John Levine

Challenged Satoshi's honest-majority security assumption in the original whitepaper thread

2 entries

Event August 21, 2008 Added August 13, 2026 Updated September 27, 2026 Analysis

What they said about Satoshi — from first doubts to a Nobel nomination

Satoshi Nakamoto ↔ Hal Finney, Adam Back, Ray Dillinger, James A. Donald, John Levine, Wei Dai, Mike Hearn, Martti Malmi, Jeff Garzik, Benjamin Wallace

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.

Event November 3, 2008 Added February 22, 2026 Updated May 15, 2026 Mailing List 25 messages

"Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper" — Satoshi's first Bitcoin announcement (Oct 2008)

John Levine ↔ Satoshi Nakamoto

John Levine dismisses Bitcoin's security assumption — botnet operators control 100,000+ machine zombie farms, and hashcash failed for the same reason: bad guys outweigh good guys computationally.