Satoshi Nakamoto presented his eCash proposal to Wei Dai via e-mail. The name eCash refers to a precedent that David Chaum created in the 1980s.
In 2009, a person (or group of people) behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto submitted a highly significant proposal. This would become a project that currently moves billions of US dollars around the world.
What many people do not know is that this project did not always have the name Bitcoin. Some e-mails between Satoshi and cryptographer Wei Dai, between 2008 and 2009, have the answer about the beginnings of the project. The creator of Bitcoin originally introduced it as “Electronic Cash without a Trusted Third Party.”
The first e-mail that Satoshi sent to Dai, which is available on the gwern.net website, sought to clarify the publication date of B-Money. Although Satoshi was not aware of B-Money before devising Bitcoin, this cryptographer’s electronic money proposal seems to be an antecedent to Bitcoin. Adam Back, a member of the cypherpunk movement, noted the similarities and notified Satoshi.
In his message to Wei Dai, he presented his project to the renowned cryptographer. Satoshi shared a first draft of the abstract or conceptual presentation of his proposal. Although it has differences beyond the name of the project, the text is the basis of the Bitcoin White Paper.
Satoshi shared the document with his counterpart in a link that is not accessible on the Internet, so it is impossible to corroborate its content with known versions where the term Bitcoin already exists. Among the few differences, the most prominent is the initial mention of “honest nodes” that would later be simply known as “nodes”. There is a correction of writing errors and minor changes in the formulation of the text.
eCash is an abbreviation of the first name Satoshi used to shape his proposal in the 1980s. David Chaum devised eCash as an anonymous electronic money alternative. It was not possible to apply it as he expected, and so he founded a firm that provided companies with electronic payments. Years later, Chaum himself would say that it was not the time to apply such an idea.
Identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin
There has been a lot of speculation, but no one knows for sure the identity of the person (or group of people) behind Satoshi Nakamoto. For that reason, the great mystery of Bitcoin is precisely in not knowing who created it.
Bitcoin shares several of its basic concepts with B-Money, which is why Dai has been one of the suspects of being behind that pseudonym since the beginning of the project.
However, the cryptographer has denied that theory. He has even argued that he would have tried to dissuade Satoshi from some wrong design decisions that he did not notice at first. In particular, he would have asked him to change the monetary policy of Bitcoin.
A few weeks ago, a group of researchers analyzed, in an attempt to look for clues, the identity of the creator of Bitcoin. Everything seems to point to London as Nakamoto’s operations center while he was developing his proposal.
The data that the analysts collected helps to discard some suspects or people who have tried to call themselves Satoshi, such as Australian businessman Craig S. Wright.
However, the findings do not shed any more light on the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, beyond placing him in a specific country between 2008 and 2009. Therefore, this remains a mystery to which there may never be a solution.
By Alexander Salazar
