Bitcoin's origins, 2007–2011: a dated timeline

Bitcoin Research — Law, Regulation, Markets & Origins (2026)

Notes

2026-10-09

Document text

Research, not advice. Part of the Bitcoin research archive (October 2026). Claims labelled unverified, contested or fringe are reported, not endorsed; statuses of bills and rules are as of the date checked. Government, court and patent records are public domain; the research notes are CC BY 4.0.

Bitcoin's origins, 2007–2011: a dated timeline

From the ideas Bitcoin drew on, through the bitcoin.org registration, the whitepaper, the genesis block, the first transaction and the first prices, to Satoshi Nakamoto's last known messages in April 2011. Early contributors Hal Finney, Martti Malmi, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn have their own section (§ 7). Compiled 2026-10-09. These are research notes, not investment advice.

The Spark origins report (20261009-143628--…) is folded in at § 9, including everything it rejected or left undocumented, each item flagged.

How to read the tags. Every line carries a source tag. The tags are listed in § 12; saved copies are in sources/primary/ (see sources/primary/INDEX.md) and sources/satoshi/.

Label Meaning
Primary Satoshi's own emails or posts, the blockchain, Bitcoin's source code, the domain registry, or a contemporaneous post by the person concerned.
Court finding Stated as fact by the UK High Court in COPA v Wright [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch), saved in sources/satoshi/.
Reported A wiki, journalist or later account says so. Not checked against a primary record here.
Contested Sources disagree. Each side is given with who says it.
(unverified) Could not be confirmed from a source retrieved on 2026-10-09.
SPARK-REJECTED / SPARK-UNDOCUMENTED / SPARK-PARTLY Material from the Spark run that its own verifier rejected, that it said the evidence did not document, or that it found only partly supported. Kept on the editor's instruction (2026-10-09), flagged.

Times are UTC unless marked. BitcoinTalk shows times in UTC to logged-out visitors [P6], [W8]. The metzdowd archive prints US Eastern time; SNI converts to UTC [P2].

1. Bottom line

  • The whitepaper was announced on 31 Oct 2008 at 18:10 UTC, by email to the Cryptography Mailing List at metzdowd.com, linking to the paper on bitcoin.org (Primary) [P2 #1]; (Court finding) [R1 ¶23.4].
  • bitcoin.org was created on 18 Aug 2008 at 13:19:55 UTC (Primary, registry record) [P1], two days before Satoshi's first known email, to Adam Back on 20 Aug 2008 (Court finding) [R1 ¶23.1–23.2].
  • The genesis block is timestamped 3 Jan 2009 18:15:05 UTC and its coinbase carries the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" (Primary) [P10], [P15], [P16].
  • v0.1 was announced on 8 Jan 2009 at 19:27:40 UTC (Primary) [P2 #16]; (Court finding) [R1 ¶23.7].
  • The first transaction between two people is in block 170, timestamped 12 Jan 2009 03:30:25 UTC: 10 BTC from Satoshi to Hal Finney, spent from coins Satoshi mined in block 9 (Primary) [P11], [P12]; (Court finding) [R1 ¶23.8].
  • Satoshi dated the start of the work to 2007: "The design and coding started in 2007" (10 Dec 2009) [P6 #17]; "Since 2007" (18 Jun 2010) [P6 #127]; and in Nov 2008, "over the last year and a half while coding it" [P2 #15].
  • Satoshi's last public messages: his last BitcoinTalk post, 12 Dec 2010 18:22:33 UTC [P6 #543], which he edited on 13 Dec 2010 at 16:45:48 UTC [W8]; and his last mailing-list email, "Bitcoin 0.3.19 is released", on 13 Dec 2010 at 16:12:09 UTC [P3 #34]. The mailing-list email is later than the forum post usually called his last.
  • His last known private messages are to Mike Hearn on 23 Apr 2011 ("I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone.") [P8 #16] and to Gavin Andresen on 26 Apr 2011, handing over the network alert key [P9]; (Court finding) [R1 ¶23.11].
  • First prices: New Liberty Standard was offering dollars for bitcoins by 8 Oct 2009 (Primary, Malmi to Satoshi) [R3 #34]. A 5,050 BTC payment confirmed on 12 Oct 2009 [P13] is reported as Malmi's sale for $5.02 [W12]. The first trade on Bitcoin Market, often called the first exchange, was reported by its operator on 17 Mar 2010 [W5]. Dollar parity on Mt. Gox on 9 Feb 2011 is reported only [W11].
  • Pizza Day: laszlo offered 10,000 BTC for two pizzas on 18 May 2010 and reported the trade done on 22 May 2010 at 19:17:26 UTC (Primary) [W2]. A 10,000 BTC payment confirmed at 18:16:31 UTC that day [P14]; that it is the pizza payment is reported (unverified).

2. Before Bitcoin: the precursors

Date Event Source
filed 5 Sep 1979; granted 5 Jan 1982 Ralph Merkle's hash-tree signature patent (US4309569A). The whitepaper cites Merkle's April 1980 paper as reference [7] for hashing transactions into a Merkle tree. [R6]; [R2] refs [7], § 7
filed 22 Aug 1983; granted 19 Jul 1988 David Chaum's blind-signature patent (US4759063A), the basis of untraceable digital cash before Bitcoin. Not cited in the whitepaper. [R6]
filed 2 Aug 1990 and 8 Mar 1991; both granted 4 Aug 1992 Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta's document time-stamping patents (US5136647A, US5136646A). The whitepaper cites three Haber–Stornetta papers (1991, 1993, 1997) as references [3]–[5] for its timestamp server. [R6]; [R2] refs [3]–[5], § 3
18 Jun 1996 NSA staff paper "How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash" (Law, Sabett, Solinas). [R5]
1997 Adam Back invents Hashcash, a proof-of-work stamp against email spam ("Hashcash was invented by Adam Back in 1997"). The exact date of the first announcement on the cypherpunks list (often given as 28 Mar 1997) is (unverified). [W14]
Nov 1998 Wei Dai publishes "b-money" on the cypherpunks list. Dai told Satoshi in 2008 that b-money "was announced on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998" and pointed him to a November 1998 post. The whitepaper's reference [1] dates it 1998. [W13]; [W10] (Dai's reply, summarised in [P7]); [R2] ref [1]
1998 (idea, as commonly dated (unverified)); blog post dated 29 Dec 2005 Nick Szabo's "bit gold": the post opens "A long time ago I hit upon the idea of bit gold". Contested: the dating of Szabo's bit gold blog posts (some were later re-dated to December 2008) is disputed; see the Satoshi note. The whitepaper does not cite bit gold. [W13]; [R7] § 4.6
1 Aug 2002 Adam Back's paper "Hashcash – A Denial of Service Counter-Measure", the whitepaper's reference [6]; the whitepaper says its proof-of-work is "similar to Adam Back's Hashcash". [W13]; [R2] ref [6], § 4
15 Aug 2004 Hal Finney announces RPOW (Reusable Proofs of Work), a server that exchanged Hashcash proof-of-work for transferable signed tokens. [W13]
2007 Satoshi later wrote that "the design and coding started in 2007" [P6 #17] and "Since 2007. At some point I became convinced there was a way to do this without any trust required at all" [P6 #127]. In Nov 2008 he said he had worked through the details "over the last year and a half while coding it" [P2 #15], and in Jul 2009 told Malmi he needed "a break from it after 18 months development" [R3 #24]. No dated 2007 record of Bitcoin itself is known here. as cited
20 Jul 2010 (looking back) Satoshi himself named the lineage: "Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai's b-money proposal … on Cypherpunks … in 1998 and Nick Szabo's Bitgold proposal". [P6 #249]

