A new batch of emails published by Martii 'Sirius' Malmi, one of the original authors of Bitcoin's code, shows that Bitcoin's anonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, foresaw BTC's potential to become an energy-consuming asset.
These emails were released during the ongoing hearing of Craig Wright, who is facing a lawsuit filed by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Proof of Work is the only solution I have found to make p2p e-cash work without a trusted third party,” Satoshi wrote in a May 2009 email, referring to the consensus algorithm used in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
This algorithm, known as Proof of Work (PoW), is of great importance for coordinating the BTC network and preventing double spending. It requires miners to solve complex computer puzzles, which verify transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain.
However, PoW is at the center of discussions regarding Bitcoin's energy consumption. Despite the cryptocurrency industry claiming that miners use clean or idle energy that would otherwise go to waste, critics argue that the raw numbers of energy consumption produced by PoW are alarming.
Satoshi argued that even if Bitcoin grew to consume significant energy, it would still be less wasteful than the labor- and resource-intensive traditional banking activity it would replace. “The cost would be an order of magnitude less than the billions of dollars in banking fees that pay for all those brick-and-mortar buildings, skyscrapers, and junk mail credit card offers,” Satoshi wrote.
He added: “It would be ironic if we had to choose between economic freedom and savings.”
Satoshi also emphasized that Bitcoin is a distributed secure time information provider for transactions. He mentioned that a few lines of code could produce a transaction that includes an extra hash for anything that needs to be timestamped.
Additionally, Satoshi expressed concerns that characterizing Bitcoin as a type of investment could invite legal scrutiny by authorities. He advised against explicitly presenting Bitcoin as an investment, writing in an email that he opposed BTC as an investment product:
“This is a dangerous thing to say and you should delete this article. “If they come to that conclusion on their own, that's fine, but we can't present it that way.”
*This is not investment advice.
