Preserving the Historical Record of Bitcoin Knowledge | Bitcoin 2026

All right, thank you everybody. >> [music] >> Aaron and Juan we just explained introduce yourself just a little bit to the audience. >> Yeah, I'm Aaron van Wirdum. I've been a journalist in the space for over a decade by now. Mostly at Bitcoin Magazine and I'm the author of the Genesis book which tells the it's the origin story of Bitcoin. It's about the prehistory of Bitcoin. So the people and project that inspired Bitcoin and that all led to Bitcoin. Yeah, hi I'm Jonathan Beer and I published a book called the block size war in March 2011 about the events that happened in Bitcoin between August 2015 and November 2017. And I've read your book the Genesis book and I think it really stands out in terms of the kind of maturity of the content really stands out compared to the other Bitcoin literature. Thanks. The block size war is also great. No, it it really is though. My name is Michael Goldstein, also known as Bitstein and I am the founder and president of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute which since 2013 has been teaching people about the history and economics of Bitcoin, especially the the prehistory, Austrian economists, cypherpunks, crypto anarchists, etc. And I'm honored to have been uh my resources used for the Genesis book which is in fact a very good book. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I used some of the or quite a bit of the the the research you put on your website as part of yeah, my storytelling essentially. I'm Paul Rosenberg. I've been involved in crypto projects for a long long time. Um I you know, I wrote a novel called the lodging of wayfaring men. I ran a company called crypto hippy for many years and this is a subject near and dear to my heart. So let's start with this. In the last few weeks there have been Satoshi is revealed sort of things going on. What are your guys' thoughts on this whole subject of the search for Satoshi? What what do you think about it? Why don't we start here? Well, as president of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, I find it inappropriate for myself to be engaging in you know, speculation of the identity of Satoshi. That being said, this is a a perennial thing that comes up and what I hope that comes from it is that as people look into that question, it leads them to the history of the ideas that go into Bitcoin so that they can properly understand why Bitcoin is so important, why Satoshi made it and then from there be able to realize you know, once they realize that Satoshi doesn't matter in terms of how Bitcoin runs today, they still have all of the knowledge they need to understand why Bitcoin is still important today. Yeah, I think it's interesting and yeah, it's kind of a repeat of what's already happened. So I think in March 2013 Newsweek came out with an article saying someone called Dominic Prince Nakamoto was Satoshi and Leah McGrath Goodman published that article and the evidence as far as I could tell was that the name Nakamoto matched the name Satoshi Nakamoto and and the journalist had looked up Nakamoto in the phone book and found someone and that was the evidence. So yeah, more recently we've had I think last year was it the New York Times said that Peter Todd was Satoshi and then this year the New York >> was that was a documentary. Oh, it was a yeah, that was a HBO documentary. >> Money Electric or was that one? Yeah. And then yeah, the New York Times this year said Adam Back was Satoshi and then they said yeah, there was in their film last week that said someone else was Satoshi. So it's just it's interesting that it repeats and then as time goes on more and more people will learn oh actually these journalists don't know who Satoshi is, they're just generating content and that this new revelation is no not fundamentally different than another revelation a year ago or two years ago. So it's just a repeat of the cycle, I guess. Yeah, so I very intentionally sidesteps that topic in my book. And that's really for three reasons in no particular order. First of all, I don't know. I I I don't know who Satoshi was. I have my list of candidates in my head, of course, like many people do, but at the end of the day I don't know. Second reason, I find it unethical to dox someone. Clearly Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to be pseudonymous and there's good reason for that. If you look at some of the prehistory project or the early digital cash projects like Douglas Jackson's e-gold, he was prosecuted and he was he didn't go to jail, but he went was sentenced to house arrest so he couldn't leave his house. Also, you know, if Satoshi mined a lot of coins, there's you know, that's a risk for him personally. So in other domains we find it unethical to dox someone. I think the same should apply to Satoshi. And then third of all, it doesn't matter, right? Bitcoin is free and open source software. It's math based. It's decentralized. So whoever created it, it actually really doesn't make a difference. As for the recent reveals, I think it's kind of poetic that we had two big reveals recently and they both point to someone else. As for the specifics for why they pointed to these people, I I remain unconvinced. I think for the for the Adam Back one there was a lot of a lot of the argument was that Adam Back and Satoshi had similar interests. Well, that's that's known. Adam Back was a very influential person within the cypherpunks and in the digital cash within the digital cash pioneers. So if Satoshi comes from that group, which I do suspect, then obviously there's going to be a lot of cross-pollination. And then the other part of the article was like more of a linguistic study of how Adam Back wrote. Years ago we had another linguistic study, a similar approach that pointed to Nick Szabo. So again similar approaches and still they come up with different names which you know And then real quick, the the recent one which reveals Hal Finney and