Detailed in the five emails below is the complete conversation between Nakamoto and Back, who was cited in the seminal Bitcoin white paper. In the emails, the two cryptography heavyweights can be seen for the first time discussing the work. 

Though Back has previously spoken publicly about the emails, hinting at the details of the conversation, and in particular how he neglected to read the white paper at first, the emails represent the first time that the full text has been made available.

Adam Back, a renowned figure in the cryptocurrency world, and the chief executive of Blockstream, has long been speculated to have been involved in the creation of Bitcoin, though these emails will likely weaken such suspicions. 

As detailed, the correspondence between the two was polite and professional, with Back pointing Satoshi to a few related papers, and Satoshi seeking to make clear the unique contributions he added to Back’s prior work. 

Invented in the 1990s by Back, Hashcash was a method for slowing email spam, one that prompted a computer’s processor to prove it had conducted calculations before delivering the message. The system is the blueprint for Bitcoin’s mining system, in which a distributed network of computers compete to solve cryptographic puzzles, and in exchange for the work, release new bitcoins into the economy. 

Elsewhere, it’s now clear Satoshi tried to keep in touch with Back, emailing him in January 2009 on release of the Bitcoin software. 

Since their publication this week, the release of these emails has reignited interest surrounding the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, as it coincides with other new emails presented by Satoshi’s early collaborators. 

While an interesting relic of history, however, these emails do little to shed light on Bitcoin’s essential mysteries. 

EMAIL #1: Satoshi reaches out to Adam back

EMAIL #2: Adam points to Satoshi to Wei Dei’s work

EMAIL #3: Satoshi notes his unique contributions to Bitcoin

EMAIL #4: Adam still hasn’t read the white paper 

EMAIL #5: Satoshi informs Adam of Bitcoin’s release

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Casey Rodarmor, the chief coder behind the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, announced Tuesday that he is proposing a significant change to the software, one that could be viewed with skepticism by its budding user base.

Revealed in a post on X Tuesday, Rodarmor specifically proposed deprioritizing the canonical numbering system that assigns unique and coveted numbers to inscriptions created on the Bitcoin network. 

Since the protocol’s inception, each digital artifact created using Ordinals has been assigned a unique inscription number. These numbers, akin to serial numbers, have become an essential part of the digital art’s identity. 

Lower numbered inscriptions have been historically perceived as more valuable, driving collectors to seek these coveted positions within the numbering hierarchy. For instance, Casey Rodarmor himself owns the highly sought-after “Inscription 0.” 

Notably, the change does not impact the numbering system the protocol assigns to individual satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain, which would still be awarded a distinct numerical score based on their ordering in Bitcoin blocks.

Still, Rodarmor sought to assuage the market in his comments discussing the change, expressing concern that the effort to maintain stable inscription numbers “has resulted in complicated code and hindered the protocol’s development.” 

He continued: “The need to ensure new changes do not alter the numbers of existing inscriptions has made the development process cumbersome and challenging.”

Rodarmor’s proposal could spark a lively debate within the Ordinals community, as well as among NFT collectors and crypto enthusiasts. However, it’s noteworthy that Rodarmor himself believes this system is already unstable. 

Discussing past attempts to rectify the issues, like adding negative numbered “cursed inscriptions” to the protocol, he wrote:

Cursed inscriptions and negative inscriptions numbers have a number of downsides:

• An inscription number now does not tell you anything about the order in which the inscription was made.
• The logic required to keep track of which inscriptions are cursed is a source of bugs and complexity.
• “Blessing” cursed inscription types, i.e., collectively deciding that after a certain block height, certain cursed inscription types will no longer be assigned negative numbers, and be assigned positive numbers instead, requires coordination.
• Cursed inscription numbers are permanently unstable, so a substantial number of inscription numbers are already unstable, even under the status quo.

Rodarmor’s solution, in his own words, would make the existing inscription numbers “permanently unstable,” changing how indexers would treat this information as opposed to eliminating them entirely.

Some market observers like Luxor’s Charlie Spears backed the move, stating: “Inscription numbers are a shitcoin, and overemphasis on the number has led to ill-conceived protocol decisions and weird market dynamics.”

Time will tell if the market agrees.

Notably, the proposal comes on the heels of a rare public appearance by Rodarmor at the recent Ordinals Summit in Singapore, where he discussed the protocol’s success and future innovations. As such, the pull request could signal that the developer is about to enter a period of renewed activity.

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Casey Rodarmor, the creator of the Ordinals protocol, made a surprising return to the public eye during the Ordinals Summit held in Singapore this week.   

The appearance marks Rodarmor’s first public engagement in months, following a period of isolation after the protocol’s launch in January of this year. He previously broke his silence most recently with a lengthy podcast in which he aired his concerns about Paul Storzc’s drivechains upgrade proposal.

The Ordinals Summit, a gathering of NFT enthusiasts, was a notable celebration of the protocol at a time when its use has seemingly declined. The software, which allows digital artifacts to be traded like NFTs on the Bitcoin network, had previously garnered significant attention and praise from collectors and earned criticism for breaking crypto’s rigid cultural lines.