3. 2008: domain, draft, whitepaper

Date (UTC) Event Source
20 Jul 2008 e-cash.org registered. A reader of Gwern Branwen's page speculates Satoshi registered it before settling on "bitcoin" (unverified). [W10]
17 Aug 2008 netcoin.org bought "using the same registrar" a day before bitcoin.org, per a comment quoted on Gwern's page; speculation that it was Satoshi (unverified). [W10]
18 Aug 2008 13:19:55 bitcoin.org created (registrar NameCheap). The court says only "In August 2008, Satoshi acquired the bitcoin.org domain name". [P1]; [R1 ¶23.1]
20–21 Aug 2008 Satoshi emails Adam Back about citing Hashcash, pointing him to a draft of the paper hosted on upload.ae. Back replies on 21 Aug about Wei Dai's b-money. These emails were first made public in the COPA trial. [R1 ¶23.2]
22 Aug 2008 Satoshi emails Wei Dai from [email protected]: "I'm getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system." The draft is titled "Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party", and he proposes to cite b-money as "(2006?)". [P7]
3 Oct 2008 (metadata) Creation date in the metadata of an earlier whitepaper draft found through the cryptography list, per Gwern (unverified here). [W10]
5 Oct 2008 Satoshi registers the SourceForge account "nakamoto2" and creates the Bitcoin project there. [R1 ¶23.3]
31 Oct 2008 18:10:00 Whitepaper announced on the Cryptography Mailing List: "I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. The paper is available at: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf". Sent from satoshi at vistomail.com. [P2 #1]; [R1 ¶23.4]
2 Nov 2008 First reply, James A. Donald: the list needs such a system, but he doubts it will scale. [W1] 014814
3 Nov 2008 John Levine: attackers control botnets of 100,000 machines or more, so honest users would not out-compute them; he calls this "the same reason that hashcash can't work on today's Internet". [W1] 014817
6 Nov 2008 Ray Dillinger: the real issue is the market for bitcoins, since proofs-of-work have no intrinsic value. [W1] 014822
7 Nov 2008 Hal Finney: "Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea"; he links it to Szabo's "bit gold". [W1] 014827
3–17 Nov 2008 Satoshi answers the list in 14 more emails, on double-spending, scaling, block-chain sync and incentives. [P2 #2–#15]
14 Nov 2008 "I'm better with code than with words". [P2 #12]
17 Nov 2008 "over the last year and a half while coding it" — puts the start of coding in about mid-2007. [P2 #15]
8–9 Dec 2008 Whitepaper uploaded to the SourceForge project. [R1 ¶23.5]
10 Dec 2008 17:00:23 First message on the SourceForge bitcoin-list: "Welcome to the Bitcoin mailing list!" [P3 #19]

The list is "The Cryptography Mailing List", run at metzdowd.com (its footer: "Unsubscribe by sending 'unsubscribe cryptography' to majordomo at metzdowd.com") [P2 #1]. The court describes it as "a group of individuals interested in cryptography" [R1 ¶23.4]. Whether it was a successor to the older Cypherpunks list is not documented here (see § 9).

4. 2009: genesis block, release, first users, first price

4.1 The genesis block (block 0)

Field Value Source
Timestamp 1231006505 = 3 Jan 2009 18:15:05 UTC (already 4 Jan at UTC+05:45 and further east, e.g. Japan and Australia) [P10]; [R1 ¶23.6]
Block hash 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f [P10], [P15] line 24, [P16] line 160
Merkle root (= its only transaction) 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b [P10]
Nonce / bits / version / difficulty 2083236893 / 0x1d00ffff / 1 / 1.0 [P10], [P16] line 158
Coinbase text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", stored in the coinbase input script (04ffff001d0104455468652054696d6573…); decoded here from the explorer record [P10]; Satoshi's own code builds it the same way [P15] lines 1484–1498
Reward 50 BTC to a bare public key (pay-to-public-key). The matching address, 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa, was re-derived here from that key. [P10]; derivation in sources/primary/INDEX.md § 9
Spendable? No. Bitcoin Core skips the genesis block's transactions when connecting blocks: "its coinbase is unspendable". Coins sent to the genesis address later are a separate matter (see the Satoshi note). [W15]; [R7] § 5.2
The headline It matches the front page of The Times (London) of 3 Jan 2009, which was not retrieved here (Reported). It shows the block was made no earlier than that day's paper. [R7] § 2

