Re: No connections — 'There may just not be anybody else running it right now'

Article Gwern · Event July 19, 2009 · Added March 19, 2026 · Updated September 13, 2026 · Author Bitcoin Institute

Figures: Satoshi Nakamoto , Nicholas Bohm

correspondence network early-network famous-quote early-adopter

Dark navy hero graphic with a date, headline, and short quote on the left, and on the right a single glowing network node linked by a dashed line to an email icon, set within a faint web of scattered dots and connecting lines.

Satoshi’s reply was blunt about how thin the network had become:

Satoshi Nakamoto

There may just not be anybody else running it right now.

He asked whether Bohm’s IP address had changed, and encouraged Bohm to keep his server online so that new users would have at least one node to connect to when they started the software.

Roughly six months after launch, Bitcoin’s continued operation depended on a handful of early adopters — Bohm, Dustin Trammell, and Hal Finney — keeping their nodes online so that a newcomer starting the software would find someone to connect to.

Satoshi followed up the next day with the IP address his own node was connected to. This exchange stayed private until COPA v. Wright trial evidence revealed the full correspondence in 2024.