A mild innovative wind wooshed into the corner where the blockchain nerd sat with a computer, foreseeing a strong crypto explosion. Yes, Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, created his first known email on August 20, 2008. The email sent to Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash, discussed Bitcoin, the first ever cryptocurrency that rolled out in 2009.
An email that sparked blockchain innovation
Satoshi’s first email: citing Hashcash, hinting at Bitcoin
Satoshi’s email to Adam Back was a request letter asking for the citation of Back’s Hashcash paper in his whitepaper. The Bitcoin founder also briefly described Bitcoin’s working system without mentioning the name.
So, why did Satoshi confirm a citation from Adam Back?
Hashcash, a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism, was initially created by Adam Back to fight email spam and denial of service attacks. Launched in 1997, this system requires the sender to perform a high computational task, making it impossible for spammers to send large volumes of spam messages.
Bitcoin uses the same PoW mechanism, and this adds to the reason why Satoshi wanted to credit Adam Back in Bitcoin’s whitepaper. Courtesy and credibility worked here.
What’s inside the email?
The Bitcoin founder reached out to Back: “I think you would find it interesting, since it finds a new use for hash-based proof-of-work as a way to make e-cash work”. The email read an interesting line: “I’m also nearly finished with a C++ implementation to release as open source”, indicating he was close to launching Bitcoin.
Adam Back replies to Satoshi
On August 21, 2008, Adam Back responded to Satoshi’s email, willing to review his draft. Pointing to another related concept called ‘B-money’ by Wei Dai, Back wrote that Satoshi’s new project has some similarities with it and could be relevant.
“You may be aware of the ‘B-money’ proposal, I guess Google can find it for you, by Wei Dai, which sounds to be somewhat related to your paper.”
So, the core idea behind this first-ever known email was for Satoshi to request a citation from Adam Back, acknowledging his Proof-of-Work mechanism originally designed for emails. This exchange marked the start of collaborative communication between the two techies, and beyond that, it highlighted the foundation of how Bitcoin would later use Proof-of-Work for mining.”