4.2 Release and first weeks

Date (UTC) Event Source
8 Jan 2009 19:27:40 "Bitcoin v0.1 released" to the Cryptography list: Windows-only, open-source C++ included, download from SourceForge (bitcoin-0.1.0.rar); "Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins … cut in half every 4 years". Same day, Satoshi uploads the software to SourceForge. [P2 #16]; [R1 ¶23.7]
9 Jan 2009 Block 1 mined by Satoshi. [R1 ¶23.8]
9 Jan 2009 03:54:39 Block 9 mined; its 50 BTC coinbase is the money Satoshi later sends to Finney. [P11]
10 Jan 2009 (as printed) Satoshi tells Wei Dai: "I just released the full implementation of the paper I sent you a few months ago, Bitcoin v0.1." [P7]
10–11 Jan 2009 Hal Finney's tweet "Running bitcoin" (Reported; the tweet itself was not fetched) (unverified). [W17]
11 Jan 2009 02:22:01 Finney on the list: "Congratulations to Satoshi on this first alpha release. I am looking forward to trying it out." [W1] 015004
11 Jan 2009 Block 78 is the first mined by a known person other than Satoshi (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki); Finney later wrote that he "mined block 70-something". [W11] 2009; [W7]
11 Jan 2009 22:32:18 v0.1.2: fixes to how nodes find and connect to each other, "since I wasn't able to test it in the wild until now". [P3 #20]
12 Jan 2009 03:30:25 Block 170: the first transaction between people. Transaction f4184fc5… spends block 9's coinbase: 10 BTC to Hal Finney's key and 40 BTC back to Satoshi. Finney: "I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test." [P12], [P11]; [R1 ¶23.8]; [W7]
12 Jan 2009 22:48:23 v0.1.3: "It looks like we're through with the worst of the Internet connection issues." [P3 #22]
8 Jan – 25 Jan 2009 Satoshi's last three emails on the Cryptography list, all in the "Bitcoin v0.1 released" thread. [P2 #16–#18]
4 Feb 2009 v0.1.5 released on the bitcoin-list. [P3 #25]
11 Feb 2009 22:27 Announcement on the P2P Foundation forum: "The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work." [P5 #1]
11–13 Feb 2009 Same announcement and follow-ups on the P2P Foundation's p2p-research list. [P4 #35–#39]
15 and 18 Feb 2009 Satoshi's replies on the P2P Foundation forum. [P5 #2–#3]
24 Mar 2009 Updated whitepaper uploaded to SourceForge. The bitcoin.org PDF saved in the repo has a metadata creation date of 24 Mar 2009 10:33:15 PDT. [R1 ¶23.9]; [R2] (pdfinfo, checked 2026-10-09)
12 Apr 2009 (as printed) Mike Hearn's first questions to Satoshi; Satoshi answers the same day: "I'm glad to answer any questions you have." [P8 #1]
18 Apr 2009 Satoshi–Hearn emails during the hours of a race Finney ran, which Jameson Lopp uses to argue Finney was not Satoshi (Contested question; see the Satoshi note). [P8 #5–#7]; [R7] § 4.4
2 May 2009 Satoshi's first reply to Martti Malmi, who had offered help ("I'm Trickstern from the anti-state.com forum"). Satoshi asks for website writing and an FAQ on SourceForge. [R3 #1]; [R1 ¶23.10]
21 Jul 2009 Satoshi to Malmi: "Hal isn't currently actively involved", and he needs "a break from it after 18 months development". [R3 #24]
Aug 2009 Finney is diagnosed with ALS (his own account, 2013). [W7]
30 Aug 2009 03:46:39 "First commit" in Bitcoin's version history, by sirius-m (Malmi's SourceForge account). The git history is an import of the SourceForge Subversion repository. [P15]; [W16]
5 Oct 2009 New Liberty Standard publishes the first exchange rates, based on the cost of electricity to mine (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki); first rate 1,309.03 BTC per $1 (Reported, Cointelegraph Magazine) (unverified). [W11] 2009; [W12]
8 Oct 2009 Malmi to Satoshi: a new user of the SourceForge site "just announced that he's trading Bitcoins for dollars" at newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com. [R3 #34]
12 Oct 2009 04:21:18 A single payment of exactly 5,050 BTC confirms in block 24835 (transaction 7dff9389…). Reported as Malmi selling 5,050 BTC to New Liberty Standard for $5.02 by PayPal, the first sale of bitcoin for a government currency; the link between this transaction and that sale is (unverified). Implied price about $0.001 per BTC (arithmetic here). [P13]; [W12]; [SPARK 32]
16 Oct 2009 Satoshi: "It's encouraging to see more people taking an interest such as that NewLibertyStandard site. I like his approach to estimating the value based on electricity." [R3 #35]
21 Oct 2009 Satoshi to Malmi: "I checked everything in to SVN (thanks for setting that up)". [R3 #40]
5–21 Nov 2009 Satoshi and Malmi set up a forum on bitcoin.sourceforge.net, then an SMF forum. [R3 #59–#105]; [R1 ¶23.10]
22 Nov 2009 18:04:28 Satoshi's first BitcoinTalk post, "Welcome to the new Bitcoin forum!" [P6 #5]
27 Nov 2009 "Martti's Linux port was merged into the main code branch and New Liberty Standard has been testing it." [P6 #13]
10 Dec 2009 "The Bitcoin network has been running for almost a year now. The design and coding started in 2007." [P6 #17]
16 Dec 2009 22:45:36 Bitcoin 0.2 released on the forum, with "Major thanks to Martti Malmi (sirius-m) for all his coding work and for hosting the new site and this forum". Announced on the bitcoin-list on 17 Dec 06:52. Contested date: the Bitcoin Wiki's 2009 page gives 12 Dec. [P6 #25]; [P3 #29]; [W11] 2009
30 Dec 2009 First difficulty adjustment, 1 to 1.18 at block 32256 (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki) (unverified). [W11] 2009

5. 2010: forum, exchanges, pizza, growth

Date (UTC) Event Source
15 Jan 2010 09:42:18 dwdollar announces he is building an exchange, "a real market where people will be able to buy and sell Bitcoins with each other". Malmi (as "sirius") replies the next day. [W5] msg100
6 Feb 2010 Bitcoin Market "the first exchange, is launched" (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki 2010 page). Contested: the wiki's own Bitcoin Market page says trading began 17 Mar 2010. [W11] 2010, Bitcoin_Market
21 Feb 2010 Satoshi: "In the absence of a market to establish the price, NewLibertyStandard's estimate based on production cost is a good guess and a helpful service". [P6 #65]
17 Mar 2010 17:07:01 dwdollar: "There are 9 people signed up but only 3 have made a deposit so far … Looks like we had our first real trade around noon!" [W5] msg748
14 Apr 2010 Malmi starts the Bitcoin Wiki (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki) (unverified). [W11] 2010
18 May 2010 00:35:20 laszlo: "I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas". [W2] msg1141
22 May 2010 18:16:31 A single payment of exactly 10,000 BTC confirms in block 57043 (transaction a1075db5…, 131 inputs). Reported as the pizza payment (unverified). [P14]
22 May 2010 19:17:26 laszlo: "I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza." On 12 Jun he says the two pizzas cost "only about 25 dollars total", which puts a bitcoin at about $0.0025 (arithmetic here). The person who delivered them is commonly named as forum user jercos (unverified). [W2] msg1195, msg1526
17–18 Jun 2010 Satoshi is "working on getting version 0.3 released"; "Since 2007 …". [P6 #125], [P6 #127]
by 21 Jun 2010 Gavin Andresen's Bitcoin Faucet is giving away 5 BTC per request (his server log of 21 Jun, posted 23 Jun). Satoshi replies with anti-abuse advice on 26 Jun. [W4]; [P6 #156]
6 Jul 2010 18:32:35 Bitcoin 0.3 released: "Announcing version 0.3 of Bitcoin, the P2P cryptocurrency!" [P6 #168]; [P3 #30]
11 Jul 2010 Slashdot covers the release, bringing a large influx of users (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki citing Slashdot). Satoshi refers to "getting slashdotted" on 20 Jul and 4 Aug. [W11] 2010; [P6 #249], [P6 #316]
12–17 Jul 2010 The price rises from $0.008 to $0.08 (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki) (unverified). [W11] 2010
15 Jul 2010 0.3.1 credits "Laszlo's fix for lowering generate thread to lowest priority" and "Gavin Andresen's implementation of 'start on windowing system startup'". [P6 #193]
18 Jul 2010 01:57:19 Mt. Gox opens: "I just put up a new bitcoin exchange. … https://mtgox.com". The Bitcoin Wiki dates it 17 Jul, which is the same evening in US time. [W6]; [W11] 2010
20 Jul 2010 Satoshi, on a proposal to delete Bitcoin's Wikipedia article, describes Bitcoin as an implementation of b-money and bit gold. [P6 #249]
25 Jul 2010 0.3.3, "PLEASE UPGRADE", with "Gavin Andresen's HTTP authentication to secure JSON-RPC" and 5× faster block download. [P6 #268]
4–5 Aug 2010 Andresen, quoted by Satoshi: "Bitcoins have gone up 10 times in value since I started the Faucet". [P6 #321]
15 Aug 2010 Value-overflow incident. 20:38:33: Satoshi emails "ALERT - we are investigating a problem" [P3 #32]; 21:40:19: "Patch is uploaded to SVN rev 132!" with steps to re-sync below block 74000 [P6 #371]. The bad block, 74638, created about 184 billion BTC and was overtaken by the corrected chain (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki, citing CVE-2010-5139) (the figure is unverified here). [P3 #32]; [P6 #368–#371]; [W11] 2010
6 Nov 2010 The price passes $0.50 and market value $1 million (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki) (unverified). [W11] 2010
13 Nov 2010 0.3.15's anti-flood features; "The key was Gavin's idea for prioritising transactions based on the age of their dependencies." [P6 #501]
5 Dec 2010 On a call for WikiLeaks to take bitcoin: "No, don't 'bring it on'. The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way." [P6 #523]
8 Dec 2010 0.3.18, whose main addition is "the Accounts-Based JSON-RPC commands that Gavin's been working on". [P6 #526]; [P3 #33]
11 Dec 2010 23:39:16 "It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us." [P6 #542]
12 Dec 2010 18:22:33 Satoshi's last BitcoinTalk post, "Added some DoS limits, removed safe mode (0.3.19)": "As Gavin and I have said clearly before, the software is not at all resistant to DoS attack." [P6 #543]; [W8]
13 Dec 2010 16:12:09 Satoshi's last public mailing-list email, "Bitcoin 0.3.19 is released" (bitcoin-list). [P3 #34]
13 Dec 2010 16:45:48 Satoshi's last recorded forum activity: an edit to the 12 Dec post. The Bitcoin Wiki says he "logs out of BitcoinTalk for the last time" on 13 Dec (Reported). [W8]; [W11] 2010
19 Dec 2010 16:41:39 Andresen: "With Satoshi's blessing, and with great reluctance, I'm going to start doing more active project management for bitcoin." He creates an integration tree at github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin; the Subversion repository stays the official release source. [W3]
27 Dec 2010 – 10 Jan 2011 Satoshi answers Hearn's "More BitCoin questions" by email. [P8 #9–#12]

