Mike Hearn

Satoshi's code had a COIN and a CENT and nothing smaller with a name. Bitcoin's smallest unit, the satoshi, was named by users on BitcoinTalk two months after his last post.

Satoshi sized the 21 million cap so amounts would land between 0.01 and 1000. The cent ran through his code, his fees and more than two years of his writing. Yen never appears once.

On August 20, 2008 Satoshi called his C++ code nearly finished. Which precursors were in front of him by then? The earliest record for Hashcash, b-money, MicroMint, Bit Gold, DigiCash and RPOW.

Doubters called it unscalable in 2008. A famed hacker failed to break the code. A judge, a dictionary, and a Nobel nominator weighed in. What others said about Satoshi, read as one record.

Eight pages posted to a mailing list on October 31, 2008 — already the report of an 18-month-old, working system. Met first by silence, then by doubts about scale.

The only candidate who claimed the identity himself — declared in coordinated BBC and Economist interviews in May 2016, cryptographic proof in hand. The evidence, weighed.

Weighing the 'Blockstream controls Bitcoin' charge against the documentary record: where it comes from, and how each link in the chain holds up.

When correspondents wished Satoshi merry Christmas, predicted Bitcoin at $10M per coin, or hoped he was doing well, his replies opened on the technical topic and never returned. Five-pattern audit.

Cross-cutting reading of Bitcoin's 2015–2017 block-size war by phase, faction, and turning point: Bitcoin XT, BIP148 UASF, the New York Agreement, Bitcoin Cash, SegWit2x cancellation.

Hayek's 1976 competing-currencies case, the 1995 Extropian 'Hayeks' thought-experiment, and Bitcoin's 2009 non-state issuance — one ideological lineage with bounded direct-influence claims.

Finding Satoshi (Tooley / Miele, April 2026) names Hal Finney and Len Sassaman as Bitcoin co-creators: Finney coded, Sassaman wrote the paper. Lopp and Back dispute it.

How Bitcoin's 21 million cap emerges from a geometric halving series, how block rewards transition from subsidy to fees, and how the incentive model sustains honest mining.

Bitcoin chose a hard 21M cap; b-money (1998) proposed elastic supply; fiat runs central-bank discretion. The cypherpunk debate, Wei Dai's 2013 regret, and 15 years of cryptocurrency variants.

Where Bitcoin's current reality has drifted from Satoshi's design intent: four axes — mining (one-CPU-one-vote to ASIC oligopoly), custody (own keys to exchange IOUs), governance, and scaling.

Satoshi coded Bitcoin on Windows for 27 months, mainly with MinGW. In November 2009 he finished the Linux build Martti Malmi had started; by mid-2010 there were Windows, Linux and Mac releases.

Why Bitcoin's 2015-2017 fork wars ran as identity contests, not OSS disputes: the post-2011 authority vacuum, the economic weight on rule choices, and the three layers that bound code to currency.

Genealogy of every Bitcoin protocol fork that left a separate chain alive (Bitcoin Cash, SV, Gold) and the adjacent cryptocurrencies derived from Bitcoin (Namecoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin).

Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen released Bitcoin XT 0.11A, a Bitcoin Core fork implementing BIP 101 — 8 MB blocks doubling every two years. The launch opened the public phase of the block-size war.

Editorial reading of how the 2014 'Bitcoin Core' rebrand reshaped Bitcoin's authority vocabulary — PR #3408 internal disagreement, the 2015-2017 fork episodes, and Hearn's 2025 retrospective regret.

He built RPOW, received the first Bitcoin transaction, and lived blocks from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. The evidence for Hal Finney as Satoshi, weighed.

March 25, 2014 Forbes feature: Andy Greenberg followed the Temple City coincidence to Hal Finney, then dropped the theory after seeing Finney's 2009 emails with Satoshi and his wallet record.

Reads the asymmetry between public attempts to identify Satoshi, the surviving material trail, and the persistent identification gap.

Structural reading of how "Satoshi Nakamoto" remained unidentified across development, public phase, and withdrawal. Six layers: pseudonym, channels, language, env, genesis constants, handover.

The Mixmaster developer who died 68 days after Satoshi's last known email. The evidence for Len Sassaman as Satoshi, weighed.

Jameson Lopp argues Hal Finney could not have been Satoshi: on April 18, 2009, Finney was running a 10-mile race in Santa Barbara during a window of Satoshi network activity.

Gavin Andresen announces on BitcoinTalk topic 2367 he is taking over active project management of Bitcoin with Satoshi's blessing. Same day, he creates the bitcoin/bitcoin GitHub repo.

Interactive D3 timeline of every documented Satoshi event — correspondence, mailing lists, BitcoinTalk, P2P Foundation, SourceForge — from August 20, 2008 to the disputed 2014 P2P Foundation post.

Inventory of every Satoshi self-reference in the public record (Aug 2008 – Apr 2011): identity claims, dev disclosures, operational state, farewells, authenticity-disputed. Each row anchored.

Editorial reading of Satoshi's relationship to cypherpunk, from three primary observations: he didn't know b-money, Wei Dai testified Satoshi was "not previously active," alignment with Hughes 1993.

Mike Hearn published The Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment, declaring Bitcoin had failed due to governance breakdown and the block-size stalemate. He sold all his coins and left the project.

Mike Hearn testifies at the COPA v Wright trial, recounting his direct interactions with Satoshi and describing how Wright failed his technical check questions at a 2016 dinner.

In a CoinGeek interview, Mike Hearn offers rare reflections on Satoshi's personality — observing he enjoyed experimenting but appeared to grow frustrated when evangelical personalities arrived.

The COPA v Wright record revealed that Nicholas Bohm — previously known only for a January 2009 bitcoin-list bug report — also exchanged a private series of troubleshooting emails with Satoshi.

Unidentified individual or group who authored the Bitcoin white paper (October 31, 2008), wrote the software, mined the genesis block, and guided early development before disappearing in April 2011.

Finnish developer (born 1988); Bitcoin's most prolific early contributor after Satoshi. Exchanged ~260 emails with Satoshi, ran bitcoin.org, started the Linux port, did the first BTC-to-fiat sale.

Software developer (born 1966), founder of Wasabi Software, creator of the Bitcoin Faucet. Chosen by Satoshi to lead the project; served as Bitcoin lead maintainer from 2010 to 2014.

WikiLeaks takes Bitcoin donations, bypassing the Bank of America/Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Western Union blockade. Six months earlier, Satoshi had warned the heat could destroy the young project.

Two months after his ALS diagnosis, Hal Finney wrote on LessWrong that over 90% of patients choose death over a ventilator, and that he hoped to choose life and still write code.

Bitcoin's first block contains a Times bank-bailout headline — Satoshi's only personal voice inside the design, etched in the system's most permanent place. A reading of why he chose it.

Satoshi's last email in the Malmi archive (Feb 22, 2011). Reply to Gavin (Martti in third person), handing over the bitcoin-list mailman password as PGP blocks to each.

Mike Hearn's private email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, in which Satoshi stated he had 'moved on to other things' and that Bitcoin was 'in good hands with Gavin and everyone.'

Satoshi's final known private messages: April 23, 2011 to Mike Hearn — "in good hands with Gavin." April 26 to Andresen, transferring the alert key and saying he would probably be unavailable.

Mike Hearn publishes his private email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, providing valuable insights into Satoshi's thinking about Bitcoin's technical future.