Since Bitcoin was created in 2009, there has been a mystery surrounding who created the project. The founder, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, has largely remained anonymous. While there have been many attempts over the years to decisively discern who Nakamoto is, there have not been any definitive conclusions on who the elusive developer is. 

However, Martti “Sirius” Malmi, released a slew of email communications between himself and Nakamoto from 2009-2011. There are over 260 emails in the release, with tons of information relating to why Nakamoto created Bitcoin and potential issues he saw with the project. Malmi was in contact with Nakamoto because he was the administrator for Bitcoin.org after Satoshi launched Bitcoin.

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While some of the emails are benign and about administrative issues, Nakamoto discusses one of the major current issues regarding Bitcoin in the email exchanges.

“If it did grow to consume significant energy, I think it would still be less wasteful than the labour and resource-intensive conventional banking activity it would replace. The cost would be an order of magnitude less than the billions in banking fees that pay for all those brick and mortar buildings, skyscrapers and junk mail credit card offers.”

In 2024, the biggest criticism of Bitcoin is its intense energy use, which is larger than most countries in the world. However, Nakamoto had the foresight to see that this could become an issue and discussed it years before it became a prominent debate. 

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The use of British spelling of words such as labour gives the impression that Nakamoto is not from the United States. 

The emails were used as evidence in an ongoing court case in the United Kingdom. The case is between the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and Craig Wright, an Australian businessman and software developer, who claims to be Nakamoto. 

Wright believes that he deserves the credit for creating Bitcoin and the changes it has brought to the financial space. However, COPA argues that he is committing “industrial-scale forgery” to legitimize his position. 

COPA representative Jonathan Hough said, “Dr. Wright has consistently failed to supply genuine proof of his claim to be Satoshi: instead, he has repeatedly proffered documents which bear clear signs of having been doctored.”

As the trial continues in the coming weeks, it will be interesting to see the part the released emails play a part in concluding whether Wright is Nakamoto. 

Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallet is the largest in the world, holding over 1 million Bitcoins across thousands of wallets. At the time of writing, the holdings are worth over $55 billion, making the Bitcoin creator one of the top 30 wealthiest people in the world. 

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