6. 2011: parity and departure

Date (UTC) Event Source
9 Feb 2011 Bitcoin reaches $1 on Mt. Gox (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki, citing a Slashdot story of 10 Feb 2011). Not checked against Mt. Gox trade data (unverified). [W11] 2011
22 Feb 2011 19:49:19 Satoshi's last email to Malmi, "Re: 0.3.20 release : shipped". [R3 #260]
1 Mar 2011 Jed McCaleb sells Mt. Gox to Mark Karpelès (Reported, Bitcoin Wiki) (unverified). [W11] 2011
7–9 Mar 2011 Hearn tells Satoshi he has open-sourced his Java implementation (BitcoinJ, as Satoshi calls it on 23 Apr); Satoshi replies on 9 Mar. [P8 #13–#14], [P8 #16]
20 Apr 2011 (as printed) Satoshi to Hearn on contracts: a time-locked transaction pattern using nLockTime, "the general pattern for safely signing contracts". [P8 #15]
23 Apr 2011 (3:40 PM as printed) To Hearn, who had asked whether he planned to rejoin the community: "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone." He hopes BitcoinJ becomes an alternative client. [P8 #16]
26 Apr 2011, about 08:29 To Andresen, "alert key": "I wish you wouldn't keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure, the press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. … I've moved on to other things and will probably be unavailable. Here's the CAlert key and broadcast code in case you need it." Andresen published it on 26 Apr 2022 as "my last email exchange with Satoshi". The court found Satoshi transferred the alert-key file that day. [P9]; [W9]; [R1 ¶23.11]
around Apr 2011 "Satoshi delegated responsibility for being the lead core developer of Bitcoin to Mr Andresen." Contested timing: the Spark's secondary sources put Andresen's appointment as lead in 2010; Andresen's own post shows him taking on project management in Dec 2010 "with Satoshi's blessing". [R1 ¶23.11]; [SPARK 25], [SPARK 21]; [W3]
Apr 2011 Andresen's reply to Satoshi blames the tone of a Forbes article; which article is not stated (probably Andy Greenberg's April 2011 Forbes piece, (unverified)). He also says he has agreed to speak at a conference run by In-Q-Tel, the US government-funded investor, and will say so openly. [W9]
after Apr 2011 No verified message from Satoshi. A 7 Mar 2014 P2P Foundation post from Satoshi's account ("I am not Dorian Nakamoto") is of disputed authenticity; the SNI publishes it with a disclaimer. Identity claims are in the Satoshi note. [P5 #4]; [R7]

7. Early contributors

7.1 Hal Finney (1956–2014)

  • Cypherpunk and PGP developer. Built RPOW, announced 15 Aug 2004 [W13]; [W7].
  • First positive public response to the whitepaper, 7 Nov 2008 [W1] 014827. Congratulated Satoshi on v0.1 on 11 Jan 2009 [W1] 015004.
  • Received the first transaction, 10 BTC in block 170, 12 Jan 2009 [P12]; [R1 ¶23.8]. In his own account he thinks he was "the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin", mined "block 70-something", and reported bugs to Satoshi by email for some days before switching mining off [W7]. Block 78 is credited to him by the Bitcoin Wiki (Reported) [W11] 2009.
  • By 21 Jul 2009 he was not "currently actively involved" [R3 #24]. Diagnosed with ALS in August 2009 [W7]. Died 28 Aug 2014 (per Gwern) [W10].
  • He described meeting and corresponding with Wei Dai and Nick Szabo before Bitcoin [W7].
  • Whether he was Satoshi is contested (he denied it; 2026's Finding Satoshi names him with Len Sassaman); see the Satoshi note [R7] § 4.4.
  • Spark claimed a January 2009 debug.log of his shows only three nodes online (Spark claim, source valuethemarkets.com) (unverified) [SPARK 26].

7.2 Martti Malmi ("sirius-m", "Trickstern")

  • A Finnish computer-science student who offered help in spring 2009; Satoshi's first reply is dated 2 May 2009 and asks for website writing and an FAQ [R3 #1]; [R1 ¶23.10].
  • Built the SourceForge website and set up the forums with Satoshi in November 2009 [R3 #59–#105]; [R1 ¶23.10]. Set up the Subversion repository; its first commit is his, 30 Aug 2009 [P15]; [W16]; [R3 #40].
  • Ported Bitcoin to Linux; the port was merged for 0.2 [P6 #13]; [R1 ¶253]. Thanked in the 0.2 release "for all his coding work and for hosting the new site and this forum" [P6 #25].
  • Brought New Liberty Standard to Satoshi's attention, 8 Oct 2009 [R3 #34]. Sold 5,050 BTC for $5.02 by PayPal in October 2009 (Reported) [W12]; a matching on-chain payment exists [P13], but the identification is (unverified).
  • Started the Bitcoin Wiki, 14 Apr 2010 (Reported) [W11] 2010.
  • Corresponded with Satoshi until 22 Feb 2011 (260 emails, 144 from Satoshi) [R3 #260]; published the archive in 2024 and gave evidence in COPA v Wright, which found him truthful [R1 ¶253–254].
  • Correction to the Spark run: it said Malmi was "not referenced in any of the provided sources" and that his role was "limited to a 2009 price transaction" (SPARK-UNDOCUMENTED, wrong). See § 9 [SPARK]; [R9] § 6.1.

