Register of Corrections

PREV_HASHthe Satoshi investigation

every change, with its reason

Rule four of this investigation says every correction will be announced publicly, together with the reason. This page is that announcement. Nothing here is deleted: an entry that was wrong stays visible, with what replaced it. Corrections are numbered and dated. Where a correction came from a reader, we say so.

C-0042026-09-07#003raised by a reader
WAS
Proof-of-work described as buying „the right to append” to the chain; the longest chain called „the record everyone accepts”. The assembly of the parts described as claimed by the author. One passage read as „not a cryptographer’s sentence”.
NOW
Work is spent to append, but the block is accepted only after peers validate its transactions. The rule names the valid chain with the greatest proof-of-work. Absence of a citation is stated as a fact about the bibliography, not as proof of priority. The passage is described as reasoning that extends beyond cryptography to representation and identity.
REASON
The original wording read technical simplifications as evidence and profiled the author from a single passage. Rules one and three.
C-0032026-09-07#000, #001-K, #001-Lraised by a reader
WAS
Side-thread titles: „The list he came to”, „The problem he brought”.
NOW
„The list behind the first message”, „The problem Bitcoin entered”.
REASON
The pronoun assumed a single male author — the very thing the T₀ table lists as undetermined. Rule two.
C-0022026-09-07#000raised by a reader
WAS
„A fixed, predetermined issuance schedule” listed among the properties of the system described in the whitepaper.
NOW
New coins issued to the block’s maker, with fees taking over once a predetermined number of coins is reached — the wording the document actually uses.
REASON
The earlier phrasing described today’s understanding of the schedule rather than what the 2008 document states.
C-0012026-09-07#000raised by a reader
WAS
„He left roughly a million early-mined BTC that have not moved to this day.”
NOW
Blockchain analyses attribute a large body of early-mined bitcoins to a single early miner sometimes associated with Satoshi; that attribution is disputed and is not treated as identity evidence here.
REASON
The original sentence stated a contested attribution as established fact, in the first block of the investigation. Rule three.

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PREV_HASHthe Satoshi investigation

Block #001-K · side thread

The list behind the first message

Case background · documents: public archives of the Cryptography list (metzdowd.com) · not part of the corpus

This block does not analyse a document by Satoshi. It is background — without it the choice of addressee cannot be judged. The Cryptography list hosted at metzdowd.com continued an older list of the same name and was moderated by Perry Metzger. It was not a forum of enthusiasts or a place for announcements. Specialists read it, and proposals were taken apart there without indulgence. One technical detail matters to the investigation: the list was moderated. A message had to pass a human being before reaching subscribers. The author therefore accepted the possibility that his project might not be let through at all — and still chose this place over a channel where anyone can publish without permission.

a moderated specialist list, not an open forum a few hundred subscribers, among them people with real track records public archives — readable also by non-subscribers the convention of review: substantive criticism, not enthusiasm

We record three facts: the author knew this list existed, knew its register well enough to write in its convention, and accepted the risk of moderation. We do not record that he was a subscriber, that he knew the moderator, or that he belonged to that milieu — there is no evidence for any of it.