Laszlo Hanyecz, I thought it was also especially the Hal Finney part. They they really left out of the documentary that Hal Finney in fact did help Satoshi. He was the first person to recognize the potential of Bitcoin and help Satoshi. That is known and it that was sort of left out of the documentary. It was kind of reframed like that means he was Satoshi. So for example, they mentioned there was a gap where it was not clear what he was doing between the release of the white paper and the release of the code. But we do know what he was doing. He was helping Satoshi. We know that. And yeah, so there were a couple of these things and the way I I feel that the way they framed the interview with Fran Finney, it did seem a bit manipulative to me. That I think she was saying he was helping Satoshi. He was helping create Bitcoin, but not as Satoshi Nakamoto. Having said that, I did think to Michael's point, the research they did and the what what the the story they told, it does introduce a lot of new people to the cypherpunk ideas and to the the original motivations for why Bitcoin exists and I that that part I like. I think it's great if more people are introduced to these ideas. And they were at the documentary particularly, it had a bit of an uplifting idea and story which is you know, it's kind of a fresh fresh breath of air breath of fresh air, you know, given all the negative media attention that Bitcoin has gotten over years. So that was kind of nice, too. But I remain unconvinced on the Satoshi Nakamoto reveals themselves. You know, it's funny. You guys are talking about this stuff and I think oh, I know what the next Satoshi reveals story is going to be. Somebody's going to take somebody's going to take AI and say AI has now proven that Satoshi is so-and-so. I you know, somebody's going to do that in the next month, probably. >> that's been done, but it's not been done in a major documentary. Usually these things go everything in Bitcoin first originates on Bitcoin talk 10 years ago, right? And then it becomes a mainstream thing later. But you know, beyond that I agree with you guys. You know, Satoshi wanted to be anonymous and out of respect if nothing else I'll do that. You know, I mean I'll you know, I've gone so far as to say that I'm convinced that Satoshi was from cypherpunks. But more than that you know this person did us gave us a great great gift. Show some respect. Yeah. Thank you. So next question is to what extent does Bitcoin history matter today? What about this is important for us right now? Why don't we start over here with Michael? I think that Bitcoin history is extremely important and will always be extremely important. Um the the extent to you know, how many people actually focus on that topic depends on you know, how many we can have running their own nodes, holding their own keys, etc. But in order to be engaged with Bitcoin, you do have to be running your own node and holding your own keys, understanding why there's only 21 million, understanding why there's proof of work. And if you're not doing those things, you're just relying on someone else who is doing those things. So whoever is doing those things needs to have an understanding of what it is so that they can and pass it down. And um in order to understand these questions, you have to dig into the history. Not just the the history of Bitcoin since it was created, but also the prehistory of Bitcoin of all of the intellectual traditions that led into it, what are the economics that can help us understand why it makes sense that there's only 21 million and why that's a good thing and why the economy is not going to, you know, crash because there's a a limited supply or um you know, why is it important that people can have sovereignty over their own keys? All of these things are are imminently important. And the other thing to understand is there are always going to be new Bitcoiners. Not just today, obviously there there's might even be new people uh here coming to this conference wanting to learn about Bitcoin, but even our our children and their children, every generation of uh people none of them come into this world as Bitcoiners and they have to relearn why are we using this thing and why is it important that we remain using these things and not slipping back into a fiat system. Um yeah, I think it's very interesting. So, Bitcoin of course launched in 2009 and most of the people that were became interested in Bitcoin were relatively young. So, mostly in their kind of mid-20s or late 20s. So, pretty much everyone is now 17 years later and pretty much everyone's alive today. And therefore there's still relatively strong knowledge about what happened. So, the question is what's going to happen into the future as people start retiring and dying, will we lose that historical record? Um and does that matter? Right, if Bitcoin is going to be a strong successful money, do we need to pass on the knowledge about Bitcoin history to later generations or maybe we don't need to and Bitcoin can still survive and thrive even if that historical knowledge is lost. Um and I think it's interesting comparing to the US dollar because of course the US dollar has got mass adoption, everyone uses it day-to-day, but no one really cares about the history of money. Um there's no big US dollar conferences where thousands of people go to and discuss the dollar. So, yeah, will we transition to a kind of more normalized state where Bitcoin is still there growing and successful and people don't care about the history. Um that said, I personally am very interested in Bitcoin history and think you know, it's very important to archive things and to try to kind of you know, research, write books and and pass the knowledge on. Yeah, as a historian I like to think that history matters a bit. Uh and in the case of Bitcoin specifically I think Bitcoin to an extent is an evolving system. It it sort of lives and breathes and and ultimately uh the the people that use it and that uh interact