The growing popularity of the Ordinals protocol among NFT collectors had taken Rodarmor by surprise. It gained traction rapidly, filling a niche in the market for Bitcoin enthusiasts who wished to participate in the NFT space. However, this success also drew the ire of some Bitcoin proponents who were staunchly against NFTs, though the reasons for the critiques varied from moral to technical objections.

In response to this polarized reaction, Rodarmor chose to step back from the limelight temporarily, focusing on refining the Ordinals protocol. Last week marked a notable change with Rodarmor merging an upgrade that helps more clearly establish provenance for the inscriptions that comprise a specific collection.

In his keynote address, he expressed gratitude for the support the community had shown and emphasized the need for innovation within the cryptocurrency space.

The Ordinals Summit was attended by a diverse range of developers and enthusiasts, all keen to explore the potential of the Ordinals protocol and its impact on the future of NFTs. Notable speakers included Udi Wertheimer, creator of the Taproot Wizards NFT project and, Domo, the pseudonymous creator of the BRC-20 protocol.

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This is an opinion editorial by Joël Kai Lenz, a professional content writer focused on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, and host of the “Rabbit Hole Stories” podcast.

In my previous life, as a professional in the legacy digital media world, I used to sit below a giant neon light. I didn’t particularly like the look of the light, but I loved its message. It was a quote by Steve Jobs.

You may have heard or even seen the quote online. It’s the last few words of a famous Apple commercial, where Jobs spoke to society’s outsiders:

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

In my earlier internet days, when I spent hours changing the CSS of my Myspace page, I was always fascinated by creators. For some weird reason, I resonated with them. Not because I’m particularly creative but because I liked their approach: You’ll get rewarded if you’re courageous enough and take on risks. Or, in Bitcoin terms, if you put in the proof of work, you will get rewarded.

However, my work wasn’t rewarding anymore. Although I was the misfit in my group — the only one who didn’t graduate in media studies or journalism — I still found a way to blend in. But that was the issue, I blended in and didn’t challenge the people reading my stories. I was just another one of these tech-bro writers who didn’t question anything.

Luckily, I was a contractor, and as long as I pitched stories with unique angles, my editor let me pursue other avenues, outside of the typical tech-bro coverage. He encouraged it, as long as I put in the same effort as I did before. That day, I looked at the neon sign and told myself: You know what? I’m going to take a closer look at changing the word by telling more personal stories, and joining the creator economy myself!

The Problem With The Creator Economy

This was in 2018. TikTok was just starting, Facebook wasn’t involved in as many scandals yet, and YouTube was, in my opinion, at its peak. I felt that on these many emerging platforms, there must be the chance to support myself as a creator and tell the stories that I wanted to tell.

Also, because most of the creator economy was digital, I was sure to run into someone else who was into Bitcoin. After all, it’s magic internet money, and these people have to get paid or want to use this new form of money to their advantage. At least, that’s what I told myself.

Not only was I wrong, but I was also disappointed to find out that there were no creators out there who had an issue with how the creator economy was run. Once you got a peek behind the curtain, you realized that most of these prominent creators were captured by talent agencies.

The deeper I dug, the quicker I realized that there are two currencies in that world. The first currency is the connections and people who you know. The second one was the U.S. dollar. Although I mainly spoke to European creators, all of them told me that they have to obey their audience, and the majority of that audience was in the U.S.

Therefore, the only real currency most of them valued was the U.S. dollar. If they did a good job, their agents could introduce them to better opportunities, and in the end, they would get paid more, all at the whim of Big Tech and payment providers such as PayPal or Stripe.

The number of creators who didn’t want to work with a talent agency or get paid in other currencies was almost nonexistent. Also, remember, this was right after the peak of the 2017 ICO bubble. All of the crypto creators I spoke with got paid in shitcoins that went bust and at that point were not open to accepting anything else but fiat money.

The goal of my pivot to tell more personal stories through the creator economy was to find people who would embark on their quirkiness, question the status quo, and maybe even use bitcoin as an alternative to the fiat system. After 18 months of hard work, attempting to join the creator economy and become empowered to deliver quality content directly to audiences, not much had changed. It seemed as if all of the “creators” were still forced to act in the interest of big agencies or promoteshitcoins to get ahead in their careers.

Subscriptions Have Destroyed The Internet

Like the monetary system at large, the creator economy is also broken and desperately needs a fix.

The main problem that these creators have as relayed to me in my research is their reliance on centralized entities, whether they be the agencies representing them or the gatekeepers online that define what’s morally good or evil. Just like so many other things online, the creator economy is rigged.

Not because the participants decided to rig it, but because they’re part of a controlled environment that likes to possess everything. The best example of this is the subscription model with big media companies.

I get forwarded a ton of Financial Times articles daily. Unless I use a tool to get around the paywall, I must subscribe to the newspaper to read even just one article.

Media outlets require recurring subscriptions for even a single piece of content because they need a steady income stream to facilitate content production, but they also seem to rely on people forgetting what services they signed up for. Many people won’t cancel a subscription, even if they only read one article. You never know when you need it again, so why bother canceling?

