s/Library Reserves/Liberty Reserve/
My notes on Malmi <=> Nakamoto private email threads
(this is a draft without checking and a subjective re-telling of my reading so please cross check the original for correctness: https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/)
- throughout the years there was focus on bootstrapping and maintaining a website for bitcoin
- bitcoin software was also improved in the collaboration, notably: increasing number of bitcoin nodes online by collapsing the GUI to Windows tray and auto-launching after machine reboot, porting to Linux, accommodating the web servers use case by proving an API and ability to run without graphical user interface
- Satoshi and Martti debugged issues with restarting bitcoin node where the operating system was trying to hold on to open network port after the process was terminated, Satoshi's guess was that the OS behaviour was a security feature to prevent locally running trojans from taking over the network connection
- fees for getting transaction included in mined blocks were explained by Satoshi even through this mechanism was rarely used during early days of bitcoin
- Satoshi explained that fees will become necessary in the future and this was the only time window when he could implement fees
- Satoshi wanted to not bring attention to fees at this stage and would prefer the explanation that fees were a mechanism for congestion control
- Satoshi wanted to be clear that fees were determined by the free market
- Satoshi's to care to preventing API being accessed over the network for better security and preventing more than one node running to avoid corruption of files on disk
- Satoshi took care to let people make backup of their private key by copying wallet.db
- There were many discussions comparing all available tools and libraries for the website, forum, wiki
- Satoshi shared he's reasoning on bitcoin choice for JSON-RPC for the API
- work on initial node discovery and discussing ideas of preseeding source code with a number of initial bitcoin node IP addresses
- there was a difficult-to-find freezing bug that Satoshi help debug and narrowed down to the process interacting with IRC
- a test transaction was done by Martti with 10k btc and later his project helped conversion to fiat currency for 10k btc converting to $20
- Martti was passionate about starting a bitcoin exchange website that would helped people convert bitcoin to fiat and back
- Satoshi was emotionally validating of the exchange project, helped brainstorm reasoning, discussed feasible ways to implement it, and weighed in in choose a domain name
- Satoshi suggested to use Library Reserves to buy and sell bitcoin in Martti's exchange project as that was a currency with less friction than doing bank transfers
- Satoshi mentions that he was trying to buy bitcoin.com but it was not feasible because the domain was held by a domain squatter
- Satoshi payed attention to the graphical design of the desktop icons and website themes
- Satoshi coordinated commits to repo, shared beta tar archives, and builds of bitcoin node with Martti
- Satoshi coordinated a number of releases and drafts of release announcements with Martti privately before making them public
- To pay for website and forum hosting Satoshi help connect a fiat donor to help Marti pay for hosting and had the donor transfer about $2000 in fiat over postal mail to Marti's address in europe
- Satoshi asked Martti to be the treasury and asked to send back financial accountability reports when the funds were used
- Satoshi allowed for a specific fraction of the funds to be used for Martti's exchange business which Martti used temporarily but then returned that back to the fund for the website hosting
- From the early days Bitcoin nodes were able use use Tor for extra privacy
- Satoshi corrected the website wording to remove the claim that bitcoin is private explaining that most people seem to overestimate how priviate their interactions are, yet Satoshi was hopeful that people who do care will achieve good privacy
- Satoshi explained a point on legal security to Martti to not translating website to your language to avoid prosecution from local regulators
- there were a number of proposals that Satoshi did not agree with, one was ignored, and one did not seem interesting to him: (1) to change hosting providers - strongly disagreed asking to promise not to do this; (2) to use Google Wave - this on seems to be the only one Satoshi completely ignored; (3) Ripple discussion - Satoshi is not interested but mentions that this is the only proposal that tries to do something with trust; (4) Adding one of the community members as an administrator - Satoshi explains that the individual seems to be a goofball
- for the hosting change proposal Satoshi really did not want to do it because we wanted to avoid risk of disrupting the growth of the community of the website and did not think that it was necessary to cut the current hosting cost
- Password for SSH connections and databases were exchanged over email. First in clear text. Later sets of password were sent encrypted over PGP
- Before disappearing Satoshi helps with expanding the team to maintain the site connecting Martti with Gavin
- Satoshi does not want to talk to press but realized that if the team doesn't talk then someone else will misrepresent or oversell bitcoin
- Satoshi realized the importance of giving clear information to EFF
- Satoshi mentions that Martti is the best person to talk to press
- Satoshi and Martti were working with high intensity throughout 2009-2011
- Satorshi shared that he had busy times at work and expressed care for not to disrupting Martti's final exams
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