with it, they they to an extent also form Bitcoin themselves. And I think it matters a lot that people understand where Bitcoin came from. So, indeed the sort of Cypherpunk tradition, the Austrian economics tradition as you mentioned. Um I I think it's important to keep that intact in Bitcoin, not just for an ideological reason uh in the sense that I also agree that uh censorship resistance and a level of privacy in in in money, I think that's important. I wouldn't want to live in a world where every transaction can be monitored and traced and potentially used against you and that is what the Cypherpunks set out to prevent, right? Maintain a level of privacy in a digital age, also for money. Uh so, I think it's important for an ideological reason that people understand why that matters. But in Bitcoin's case, I think it also matters for the viability or the value proposition of Bitcoin itself. It's ultimately what distinguishes Bitcoin from other forms of money, including other forms of digital money. Uh if if Bitcoin were to lose its censorship resistance, for example, then what what's really the difference with something like PayPal? I think that the core value proposition of Bitcoin does come from the the Cypherpunk ish properties. Like that the these these ideals are embedded in the protocol and need to to stay there. We we it needs to stay that type of product uh project in order to be unique and offer unique value to the world ultimately, I think. In order to have value, people need to understand why they value it. Or yeah. All value is subjective, right? So, it's like it doesn't have value on its own. It has value because people appreciate what value it delivers to them. That's yeah, that's one thing and also the project itself itself if people stop caring about these things, the project itself could evolve in a way that these things kind of get lost. Like the emailification of of uh Bitcoin as people have called this, right? Where it the the email protocol is used by almost no one anymore because everyone just logs into one of like free email services and you don't in Bitcoin's case, then you would lose the censorship resistance and in a way even the sort of decentralized governance, which Johnny wrote a whole book about. Like you would lose these things if people start stop caring about these things. So, for that reason I hope people care about the history of where Bitcoin came from, too. Welcome to Predict. The world is a market. >> [music] >> Everything is a market. Every headline moves the line. Every moment is your market. Call the moves. >> [music] >> Bet on your instinct. Your prediction, your edge. Dualbet's Predict, where everything is a market. You know, I I absolutely agree with everything you guys have said. And it's very interesting uh to me that the more people understand about Bitcoin history, the more they begin to understand the Bitcoin philosophy. And it's and it's it's a fascinating study because you look at all the parts of the prehistory that came together, funny things like Napster. And and uh we talked you mentioned before e-gold. I think e-gold was tremendously important to Bitcoin not for the technical side but for the social side for lack of a better word, the business side because if for the anyone who doesn't know, e-gold was in a uh you could buy digital gold. There was gold in a warehouse and you could just send a gram or half a gram or 1.2039 grams to your friend. And it was very easy and and it was a big it was a big thing at one time. But one of the fascinating things about this was all of the sudden as soon as it came out, there was this network of exchangers that and and people that would sell you e-gold in your native currency. And these guys just popped up out of nowhere. I know one of them was in Alaska. Another one was was a telephone repairman from Australia. And these guys just jumped up at an opportunity and and really did a good job of it. I there's so many details to talk about, but they did a good job of it. And this I think was important to Satoshi for knowing that you build a structure like mining or something like that and there were people who would show up and would fill in the gaps. I think that was really important. Yeah, the way I think about it is when it comes to these uh pre-Bitcoin digital cash projects, e-gold kind of got the economic side of it right because it was backed by gold, right? And then but it didn't get the technical side right because it could be shut down. It was centralized. Whereas something like RPO got the technical side well there were some issues with that as well. But there were other digital cash projects that were more focused on the technical side, but then they didn't get the economic side right because they had uh they it could be inflated too much or start you know, for example, hash cash you could just make as much as your computer could produce. And Bitcoin really kind of brings these two things together in a clever way. So, both the economic side and the technical side and that that makes it such a powerful project. >> Yeah, to me that was the genius of the whole thing. Um you know, it just it made everything work together in one ecosystem and go oh this could work. And it did. Um what happens if we get extreme Bitcoinization? You know, Bitcoin becomes you know, a very important international currency and so on. Um does Bitcoin history become more important or less important? Um yeah, well I think going back to like kind of what you were saying about passing on these Cypherpunk values and maintaining them I think Bitcoin is a lot of it's about kind of game theory and asymmetry. And the more popular it gets, the more we get to mass adoption, the more unfeasible it is that a majority of people have these Cypherpunk values, will believe in censorship resistance. So, Bitcoin has to exist in such a way that even if it's only a small minority of people that have these values, those values can prevail because of the kind of design and asymmetry