Satoshi Anticipated Bitcoin Energy Debate in Email Thread With Early Collaborators

In
a
recently
released
batch
of
emails
posted
by
Martii
‘Sirius’
Malmi,
an
early
collaborator
on
Bitcoin’s
code,
Satoshi
Nakamoto
warned
that
the
cryptocurrency
–
now
the
world’s
largest
digital
asset
–
could
become
an
energy
guzzler.

The
email
release
comes
as

Craig
Wright
is
on
trial
in
a
case
brought
by
the
Crypto
Open
Patent
Alliance
(COPA)
to
determine
whether
he
is
indeed
Satoshi
Nakamoto,
the
anonymous
creator
of
Bitcoin.

“Proof
of
Work
is
the
only
solution
I’ve
found
to
make
p2p
e-cash
work
without
a
trusted
third
party,”
Satoshi
wrote
in
May
2009,
calling
Proof
of
Work
(PoW)
“fundamental
to
coordinating
the
network
and
preventing
double-spending.”

PoW
is
a
consensus
algorithm
used
in
cryptocurrencies
like
Bitcoin
to
secure
the
network
and
prevent
double-spending
by
requiring
miners
to
solve
complex
computational
puzzles,
which
in
turn
validates
transactions
and
adds
new
blocks
to
the
blockchain.

PoW
is
at
the
center
of
a

debate
around
Bitcoin’s
energy
consumption.
While
the

cryptocurrency
industry
points
to

miners’
use
of
clean
or
orphaned
power,
which
would

otherwise
go
to
waste,
critics
are
laser-focused
on
the
raw
numbers
of
energy
consumption
it
generates.

As
a
result,
some
jurisdictions
like

New
York
State
or

British
Columbia
have
placed
moratoriums
on
Bitcoin
mining,
citing
the
high
energy
consumption.

“If
it
did
grow
to
consume
significant
energy,
I
think
it
would
still
be
less
wasteful
than
the
labour
and
resource
intensive
conventional
banking
activity
it
would
replace,”
Satoshi
wrote.
“The
cost
would
be
an
order
of
magnitude
less
than
the
billions
in
banking
fees
that
pay
for
all
those
brick-and-mortar
buildings,
skyscrapers,
and
junk
mail
credit
card
offers.”

2021
research
from
Galaxy
Digital
showed
that
Bitcoin
uses
half
the
energy
of
the
banking
or
gold
mining
industries.

“Ironic
if
we
end
up
having
to
choose
between
economic
liberty
and
conservation,”
Satoshi
continued.

Blockchain
serving
as
a
sort
of
open-source
notary
was
one
non-financial
use
of
Bitcoin
that
Satoshi
saw
in
the
technology,
which
would
allow
users
to
securely
timestamp
documents
to
prove
their
existence
at
a
specific
point
in
time.

“Bitcoin
is
a
distributed
secure
timestamp
server
for
transactions,”
Satoshi
wrote.
“A
few
lines
of
code
could
create
a
transaction
with
an
extra
hash
in
it
of
anything
that
needs
to
be
timestamped.”

Satoshi
was
also
concerned
that
labelling
Bitcoin
as
a
sort
of
investment
might
bring
legal
scrutiny
from
authorities.

“There
are
a
lot
of
things
you
can
say
on
the
sourceforge
site
that
I
can’t
say
on
my
own
site,”
he
wrote.
“Even
so,
I’m
uncomfortable
with
explicitly
saying,
‘consider
it
an
investment’
…
That’s
a
dangerous
thing
to
say
and
you
should
delete
that
bullet
point.
It’s
OK
if
they
come
to
that
conclusion
on
their
own,
but
we
can’t
pitch
it
as
that.”

Indeed,
in
the
time
since,
the
Securities
and
Exchange
Commission
(SEC)
has

engaged
in
a
long
campaign
of
legal
warfare
around
the

use
of
this
word
and
might
classify
a
cryptocurrency
as
a
security
and
crypto
exchanges
as
dealing
with
unregistered
securities.