7.3 Gavin Andresen

  • Running the Bitcoin Faucet, 5 BTC per request, by 21 Jun 2010 [W4]. By 4 Aug 2010 he wrote that bitcoins had "gone up 10 times in value since I started the Faucet" [P6 #321]. Spark adds that Forbes quoted the Faucet in 2011 (Spark claim) (unverified) [SPARK 25].
  • Code credited by Satoshi from July 2010: Windows startup option (0.3.1), JSON-RPC HTTP authentication (0.3.2/0.3.3), -rpcallowip and clean shutdown (0.3.13), the test network (0.3.14), transaction priority by coin age (0.3.15), and the accounts RPC commands (0.3.18) [P6 #193, #268, #472, #491, #501, #526].
  • 19 Dec 2010: takes on project management "with Satoshi's blessing" and opens github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin [W3].
  • 26 Apr 2011: receives the alert key and Satoshi's goodbye [P9]; [R1 ¶23.11].
  • Contested: when he became lead developer (2010 per Spark's sources; "around April 2011" per the court) [SPARK 25], [SPARK 21]; [R1 ¶23.11].
  • Outside this period: founding the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012 (a fact the Spark itself dropped) (unverified) [SPARK 25], [SPARK 27]; his 2016 backing of Craig Wright, rejected by the court, is in the Satoshi note [R7].
  • Not documented here: when he first contacted Satoshi (the Spark's gap too) [SPARK].

7.4 Mike Hearn

  • First wrote to Satoshi on 12 Apr 2009 with "Questions about BitCoin"; 16 of Satoshi's replies survive, to 23 Apr 2011 [P8 #1–#16].
  • In April 2011 he worked on Google's abuse team, by his own description in his 18 Apr 2011 email (read at plan99.net, not saved) [W19]; Satoshi's reply discusses Google holding user deposits [P8 #15].
  • Built a Java implementation, BitcoinJ, open-sourced in March 2011 [P8 #13–#14, #16].
  • Received "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone." on 23 Apr 2011 [P8 #16].
  • Gave evidence in COPA v Wright about a 2016 dinner with Wright [R1 ¶257].

7.5 Others named in the record

  • Wei Dai (b-money) and Adam Back (Hashcash): the first two people Satoshi is known to have written to, in August 2008 [R1 ¶23.2]; [P7].
  • New Liberty Standard: first published dollar rate and Linux tester [R3 #34]; [P6 #13], [P6 #65].
  • Laszlo Hanyecz ("laszlo"): the pizza purchase [W2]; a code fix credited in 0.3.1 [P6 #193]. The Bitcoin Wiki calls him "a GPU miner" (Reported) [W11] 2010.
  • dwdollar: ran Bitcoin Market [W5]. mtgox (Jed McCaleb, per later reporting) opened Mt. Gox [W6]; [W11] 2011.

8. Early prices, 2009–2011

Date Price or rate What it is Status Source
5 Oct 2009 1,309.03 BTC per $1 (about $0.00076 per BTC) New Liberty Standard's published rate, based on electricity cost Reported (unverified) [W11] 2009; [W12]
12 Oct 2009 5,050 BTC for $5.02 (about $0.001) Malmi's sale to New Liberty Standard by PayPal Reported; matching 5,050 BTC payment on-chain [P13] [W12]; [SPARK 32]
17 Mar 2010 not stated First trade on Bitcoin Market Primary (operator's post) [W5] msg748
22 May 2010 10,000 BTC for two pizzas (about $25, so about $0.0025) laszlo's purchase Primary (his posts); on-chain match reported [W2]; [P14]
12–17 Jul 2010 $0.008 → $0.08 After the Slashdot story Reported (unverified) [W11] 2010
Aug 2010 "gone up 10 times … since I started the Faucet" Andresen's remark Primary (quoted by Satoshi) [P6 #321]
6 Nov 2010 passes $0.50 Market value reaches $1 million Reported (unverified) [W11] 2010
9 Feb 2011 $1.00 Dollar parity on Mt. Gox Reported (unverified) [W11] 2011
23 Apr 2011 parity with the euro and pound — Reported (unverified) [W11] 2011

The court's summary: "In the very early days of the Bitcoin system, Bitcoin had negligible value" [R1 ¶24].

9. The Spark origins report, folded in

Run 20261009-143628--what-is-documented-about-the-origins-of-bitcoin-from-2007-to, finished 2026-10-09T22:26:09Z, overall CONFIDENT, 46 pages read, 41 sources cited; read with research report <id> [SPARK]. Its source list is mostly secondary (CoinMarketCap, Binance, Grokipedia, bitcoinwiki.org, crypto-news sites). Its run log also skipped the SNI's own email pages as irrelevant (score 0.0) [R9] § 6.3. This pass checked each claim against primary records. Nothing the Spark produced is dropped; every claim is below with its status.

