idealistic" having "always loved cryptography, its mystery, and its paradox." (original: "I've noticed that cryptographic graybeards (I was in my mid 50's) tend to get cynical. I was more idealistic; I have always loved crypto, the mystery and the paradox of it.") Thus, on November 7, he wrote in an email to the list that "Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea" and compares Satoshi's model to Nick Szabo's bit gold. (original: "Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea.")

Hal Finney in 2007

Monetary Policy and Software Code

int64 GetBlockValue(int64 nFees)
{
    int64 nSubsidy = 10000 * CENT;
    for (int i = 100000; i <= nBestHeight; i += 100000)
        nSubsidy /= 2;
    return nSubsidy + nFees;
}

The Software Release and Network Launch

Dustin Trammell (source: Dustin Trammell's blog archive)

A Progressive Design