We are reading everything Satoshi left behind. Document by document.
Bitcoin’s creator left a finite, public trail: the whitepaper, emails, ~575 forum posts and code. We have found no public investigation that reads the entire corpus chronologically, from beginning to end, without starting from a named suspect. So we are doing it. Conclusions appear only when they emerge from the evidence.
The first email: Friday, 31 October 2008, 14:10
Satoshi’s first trace is not a website or a press release. It is an email sent to a niche mailing list read by perhaps a few hundred cryptographers, researchers and cypherpunks.
Block archive
all published episodes- Block #002mining The list replies. The first voice is not friendly.
- Block #001-L · side threadThe problem Bitcoin enteredside thread
- Block #001-K · side threadThe list behind the first messageside thread
- Block #001The first email: Friday, 31 October 2008, 14:10
- Block #000 · genesisWhat Bitcoin is, and why we are looking for its creator
The findings board
confirmed facts onlyOnly findings from published blocks end up here. The blacked-out fields are waiting for their episodes — we already know what they will concern, but conclusions must emerge from the evidence.
Register of open questions
a question equals a documentA question enters here only when a document we have read gives rise to it — never from knowledge of what lies ahead. Each has a number, a source block and a status. Closure comes only through evidence.
- Q1Did the author know this mailing list before 31 October 2008 — did he read it, or did he come to it from outside?
- Q2Why was the project’s first audience a narrow, moderated circle of cryptographers rather than the wider public?
open · closed (with a link to the block) · undetermined (material exhausted)
Rules of the investigation
binding on us, not on youEvery document we analyse is linked in the original. Every step we take can be verified independently.
We read in order of publication — the way the world read it in 2008, with no knowledge of what comes next.
We point to no suspects until the evidence justifies it. Hypotheses are built from findings, not the other way round.
A new case block every Friday at 14:10 — the exact time Satoshi sent his first email.
Rules of evidentiary language
hold us to themAn investigation is only as credible as its language is precise. Below are five rules we have tied our own hands with. If we break any of them — write to us.
Signed, registered, sent, published, mined. Without proof we will not write: paid, lived, worked, was hiding.
“Author” means the entity signing as Satoshi Nakamoto — a person or a group. No “he”, “Japanese”, “programmer” until there is evidence for it.
A claim without a link to primary material does not go on the board. It stays in the text as an open question.
Every correction to a document count, a date or an attribution will be announced publicly, together with the reason.
A green frame is a finding backed by a document. A dashed one is a preview or a caveat. The difference is visible without reading.
Join the listening nodes
new-block notificationNo algorithm, no recommendations. One signal: a new block, every Friday, 14:10. Subscribe and we will send it straight to you — the way Satoshi sent his first email.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 subscribe: send an empty email to the address below. Got old list archives, forum copies, analyses of your own? Attach them. Sender anonymity respected. node: node@prev-hash.com fingerprint: 3B1D 09A4 77C2 0E58 91AF 6D22 4C0B E7A1 1208 5A6F -----END PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----