9.1 Its summary and sub-answer claims

Spark claim Spark's status Status after this pass Evidence
Whitepaper published 31 Oct 2008 sub-answer CONFIDENT, 6/10 Confirmed, 18:10 UTC [P2 #1]; [R1 ¶23.4]
"Posted on a cryptography mailing list"; the specific list "not identified in the evidence" SPARK-PARTLY; gap Confirmed and identified: The Cryptography Mailing List, metzdowd.com. The email linked to the paper on bitcoin.org; the paper itself was hosted there. [P2 #1]; [R1 ¶23.4]
One source [3] gives 3 Jan 2009 as the publication date, "the date Bitcoin software was released" SPARK-PARTLY Corrected: 3 Jan 2009 is the genesis block. The software was released on 8 Jan 2009. [P10]; [P2 #16]
Genesis block 3 Jan 2009 18:15:05, Times headline, 50 BTC to 1A1zP1eP…, timestamp 1231006505 CONFIDENT, 10/10 Confirmed from explorer record and source code; address re-derived [P10], [P15], [P16]
The 50 BTC "is unspendable as it is permanently excluded from the UTXO set" CONFIDENT Confirmed (Bitcoin Core special case) [W15]
"The timestamp serves as cryptographic proof that Bitcoin existed before the bank bailout news" CONFIDENT Corrected: backwards. The headline shows the block was made no earlier than 3 Jan 2009. [P10]
Early communications "before the whitepaper" include emails with Adam Back, Wei Dai and Hal Finney SPARK-PARTLY Partly wrong: Back (20–21 Aug 2008) and Dai (22 Aug 2008) are before; the Finney emails are from January 2009, after. [R1 ¶23.2]; [P7]; [W18]
A GitHub repo (lugaxker/nakamoto-archive) holds 3 Back, 2 Dai and 18 Finney emails SPARK-PARTLY Counts differ today: its file list on 2026-10-09 shows doc/adam-back 1–5, doc/wei-dai 1–3, doc/hal-finney 1–27, plus Back's trial exhibit "AB1" and a Finney–Nakamoto email PDF. Contents not read. [W18]
Cryptography list archives hold Satoshi's messages "from 2008-11-01 to 2009-01-25" SPARK-PARTLY Corrected: 18 messages, 31 Oct 2008 18:10 UTC to 25 Jan 2009 15:47 UTC. [P2]
"Satoshi's message on November 10, 2008, announced the release of Bitcoin v0.1" SPARK-REJECTED by its own verifier Refuted: Satoshi's two emails of 10 Nov 2008 discuss the design; v0.1 was announced on 8 Jan 2009. [P2 #9], [P2 #10], [P2 #16]
His "discussion on POW tokens in November 2008 preceded the whitepaper" CONFIDENT Corrected: the whitepaper came first, on 31 Oct 2008. [P2 #1]
The Cypherpunks list (from 1992) "does not contain Satoshi's communications directly"; whether the Cryptography list succeeded it is unclear gap Still SPARK-UNDOCUMENTED. No Satoshi post to Cypherpunks was found here; the lists' relationship was not researched. The 1992 date is from Wikipedia via Spark (unverified). Satoshi himself linked b-money to Cypherpunks [P6 #249]. [SPARK 38]; [P6 #249]
Last BitcoinTalk post 12 Dec 2010, on DoS protections SPARK-PARTLY (source: Grokipedia) Confirmed (18:22:33 UTC), with a refinement: his last mailing-list email (13 Dec 16:12) and an edit to that post (13 Dec 16:45) came later. [P6 #543]; [P3 #34]; [W8]
Last verified email to Andresen 26 Apr 2011, "confirming the handover and cessation of involvement" SPARK-PARTLY Confirmed from Andresen's own publication; the court also finds the alert key went to him that day. [P9]; [W9]; [R1 ¶23.11]
Email to Hearn 23 Apr 2011: "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone" CONFIDENT (Grokipedia) Confirmed from Hearn's published thread. [P8 #16]
Andresen took a more active role 19 Dec 2010 "with Satoshi's blessing" SPARK-PARTLY Confirmed from his BitcoinTalk post. [W3]
Satoshi handed the source code repository to Andresen in December 2010 [12] CONFIDENT Not confirmed: in Dec 2010 Andresen set up a GitHub integration tree while the Subversion repository stayed official; a handover of the repository in Dec 2010 is (unverified). [W3]
Finney's January 2009 debug.log shows three nodes CONFIDENT (unverified); see the Satoshi note on early IRC logs [SPARK 26]; [R7] § 4.4
Finney received the first transaction, 10 BTC, block 170, 12 Jan 2009 CONFIDENT Confirmed [P12]; [R1 ¶23.8]
RPOW "developed in 2004" CONFIDENT Confirmed, announced 15 Aug 2004 [W13]
Finney's 2013 "Bitcoin and me" post and his 2009 tweet CONFIDENT Post confirmed (19 Mar 2013); tweet (unverified), not fetched [W7]; [W17]
Malmi "not mentioned" in the evidence; "no primary sources" on his role; role "limited to a 2009 price transaction" SPARK-UNDOCUMENTED Wrong. Documented by 260 emails, the court's findings, the first commit and the 0.2 release credits (§ 7.2). [R3]; [R1 ¶23.10, ¶253]; [P15]; [P6 #25]
Andresen designated lead maintainer in 2010 CONFIDENT Contested with the court's "around April 2011" [SPARK 25], [SPARK 21]; [R1 ¶23.11]
Andresen founded the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012, as Chief Scientist CONFIDENT (unverified), outside 2007–2011 [SPARK 25], [SPARK 27]
Andresen's GitHub commits as primary evidence SPARK-PARTLY Not checked here; Satoshi's release notes credit his code (§ 7.3) [P6]
Andresen created the Bitcoin Faucet, which Forbes quoted in 2011 CONFIDENT Faucet confirmed (June 2010); Forbes quote (unverified) [W4]; [SPARK 25]
v0.1 released 8 Jan 2009 CONFIDENT (one source) Confirmed [P2 #16]; [R1 ¶23.7]
First documented price 12 Oct 2009: Malmi's 5,050 BTC for $5.02 CONFIDENT Partly confirmed: a 5,050 BTC payment confirmed that day; the sale itself is reported [P13]; [W12]
Pizza, 10,000 BTC, 22 May 2010 CONFIDENT Confirmed from laszlo's posts; on-chain match reported [W2]; [P14]
Dollar parity 9 Feb 2011 CONFIDENT (bitcoin.com only) Still reported (unverified) [W11] 2011
First halving 28 Nov 2012 CONFIDENT Outside the period; not checked [SPARK 17]
"The evidence does not document events in 2007" gap Partly filled: Satoshi's own statements date the start to 2007; no dated 2007 artefact is known [P6 #17], [P6 #127]; [P2 #15]; [R3 #24]
No primary source on the whitepaper's initial reception gap Filled: the list thread records it (Donald, Levine, Dillinger, Finney) [W1]
Wright registered US copyrights in the whitepaper and code in April 2019; a British High Court rejected his claims in March 2024 SPARK-PARTLY Confirmed, with detail: the registrations were in April 2019; the US Copyright Office's statements about them (22–23 May 2019) say they do not establish that he is Satoshi. The court ruled orally on 14 Mar 2024 and in writing on 20 May 2024. [R7] § 1, § 4.1, § 6

9.2 Facts the Spark dropped before writing

Dropped fact Why it dropped it Status here
"Emails between Satoshi and Hal Finney are available." (github.com/lugaxker/nakamoto-archive) quote not found word-for-word The repo lists 27 Finney email files and a Finney–Nakamoto PDF; not read here [W18]
"Gavin Andresen founded the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012." (notablepeopleproject.org) quote not found word-for-word (unverified); outside the period [R9] § 6.3

9.3 Pages it refused, skipped or failed

From the run log, as listed in [R9] § 6.3:

  • Refused (DNS failure): motherboard.vice.com, "Former Bitcoin developer shares early Satoshi Nakamoto emails" (which developer is not given in the log; not read here either) [R9] § 6.3.
  • Skipped as low relevance: github.com/cryptoanarchywiki/mailing-list-archive; finance.yahoo.com BTC-USD (twice); satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography and /emails/threads (score 0.0; these are the archive this pass used); a Czech whitepaper translation; Coinbase's whitepaper explainer; a Czech article on a copyright claim [R9] § 6.3.
  • Browser fallback failed: mailing-list-archive.cryptoanarchy.wiki/archive; a Forbes article of 26 Mar 2026 on Coinbase's chief executive's view of Satoshi's identity [R9] § 6.3.
  • Passed over at the search stage (page caps): Bitcoin Wiki "Category:History", Wikipedia's "History of bitcoin", "Satoshi Nakamoto", "Hal Finney", "Craig Steven Wright" and others; full list in [R9] § 6.3.

