Satoshi Nakamoto

- Electronic cash without a trusted third party, proof-of-work, peer-to-peer networks (from the whitepaper and his posts)

Education, work, location and real name are not documented. Time-zone and writing-style analyses exist, but they are not facts, so we do not list them.

• Hal Finney: Sent him 10 BTC in block 170, the first person-to-person transaction (12 Jan 2009)
• Adam Back: Emailed him on 20 Aug 2008 to check the Hashcash citation
• Wei Dai: Emailed him on 22 Aug 2008 to cite b-money
• Martti Malmi: Worked with him by email, 2009–2011
• Gavin Andresen: Gavin took over project management “with Satoshi's blessing” (Dec 2010)
• Mike Hearn: His last known email went to Mike Hearn (23 Apr 2011)

“I'm getting ready to release a paper that references your Hashcash paper and I wanted to make sure I have the citation right.” (20 Aug 2008, via email (published in the COPA v Wright trial))

“I was very interested to read your b-money page. I'm getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system.” (22 Aug 2008, via email (published by Wei Dai))

“I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” (31 Oct 2008, via Cryptography mailing list (metzdowd))

“Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash system…” (8 Jan 2009, via Cryptography mailing list (metzdowd))

bitcoin.org is registered (18 Aug 2008): The domain that would host the whitepaper and the first software is registered.

Satoshi's first known email goes to Adam Back (20 Aug 2008): Before publishing the whitepaper, Satoshi emails Adam Back to check the Hashcash citation and shares the draft “Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party”. Back replies on 21 August that the citation looks right and points him to Wei Dai's b-money, which Satoshi had not known. The emails were first made public in the COPA v Wright trial.

Satoshi's last forum post (12 Dec 2010): Satoshi announces version 0.3.19 on BitcoinTalk: “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…” No public posts follow.

Satoshi's last known message (23 Apr 2011): Replying to Mike Hearn, Satoshi says he has moved on. No later message from him is known.