Agile coach who asked Satoshi about Bitcoin's money supply
Event Added Updated
On February 12, 2009, a Dutch P2P-research community member named Martien van Steenbergen asked Satoshi whether Bitcoin had a limited money supply or created money on each transaction. Satoshi Nakamoto replied the same day:
“There is a limited supply of money. Circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. Transactions only transfer ownership.”
Satoshi had already stated the same 21-million-coin cap five weeks earlier, in the January 8, 2009 release announcement (“Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins”); this reply was the first time he confirmed it in direct response to someone asking whether the supply was capped at all. Van Steenbergen is a Dutch agile and lean trainer and founder of AardRock, an organisational-transformation consultancy.
On February 12, 2009, van Steenbergen responded to Satoshi Nakamoto’s announcement of Bitcoin on the P2P Research mailing list with two key technical questions: whether Bitcoin resembled David Chaum’s anonymous digital money system, and whether Bitcoin had a limited money supply or created money at the moment of transaction.
Satoshi replied the same day, restating in direct answer to a question the cap he had first announced publicly a month earlier:
“There is a limited supply of money. Circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. Transactions only transfer ownership.”
In a follow-up exchange on February 13, van Steenbergen asked about Ripple, protocol specifications, and whether Bitcoin could support self-organizing monetary models. Satoshi responded by describing Bitcoin as “a foundation and first step” for programmable P2P social currencies, and discussed Bitcoin’s relationship to Pekunio and reputation-based systems.
The question came from an agile coach, not a cryptographer — and from a peer-to-peer research list, not a cypherpunk venue. Barely a month after Bitcoin’s first release, its monetary design was already being probed from well outside the circles where it started, and it was a plain question like his that prompted Satoshi to restate, in a direct one-on-one exchange, the cap he had first announced publicly a month earlier.
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Steenbergen asks whether Bitcoin resembles David Chaum's anonymous digital money and whether the system has a managed limited money supply or creates money at the moment of transaction.