Satoshi Nakamoto Left Us 11 Years Ago With The Message That There’s Still More Work To Be Done

Original author: Aliyu Pokima

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• It is now exactly 11 years since Satoshi Nakamoto’s last public communication before he went dark.
• The founder’s last message told the community that there is still more work to be done regarding attacks.
• Analysts have tried to figure out the reason for his disappearance with fingers being pointed at the WikiLeaks

Satoshi Nakamoto’s legacy has been cemented in the hall of fame after his Bitcoin network has grown into a trillion-dollar market. He had the courage to change the world and the humility to walk away from all of it. But why?

Nakamoto’s Last Message

On December 12, 2010, Nakamoto penned his last message to the community in what could be described as a call to action for developers. He highlighted potential flaws in the system and simply vanished off the face of the earth. 

“There’s more work to do on DoS, but I’m doing a quick build of what I have so far in case it’s needed, before venturing into more complex ideas. The build for this is version 0.3.19,” said Nakamoto.

“Added some DoS controls. As Gavin and I have said clearly before, the software is not at all resistant to DoS attacks. This is one improvement but there are still ways to attack that I can count.”

Nakamoto’s last message indicated that he was overly concerned about the security of his invention. At the time of his disappearance, the price of the asset was still a fringe asset as it was trading at just under $1.00. It would not be until February 2011 that the asset would achieve parity with the dollar. 

Bitcoin history buffs have cited the reason for Nakamoto’s disappearance to be intertwined with the adoption by Wikileaks. Wikileaks was hounded by the government for its role in leaking classified documents on the internet and turned to Bitcoin to receive its funding. On December 11th, a day prior to his disappearance, Nakamoto sent out a plea to Wikileaks to stay away from the network because it had the potential to stir the hornet’s nest.

“I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy,” Nakamoto wrote. “You would not get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring will most likely destroy us at this stage.”

Satoshi’s Messages – A Glimpse Into The Enigma

While Satoshi Nakamoto remained unknown, his messages gave community members a glimpse into his personality. From the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper and the attention to fine details that it contained, it is safe to say that Satoshi Nakamoto was an academic. While this is debatable because he did not publish the paper in an academic journal but through a mailing list, this can be rationalized.

Publishing his whitepaper in an academic journal would have meant that readers might have to pay money to access the funds. Secondly, publishing in an academic journal would mean that the paper would have come to the public in 2009 or 2010 perhaps, because of the processes in publishing academic journals.

Satoshi’s communication ran for around 770 days from the publication of the whitepaper and early users described him as a benevolent dictator with a keen interest in breaking away from the traditional financial system.