and game theory in the system. Um so, yeah, it's very important to preserve and maintain and pass on these lessons. Um and hope that Bitcoin is structured in such a way that it even if it's a small minority, maybe 5% of users or less, because of the design of it, because it's very robust and resilient, it will still be censorship resistant even if 95% of the users don't know or don't care about that. Anybody want anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean I think if we reach a point of hyper-Bitcoinization where Bitcoin is, you know, the global currency and the central spill of the global economy uh I think Bitcoin history will be considered very important. I've likened it in the past to I think the Cypherpunks could go down in history in the similar way as the founding fathers of the United States, for example. Right, they were both groups of people that wanted to create a new type of society. The founding fathers on a new continent and the cypherpunks in a new realm like in the in the digital space. They were really thinking about it as a new economy and a new society even. And and even some of the you know, the ideals or the the things they tried to achieve there's overlap there like with a lot of strong emphasis on individual freedom for example. So yeah, I think if cypherpunk technologies and Bitcoin in particular go mainstream and you know, become a historic project and people could there will be history books written about that era. I think well, I already wrote one. >> [laughter] >> But yeah, but many more. All right, let's go to our last question I've got here. We can take some time in this one. How do we approach documenting Bit I'm sorry, I took the microphone away. How do we approach documenting Bitcoin's history? Michael, let's start with you. This is a very much the job of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute too. So I think we face a number of key issues. One is just making sure that we actually have that information to pass down. Two is dealing with you kind of referenced we have the the problem of you know, AI swap and we're just going to have more and more information flooding the internet and it's going to be harder and harder to find information especially when we already have issues with with link rot. And so um what we find is passing down the information about why what Bitcoin is and why it's important is in many ways like as difficult as making Bitcoin itself. It's actually very easy to send Bitcoin to to someone else. It's harder to tell them and and pass on the knowledge of why this thing matters. And so the way that I'm approaching it at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute is I'm trying to build what I call the library of Bitcoin. Just sort of the think the Library of Congress for Bitcoin. The idea here is the preservation and passing down of knowledge requires dealing with issues of integrity, making sure that the files actually you know, are what you you meant them to be that whole time. We use hashes for that. And availability to make sure that you have a you know, a document or a file, making sure you can actually access it access it you know, 50 100 years down the line. That's actually not a trivial problem because we don't know the future of computing. And finally also intelligibility, knowing that what is this thing that I've been handed down. What is the Bitcoin whitepaper and if those things have have changed over time to actually understand what was happening. So I'm trying to build a an archive system that is on the level of what you would see at the Library of Congress and National Archives etc. that follow these standards that allow us to actually pass down the information. And then once we have that it's a matter of finding everything that is important from Bitcoin history and getting it processed and then there so that we can pass it down to future generations with confidence that they will understand Bitcoin not just as good as we do, but hopefully even better because they will have been building on that foundation of knowledge. All right, I'm going to have to stop this right now cuz we're almost out of time. Last words guys. Give me 15 20 seconds. What have you got? Last words I know I'll just answer your question real quick. So for the Genesis book I the main resources I used is one the great work of other journalists and historians before me. Steven Levy for example has done great work documenting history of also the cypherpunks, the hacker movement. He was around he was basically a cypherpunk himself. I've done a lot of archival research myself just strolling scrolling through the cypherpunk archives and speaking with the people that were around back then in so far they're still around and alive and reachable. So that these were my main resources for writing the book. Yeah, in terms of where the Bitcoin discussion has happened I think it started off on kind of Bitcoin talk in 2011. Then in kind of 2013 it transitioned to Reddit and r/btc and then in 2017 it transitioned to kind of Twitter. And I think that's why the work you do at the Nakamoto Institute is really important because Reddit and Twitter in particular have extremely poor archival qualities. On Reddit if you even go to an old post by default you can't even see the old comments and that's where a lot of the Bitcoin debate happened. So I think I think the work you're doing is really really important. Thank you. And I just like to say please visit nakamotoinstitute.org and get in touch and study Bitcoin history and help me collect and protect Bitcoin history for future generations. And with that we're done. We love you all. Thank you so much for caring about this. Thank you. >> [music] >> Every year this community comes together to celebrate to debate to build what comes next. >> [music] >> And every year the stage gets bigger. >> [music] >> Sound money center stage. So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? [music] You come home. Nashville, July [music] 2027.