9.4 Its "what still needs judgement" list, answered

  1. Was the Cryptography list a successor to Cypherpunks? Still open (§ 9.1) [SPARK 38].
  2. Malmi's role in initial development: answered (§ 7.2) [R3]; [R1 ¶23.10, ¶253].
  3. Which mailing list carried the whitepaper: answered: The Cryptography Mailing List at metzdowd.com [P2 #1].
  4. Content of the emails with Back, Dai and Finney: Dai answered [P7]; Back known only through the court's summary [R1 ¶23.2]; Finney not read.
  5. Initial reception of the whitepaper: answered from the list thread [W1].

10. Contested and unverified points in one place

  • Contested: Bitcoin Market's start (6 Feb 2010, Bitcoin Wiki year page, against 17 Mar 2010, the wiki's own Bitcoin Market page and the operator's first-trade post) [W11]; [W5].
  • Contested: the v0.2 release date (12 Dec 2009, Bitcoin Wiki, against 16 Dec 2009, Satoshi's forum post) [W11]; [P6 #25].
  • Contested: the v0.1 release date: 9 Jan 2009 (Bitcoin Wiki) against 8 Jan 2009 (Satoshi's email; the court). Block 1 was mined on 9 Jan, which may explain the wiki's date [W11] 2009; [P2 #16]; [R1 ¶23.7–23.8].
  • Contested: when Andresen became lead developer (2010 per Spark's sources; around April 2011 per the court) [SPARK 25]; [R1 ¶23.11].
  • Contested: the dating of Szabo's bit gold posts [R7] § 4.6.
  • Contested: "the first exchange". New Liberty Standard traded at a posted rate from October 2009 [R3 #34]; Bitcoin Market (2010) was the first market where users traded with each other [W5]. Which counts as first depends on the definition.
  • Commonly misstated: Satoshi's "last message". The 23 Apr 2011 Hearn email is often called his final email, but his 26 Apr 2011 email to Andresen is later [P8 #16]; [P9].
  • Unverified: Malmi's 5,050 BTC / $5.02 sale and its link to transaction 7dff9389…; the pizza transaction a1075db5… and jercos as the deliverer; NLS's 1,309.03 rate and its 5 Oct 2009 date; dollar parity on 9 Feb 2011; the price figures from the Bitcoin Wiki; Finney's "Running bitcoin" tweet; block 78 as Finney's; the 184 billion BTC figure; e-cash.org and netcoin.org as Satoshi's; the 3 Oct 2008 draft metadata; the Hashcash announcement date; the Forbes article Andresen referred to; Malmi starting the Bitcoin Wiki on 14 Apr 2010. Sources as in the rows above: [P13], [P14], [W2], [W9], [W10], [W11], [W12], [W14], [W17].

11. Gaps

  • Satoshi–Adam Back emails (Aug 2008) were not saved; only the court's summary is used [R1 ¶23.2]. A copy of Back's trial exhibit "AB1" appears in github.com/lugaxker/nakamoto-archive (src/adam-back-exhibit-ab1.pdf), not fetched.
  • Satoshi–Hal Finney emails (Jan 2009), released in the COPA trial, were not read or saved (same repo, src/finneynakamotoemails.pdf and doc/hal-finney/). The same repo also lists emails to Laszlo Hanyecz and Jon Matonis, not read [W18].
  • New Liberty Standard's own 2009 pages (newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com, later wikifoundry.com) were not read: the Internet Archive blocked further requests as bot traffic. The 5 Oct 2009 rate rests on the Bitcoin Wiki and Cointelegraph [W11] 2009; [W12].
  • Malmi's own statement of the 5,050 BTC sale (he is said to have described it on X) was not found in a fetchable source; X was not fetched [W12].
  • Dollar parity was not checked against Mt. Gox or bitcoincharts trade data [W11] 2011.
  • The Times of 3 Jan 2009 was not retrieved (paywalled; and copyrighted, so it would be a summary only) [R7] § 2.
  • Finney's "Running bitcoin" tweet was not fetched (x.com) [W17].
  • The bitcoin-list originals on SourceForge and the p2p-research originals were not fetched; their text here comes from the SNI data. The P2P Foundation's own archive was not checked [P3]; [P4]; [P5].
  • When Andresen first contacted Satoshi is not documented here [SPARK].
  • The v0.1 release archive (bitcoin-0.1.0.rar) was not downloaded (an executable and archive). Its genesis code is covered by the August 2009 first commit [P15].
  • The relationship between the Cryptography and Cypherpunks lists was not researched [SPARK 38].
  • Out of scope: the 2010 block-size limit, the June 2011 Mt. Gox breach and later events.

12. Sources

Saved in sources/primary/ (see sources/primary/INDEX.md)

  • [P1] WHOIS for bitcoin.org, Public Interest Registry, queried 2026-10-09 — 2026-10-09-whois-bitcoin.org-PIR.txt
  • [P2 #n] Satoshi's 18 emails to the Cryptography Mailing List, 31 Oct 2008 – 25 Jan 2009, SNI numbering; originals at https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/ . #1–#11, #13–#14 and #16–#18 are saved from metzdowd as YYYY-MM-DD-Satoshi-cryptography-list-NN-…-metzdowd.html; #12 and #15 are in sources/satoshi/ (INDEX § 2).
  • [P3 #n] Satoshi's 16 bitcoin-list emails, SNI numbers 19–34 — Satoshi-emails-bitcoin-list-2008-2010-SNI.html
  • [P4 #n] Satoshi's 5 p2p-research emails, SNI 35–39 — Satoshi-emails-p2p-research-list-2009-SNI.html
  • [P5 #n] Satoshi's P2P Foundation posts, SNI 1–4: #2–#3 in Satoshi-posts-P2P-Foundation-2009-SNI.html; #1 and the disputed #4 in sources/satoshi/
  • [P6 #n] Satoshi's 539 BitcoinTalk posts, SNI 5–543 — Satoshi-posts-BitcoinTalk-2009-2010-SNI.html
  • [P7] Satoshi's two emails to Wei Dai, 22 Aug 2008 and 10 Jan 2009, from https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto — Satoshi-emails-to-Wei-Dai-2008-08-22-and-2009-01-10-via-gwern.txt
  • [P8 #n] Satoshi's 16 emails to Mike Hearn, 12 Apr 2009 – 23 Apr 2011, from https://plan99.net/~mike/satoshi-emails/ — Satoshi-emails-to-Mike-Hearn-2009-2011-plan99-extract.html (numbered in that file's contents table)
  • [P9] Satoshi's 26 Apr 2011 "alert key" email to Gavin Andresen, as Andresen published it — Satoshi-email-to-Gavin-Andresen-2011-04-26-alert-key-as-published-by-Andresen.txt
  • [P10] Genesis block records, Blockstream Esplora API — 2009-01-03-genesis-block-0-esplora-block.json, …-coinbase-tx.json, …-header-80-bytes.hex.txt
  • [P11] Block 9 coinbase transaction — 2009-01-09-block-9-coinbase-tx-0437cd7f-esplora.json
  • [P12] Block 170 and its transactions — 2009-01-12-block-170-esplora-block.json, 2009-01-12-block-170-esplora-txs-first-satoshi-to-finney.json
  • [P13] 5,050 BTC transaction, block 24835 — 2009-10-12-5050-BTC-tx-7dff9389-block-24835-esplora.json
  • [P14] 10,000 BTC transaction, block 57043 — 2010-05-22-pizza-tx-a1075db5-block-57043-esplora.json
  • [P15] main.cpp at Bitcoin's first commit 4405b78d (30 Aug 2009) — 2009-08-30-bitcoin-svn-r1-main.cpp
  • [P16] Bitcoin Core src/kernel/chainparams.cpp at c067aa71 (2026-10-09) — 2026-10-09-bitcoin-core-chainparams.cpp

