Old emails of Satoshi Nakamoto surfaced

The lawsuit against alleged Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright may soon reach a verdict. Old emails from Satoshi Nakamoto have now surfaced.

Craig Wright has claimed for years that he Bitcoin invented under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Whether he may still do so is currently being negotiated in court.

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), backed by individuals like Jack Dorsey and companies like Coinbase, sued the entrepreneur in 2021. In turn, the entrepreneur repeatedly invoked the claim in various legal disputes.

On the most recent day of the trial, Adam Back was called to the witness stand. The cryptographer and CEO of Blockstream revealed previously unseen email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto.

The first emails between Back and Satoshi date back to 2008, a few months before the Bitcoin white paper was published. In one of them, Satoshi makes sure he quoted Back's "Hashcash" essay correctly.

Back also recommends Satoshi read other academic articles on digital currencies: "B-Money" and "Micromint."

Satoshi eventually shared a preliminary draft of the Bitcoin white paper with Back. In the final e-mail, from January 2009, Satoshi thanked Back and informed him that Bitcoin's open source software had been released.

The emails clearly show that Adam Back and Satoshi Nakamoto are not the same person, as has often been assumed.

Whether Craig Wright succeeds in explaining that it was he who wrote Adam Back will likely become clear in the coming days. The lawsuit is prediction to end in late February.

There are many legends surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto. The anonymous inventor of Bitcoin wrote his last official message in December 2010 and his identity has been the subject of speculation ever since.

The most recent evidence pointed to cryptographer Hal Finney, who died in 2014. According to this evidence, Satoshi Nakamoto is a name coded from Japanese for Hal Finney. More here here.