Kicking the Hornet’s Nest

The Complete Writings, Emails, and Forum Posts of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Founder of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

Third Edition

Mill Hill Books

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.

• Satoshi Nakamoto, December 11, 2010, 23:39:16 UTC

This statement was in reference to an article by PC World. It can be accessed at https://www.pcworld.com/article/213230/could_wikileaks_scandal_lead_to_new_virtual_currency.html.

Two days later, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared from making further public postings.

Notes on the Third Edition

One might ask, “Why is there a third edition of Satoshi’s words?” The simple answer is that new, or rather, previously unseen Satoshi writings have emerged publicly.

The “Hal Finney emails” cited above by CoinDesk in November of 2020 prompted version two of “Kicking.”

Then, in February of 2024, the “COPA trial” began with the possible identity of Satoshi Nakamoto at the core of the case. That trial called in individuals who had made early electronic contact with Satoshi to offer witness statements. As a result, new, previously private “Satoshi emails” became public. Hence, here is the Third Edition of “Kicking.”

I think that a chronological record of Satoshi’s writings is interesting, useful, and important. To that end, I’m committed to keeping this book freely offered and in several formats. See all the links at https://hive.blog/@crrdlx/satoshi to download a copy.

• crrdlx, editor

February 24, 2024

https://hive.blog/@crrdlx/satoshi

Notes from the Editor (written for the First Edition)

Ten years ago, on January 3, 2009, Bitcoin went live. That day, Satoshi Nakamoto generated the first Bitcoin block, which has since come to be known as the “Genesis block.” In the Genesis block, Satoshi encoded the message, “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This was likely to both timestamp the block to the outside world (using the title of the article on the front page of the London’s daily The Times, but, more importantly, to offer a comment. The comment gave insight that was both outward toward the financial system and inward toward Satoshi himself. Any article title could have been chosen as a timestamp. This one was clearly meant to convey a message. Satoshi sent the message that he does not favor banks. More likely, he does not like the fractional reserve banking system and the endless creation of fiat currency that coincides with fractional reserve banking. 2008 and 2009, when Bitcoin was born, were the years of rampant “cash injections,” “stimulus packages,” “quantitative easing,” and “too-big-to-fail” bank bailouts. Bitcoin, with its hard-coded 21 million coin limit, would solve the fiat addiction. Infinite paper money would be replaced by finite numbers written in code.

What’s more, Satoshi fired a shot across the bow of the financial powers-that-be. Bankers, politicians, and the manipulators of the money supply have not been happy about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Ten years in, the powers seem to be warming to the idea a bit—or, at least, they’re beginning to realize the use-cases and the inevitability of crypto. Still, their reluctant “embrace” is very slow and very cautious. I imagine one of the most threatening things to the powerful is to suggest that power be taken from them and then dispersed to the people themselves. Putting power into the hands of the people means saying, “You know what? We the people really don’t need you after all. Have a nice day.” Bitcoin suggests this very thing financially—it gives the power, freedom, and responsibility to the individual. As a boy, my brother and I would occasionally come upon a hornet’s nest while playing in the woods. When we did, being boys, there was really nothing else to do but to throw a rock or stick at it, or kick it. Kicking a hornet’s nest isn’t rational, but just too tempting and just too much fun not to. And when you do it, you do it fast and then you run like hell!

Since January 2009, some people have placed an almost religious status onto Satoshi and his writings (the term “Genesis block” serves an example). I do not subscribe to this position, and I discourage anyone from doing so. Satoshi is, or was, a man, or a woman, or a group—as fallible and as human as us all. And, I’m sure he holds just as many hang-ups and weaknesses as anyone else. Applying demi-god status to a mortal man is unfair to that person, and sets one’s self up for disappointment. And yet, Satoshi was very clever. So, I do think his writings, interactions, and thought processes are important, revolutionary, and worth documenting. I realize that all of these words are fantastically preserved and organized on websites, particularly at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute (https://nakamotoinstitute.org/). Still, having a hard copy for reference or referral may be appealing to some. And, I realize other such books exist already. However, they include most_, but not all, of Satoshi’s writings and they include excellent commentary as well. This book is distinct in that it has the entirety of Satoshi’s work included, is arranged chronologically rather than topically, and offers almost zero commentary. The goals here were to be complete, to build a chronological chain of Satoshi’s words and thoughts, and to allow Satoshi’s words to speak for themselves free from an editor’s interjections. Thus, this book was assembled.

Following are all of the public writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin—at least these are all that I could find. They are arranged in chronological order. Many of the writings are very technical. Some are purely code and will read as jibberish to most of us. I debated whether to include these “writings” or not. But, I wished to have a full account of all of Satoshi’s writings, and so, even the code was included. Though unwieldly to read, even they convey a message—Satoshi was focused, businesslike, and pragmatic in his dealings and work. Since many of the writings are in response to others’ comments, and for the sake of revealing the context of Satoshi’s words, there are writings by other people included here as well. However, any non-Satoshi writings are italicized. Satoshi’s writings can be identified by the fact that they are not italicized.