Elsewhere in this repo

  • [R1 ¶n] Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright, [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch), judgment of 20 May 2024 — sources/satoshi/COPA-v-Wright-2024-EWHC-1198-Ch-judgment.pdf. ¶23.1–23.11 is the court's chronology of the Satoshi period; ¶24 early value; ¶253–254 Malmi; ¶257 Hearn.
  • [R2] The whitepaper — sources/satoshi/Bitcoin-whitepaper-Nakamoto-2008-bitcoin.org.pdf (byte-identical to https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf on 2026-10-09; references [1]–[8] on its last page)
  • [R3 #n] Satoshi–Malmi email archive, numbered as in the archive — sources/satoshi/Satoshi-Malmi-emails-2009-2011-archive-mmalmi-github.html
  • [R5] NSA, "How to Make a Mint" (1996) — sources/satoshi/NSA-1996-How-to-Make-a-Mint-Law-Sabett-Solinas-MIT-copy.htm
  • [R6] sources/patents/INDEX.md rows for US4309569A (Merkle), US4759063A (Chaum), US5136646A and US5136647A (Haber–Stornetta)
  • [R7] § n notes/2026-10-09-who-is-satoshi.md
  • [R9] § n RESEARCH-STATUS-2026-10-09.md
  • [SPARK n] Spark report 20261009-143628--what-is-documented-about-the-origins-of-bitcoin-from-2007-to (research report <id>); n is the number in its own source table (e.g. [17] bitcoinwiki.org, [21] bitcoinwiki.org Gavin Andresen, [25] mappingbitcoin.com, [26] valuethemarkets.com, [27] notablepeopleproject.org, [32] CoinMarketCap, [38] Wikipedia "Cypherpunk").

Read on the web, not saved (summaries and short quotations only)

  • [W1] Other people's replies on the Cryptography Mailing List, https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/ — 2008-November/014814 (James A. Donald, 2 Nov 2008), 014817 (John Levine, 3 Nov), 014822 (Ray Dillinger, 6 Nov), 014827 (Hal Finney, 7 Nov); 2009-January/015004 (Finney, 11 Jan 2009). Located through the SNI data, read 2026-10-09.
  • [W2] laszlo, "Pizza for bitcoins?", BitcoinTalk topic 137 (msg1141 18 May 2010; msg1195 22 May 2010; msg1526 12 Jun 2010), https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0 , read 2026-10-09. (A post in the thread gives a home location; it is not repeated here.)
  • [W3] Gavin Andresen, "Development process straw-man", BitcoinTalk topic 2367, 19 Dec 2010, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2367.msg31651#msg31651 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W4] Gavin Andresen, "Bitcoin Faucet changes", BitcoinTalk topic 206, 23 Jun 2010, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206.msg1711#msg1711 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W5] dwdollar, "New exchange (Bitcoin Market)", BitcoinTalk topic 20 (msg100 15 Jan 2010; msg748 17 Mar 2010), https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20.0 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W6] mtgox, "New Bitcoin Exchange (mtgox.com)", BitcoinTalk topic 444, 18 Jul 2010, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=444.0 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W7] Hal Finney, "Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney)", BitcoinTalk topic 155054, 19 Mar 2013, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W8] Original BitcoinTalk page of Satoshi's last post, topic 2228, showing posting and edit times, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2228.0 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W9] Gavin Andresen, "Eleven years ago today…", Svbtle blog, 26 Apr 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20220426154120/https://gavinandresen.ninja/eleven-years-ago-today ; live copy at https://riski.wiki/wiki/User:Gavinandresen/Blog/2022-04-26_Eleven_years_ago_today%E2%80%A6 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W10] Gwern Branwen, "2008 Nakamoto", https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto , read 2026-10-09
  • [W11] Bitcoin Wiki (CC BY 3.0), "2009", "2010", "2011" and "Bitcoin Market", https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/2009 , /2010 , /2011 , /Bitcoin_Market , read 2026-10-09
  • [W12] Elias Ahonen, "5,050 Bitcoin for $5 in 2009: Helsinki's claim to crypto fame", Cointelegraph Magazine, 25 Oct 2023, https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/5050-bitcoin-for-5-dollars-2009-helsinki-claim-to-crypto-fame-crypto-city-guide , read 2026-10-09
  • [W13] Satoshi Nakamoto Institute library: Wei Dai, "b-money" (Nov 1998); Nick Szabo, "Bit Gold" (29 Dec 2005); Hal Finney, "RPOW – Reusable Proofs of Work" (15 Aug 2004); Adam Back, "Hashcash – A Denial of Service Counter-Measure" (1 Aug 2002). https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/b-money/ , /bit-gold/ , /rpow/ , /hashcash/ , read 2026-10-09
  • [W14] hashcash.org home page, http://www.hashcash.org/ , read 2026-10-09
  • [W15] Bitcoin Core src/validation.cpp lines 2336–2338 at commit c067aa71, https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/c067aa716f8c5b7b1951e47f8d67e6cf0fc14822/src/validation.cpp#L2336 , read 2026-10-09
  • [W16] GitHub commit 4405b78d ("First commit", sirius-m, 2009-08-30T03:46:39Z), https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/4405b78d6059e536c36974088a8ed4d9f0f29898 , metadata read through the GitHub API 2026-10-09
  • [W17] Hal Finney's "Running bitcoin" tweet, https://x.com/halfin/status/1110302988 (not fetched); reported in e.g. "10 Years Ago Today, Hal Finney Started 'Running Bitcoin'", https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-years-ago-today-hal-180509795.html (found by search, not fetched)
  • [W18] github.com/lugaxker/nakamoto-archive, file list read through the GitHub API 2026-10-09 (contents not read)
  • [W19] Mike Hearn's own messages in his published Satoshi threads, https://plan99.net/~mike/satoshi-emails/thread1.html to thread5.html , read 2026-10-09; only Satoshi's messages were saved [P8]