A Message to the Early Bitcoin Developers and to the World About Bitcoin
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Satoshi Nakamoto
Jul 19, 2025, 8:38:52 AM7/19/25
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A Message to the Early Bitcoin Developers and to the World About Bitcoin
By Satoshi Nakamoto
"Don’t trust—verify."
This simple phrase captures the heart of what Bitcoin stands for.
We live in a world where we’ve been trained to trust: banks to store our money, governments to manage our economies, and corporations to protect our data. But time and again, those trusts have been broken. Financial crises, inflation, surveillance, and data breaches have revealed the dangers of blind trust in centralized institutions.
Bitcoin is a response to that failure—a system that doesn’t require trust.
It runs on math, code, and consensus—not politics, bailouts, or backroom deals.
Bitcoin Is About Sovereignty
Bitcoin isn’t just “digital money.” It is the first financial network that lets anyone, anywhere in the world, hold and transfer value without needing permission from any authority. It respects no borders, asks for no ID, and doesn’t discriminate.
If you own your private keys, you own your money. No one can freeze it, seize it, or inflate it away.
Bitcoin is financial self-sovereignty. But with that freedom comes responsibility.
"Don’t Trust—Verify" Means: Learn, Think, Act
You don’t need to trust any central bank. You can verify Bitcoin’s fixed supply.
You don’t need to trust a CEO or a minister. You can inspect the open-source code.
You don’t need to believe in the hype. You can run a full node and see every transaction yourself.
This system was designed so that no one needs to be in control—and no one should be. But for it to stay that way, the people who use it must understand it, use it responsibly, and build on it wisely.
Bitcoin is not a spectator asset. It’s a participatory protocol.
A Call to Builders, Users, and Thinkers
Bitcoin is still in its early days. It faces many challenges: misinformation, regulatory threats, technical limitations, and attempts to co-opt or centralize it.
But it also offers enormous hope.
To the unbanked, it offers financial inclusion.
To those under oppressive regimes, it offers freedom of transaction.
To savers, it offers protection from inflation.
To builders, it offers a foundation for innovation.
You are the stewards of this protocol now. I stepped away so that no one could depend on me. That was by design. A decentralized system must not have a leader—it must have a mission.
A Message to the Early Developers
Many of the earliest developers joined the project I started, contributing to Bitcoin Core and dedicating years of effort to building this revolutionary protocol. Through the incentives I designed, many became fortunate in their holdings, their mining efforts yielding great rewards. I knew most of these pioneers over the internet before meeting some in person.
Notably, Hal Finney and Wei Dai came to London in late October 2008 to meet with me—an extraordinary coincidence that I still find remarkable. Over the years, I have encountered many early contributors at Bitcoin and blockchain meetings, often anonymously, sharing a quiet camaraderie grounded in a shared vision.
To all early developers and contributors:
Thank you. Your passion, expertise, and resilience helped breathe life into Bitcoin and kept it alive when the world was uncertain. Your work laid the foundation for a movement greater than any one individual.
You helped build a system that transcends borders and challenges established norms. I am proud of what we created together, even if I remain in the shadows.
The Future Is What You Make It
Bitcoin can be a tool for revolution or speculation. It can be corrupted, or it can stay pure. That depends not on the code—but on you. How you take the Bitcoin project as humanely possible.
Run a node. Hold your own keys. Educate others. Speak out for privacy and freedom. Resist centralization. Question every update. Contribute, if you can.
Bitcoin is a mirror. What it becomes reflects who we are.
So if I could leave the world with one message, it would be this:
Don’t trust. Verify. And take responsibility for your freedom.
Bitcoin gives you power—but you must choose how to use it.
In Bitcoin We Trust.
— Satoshi Nakamoto
By Satoshi Nakamoto
"Don’t trust—verify."
This simple phrase captures the heart of what Bitcoin stands for.
We live in a world where we’ve been trained to trust: banks to store our money, governments to manage our economies, and corporations to protect our data. But time and again, those trusts have been broken. Financial crises, inflation, surveillance, and data breaches have revealed the dangers of blind trust in centralized institutions.
Bitcoin is a response to that failure—a system that doesn’t require trust.
It runs on math, code, and consensus—not politics, bailouts, or backroom deals.
Bitcoin Is About Sovereignty
Bitcoin isn’t just “digital money.” It is the first financial network that lets anyone, anywhere in the world, hold and transfer value without needing permission from any authority. It respects no borders, asks for no ID, and doesn’t discriminate.
If you own your private keys, you own your money. No one can freeze it, seize it, or inflate it away.
Bitcoin is financial self-sovereignty. But with that freedom comes responsibility.
"Don’t Trust—Verify" Means: Learn, Think, Act
You don’t need to trust any central bank. You can verify Bitcoin’s fixed supply.
You don’t need to trust a CEO or a minister. You can inspect the open-source code.
You don’t need to believe in the hype. You can run a full node and see every transaction yourself.
This system was designed so that no one needs to be in control—and no one should be. But for it to stay that way, the people who use it must understand it, use it responsibly, and build on it wisely.
Bitcoin is not a spectator asset. It’s a participatory protocol.
A Call to Builders, Users, and Thinkers
Bitcoin is still in its early days. It faces many challenges: misinformation, regulatory threats, technical limitations, and attempts to co-opt or centralize it.
But it also offers enormous hope.
To the unbanked, it offers financial inclusion.
To those under oppressive regimes, it offers freedom of transaction.
To savers, it offers protection from inflation.
To builders, it offers a foundation for innovation.
You are the stewards of this protocol now. I stepped away so that no one could depend on me. That was by design. A decentralized system must not have a leader—it must have a mission.
A Message to the Early Developers
Many of the earliest developers joined the project I started, contributing to Bitcoin Core and dedicating years of effort to building this revolutionary protocol. Through the incentives I designed, many became fortunate in their holdings, their mining efforts yielding great rewards. I knew most of these pioneers over the internet before meeting some in person.
Notably, Hal Finney and Wei Dai came to London in late October 2008 to meet with me—an extraordinary coincidence that I still find remarkable. Over the years, I have encountered many early contributors at Bitcoin and blockchain meetings, often anonymously, sharing a quiet camaraderie grounded in a shared vision.
To all early developers and contributors:
Thank you. Your passion, expertise, and resilience helped breathe life into Bitcoin and kept it alive when the world was uncertain. Your work laid the foundation for a movement greater than any one individual.
You helped build a system that transcends borders and challenges established norms. I am proud of what we created together, even if I remain in the shadows.
The Future Is What You Make It
Bitcoin can be a tool for revolution or speculation. It can be corrupted, or it can stay pure. That depends not on the code—but on you. How you take the Bitcoin project as humanely possible.
Run a node. Hold your own keys. Educate others. Speak out for privacy and freedom. Resist centralization. Question every update. Contribute, if you can.
Bitcoin is a mirror. What it becomes reflects who we are.
So if I could leave the world with one message, it would be this:
Don’t trust. Verify. And take responsibility for your freedom.
Bitcoin gives you power—but you must choose how to use it.
In Bitcoin We Trust.
— Satoshi Nakamoto
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