That thinking has allowed centralized payment providers to obtain a monopoly on the internet and lock users in for eternities. The same applies to content creators, because they have to play by these rules or offer their content for free, hoping that advertisers recognize them and pay them. Spoiler alert: they never do and they abuse creators just as much as companies abuse customers through subscriptions.

Lightning And Bitcoin Change The Game

Now, this is where Bitcoin and the Lightning Network come into play.

They allow creators to monetize every single piece of content online, whether that be a blog post, video or even a poll. Lightning enables us to interact differently with content. Users won’t have to subscribe to read one article, they can simply pay for that single article on a case-by-case basis.

And this is all without needing to enter card details — just take your phone out or use a web-based wallet, send some sats, and off you go. This incentivizes readers to curate content and their time spent online differently. Instead of blindly subscribing in the hopes of choosing the right service, they can engage with creators and have their voices heard more directly.

You already see this online with places like Nostr or through podcasting 2.0, where people are getting paid directly without a middleman, and followers can voice their support or concern with their sats. Compared to the current model, where users are the product 99% of the time, this new model (which will take some time to flourish) puts the users first, which is crucial.

This model enables everyone online to take part in a better creator economy. It could potentially also lift the barriers you see online these days. To get monetized on a platform like YouTube, you need a minimum number of subscribers and view count, all in favor of YouTube because it can gather data on their audiences, used to show them ads later.

Creators of the Lightning or “Value4Value” economies won’t need YouTube because they only need to offer the content in places where zapping or Lightning infrastructure exists. They could also create content with certain paywalls in mind. A good example would be a book where the author requests payments per chapter instead of for the whole book at once.

These approaches would increase the content quality — after all, you would need to create better content and keep followers entertained to send sats — but it would also increase the financial relationships that creators have with the web as a whole. They’ll be in charge of where and when their funds are released. There will be no more need to wait for biweekly payments with high fees, they can just create invoices and send it to their wallets of choice.

It’s a crazy idea to go against the current tide. However, as Jobs stated in that Apple commercial, it’s the crazy ones who change the world. Bitcoiners are crazy enough to challenge not only central banks and fiat money but also content monetization online.

Therefore, if you speak to a creator friend of yours and they complain about not getting paid, show them how Lightning works, explain what Value4Value is all about and how they can start today.

This is a guest post by Joël Kai Lenz. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $29,000 into April 20 as bulls faced a battle for ground reclaimed in March.

Will $30,000 become Bitcoin’s latest “Bart Simpson”?

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD heading to $28,800 on Bitstamp.

Earlier wicks below $28,600 were quickly bought up, but Bitcoin still threatened to flip $29,000 to resistance on the day, as traders eyed a crucial support zone.

$BTC / $USD – Update

On support now, so I am scalping a long while we remain above the lows at $28,550 on a 4 hour closure

Will see how this plays out today pic.twitter.com/qsjmVn2kb9

— Crypto Tony (@CryptoTony__) April 20, 2023

“Whilst the Bitcoin market is correcting, we still have the average transactor taking profits,” Checkmate, lead on-chain analyst at Glassnode, wrote in part of Twitter analysis.

“To me, this indicates that chips are still being taken off the table, and we don’t yet have a flush out of top buyers in full (like March).”

Checkmate added that he was waiting for realized losses to take control as a signal of “panic” by those who bought BTC as it crossed $30,000 this month.

An accompanying chart showed the Adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio (aSOPR) metric, which captures aggregate profit and loss of on-chain transactions.

Some more optimistic takes remained, with analyst Matthew Hyland noting one-month lows in Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) on daily timeframes.

RSI gives an insight into how overbought or oversold BTC/USD is at a given price level, and while still relatively high, such a reset and subsequent reversion can signal an inbound uptrend.

#Bitcoin Daily RSI now at lowest point since BTC closed at $24,200 over a month ago pic.twitter.com/JjGd7IqVJ5

— Matthew Hyland (@MatthewHyland_) April 19, 2023

Elsewhere, popular trader and analyst Jelle continued to observe a copycat formation by BTC/USD, which neatly followed a price fractal from 2020.

This ultimately produced a so-called “Bart Simpson” pattern — a spike higher, followed by a plateau and subsequent retracement — only to then break out even higher later on.

“$28.800 acting as a bottom so far. If we can hold here for the next week or so – I see us breaking $30.000 soon after,” Jelle predicted.

BTC price returns to “logical place”

With volatility returning to BTC/USD in recent days, John Bollinger, creator of the Bollinger bands volatility indicator, meanwhile called for caution.

Related: Is Bitcoin overbought or oversold? Use Bollinger Bands to find out!

Bitcoin, he noted on the day, had reversed away from its upper Bollinger band, abandoning a breakout beyond it.

“Bitcoin just pulled back to its middle Bollinger Band and its prior breakout level. We call this a logical place. Time to Pay Attention!” he tweeted.

Magazine: Crypto audits and bug bounties are broken: Here’s how to fix them

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.