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13 years ago today, the creator of the Bitcoin network, Satoshi Nakamoto published the inventorâs first forum post on the P2P Foundation website. The forum post called âBitcoin open source implementation of P2P currencyâ introduced the e-cash system to the members of the advocacy and research forum focused on peer-to-peer dynamics in society.
The First of 3 February 2009 Forum Posts Introducing Bitcoin
There was three occasions in February 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the inventorâs Bitcoin white paper and open source codebase to the P2P Foundation forum members. The occasion on February 11, 2009, was the first time the creator of Bitcoin publicly announced the project using the P2P Foundation forum. Prior to these instances during the month of February, Nakamoto leveraged the email system tethered to the cryptography mailing list hosted on metzdowd.com.
The introductory forum post is quite fascinating, and the inventor also leaves a link to the softwareâs first version on the forum as well. âIâve developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin,â Nakamoto wrote 13 years ago today. âItâs completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. Give it a try, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper,â the creator added.
Nakamoto is extremely descriptive in the first forum post, and Bitcoinâs inventor explains the issue with conventional currencies. âThe root problem with conventional currency is all the trust thatâs required to make it work,â Nakamoto wrote that day. âThe central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.â
Bitcoinâs inventor further stressed:
We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.
Nakamoto Responds: âI Think This Is the First Time Weâre Trying a Decentralized, Non-Trust-Based Systemâ
Anyone who reads the first forum post Satoshi wrote, can understand that the inventor is trying to get the word out, so more people can test the Bitcoin network during the earliest days. Nakamotoâs forum post did not get a reply until the very next day, as an individual named Sepp Hasslberger was the first to respond to Nakamotoâs first P2P Foundation thread.
âGreat stuff,â Hasslberger wrote at the time. âThis is the first real innovation in money since the Bank of England started to issue its promissory notes for gold in the vaults, which then became known as banknotes. I believe an open source currency has great potential. A bit like Google becoming the default search engine for many of us,â Hasslberger added. A few other individuals in the post talked about âold Chaumian central stuffâ and e-currency projects such as e-gold that failed in the past.
Satoshi responded to a few questions in the thread and noted that the âold Chaumian central mint stuff,â was the only thing available at the time. Bitcoinâs inventor reminded the P2P Foundation members that the Bitcoin protocol was decentralized and different. âA lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990âs,â Nakamoto replied to one of the threadâs responses on February 15, 2009. âI hope itâs obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time weâre trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system,â the cryptocurrencyâs creator added.
On February 18, Nakamoto came back to the thread to answer multiple questions asked by inquisitive Sepp Hasslberger at the time. In response to Hasslbergerâs questions, Nakamoto laid out three interesting features the Bitcoin network showcased and insisted that the coins would be scarce. Nakamoto said:
It is a global distributed database, with additions to the database by consent of the majority, based on a set of rules they follow: [One] â Whenever someone finds proof-of-work to generate a block, they get some new coins. [Two] â The proof-of-work difficulty is adjusted every two weeks to target an average of 6 blocks per hour (for the whole network). [Three] â The coins given per block is cut in half every 4 years â You could say coins are issued by the majority. They are issued in a limited, predetermined amount.
Itâs safe to say that Satoshi Nakamotoâs e-cash system caught on and after 13 years, 18,954,937 bitcoins have been issued out of the maximum supply of 21 million so far. Bitcoinâs (BTC) market capitalization is currently worth more than $800 billion and since its inception on January 3, 2009, the network has been functional with a 99.98713391230% uptime rating. Nakamotoâs invention has also sparked the creation of thousands of crypto coins, and today thereâs 12,523 crypto assets within the crypto economy.
What do you think about the first forum post written by Satoshi Nakamoto on the P2P Foundation forum? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
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